How I Organize My Obsidian Vault 📥 Tags, Topics & Maps of Content

[@thomasvochten]

I have used Tag Pages in the past (from the Tag Wrangler plugin). Using Topics seems a somewhat similar concept, but I like this one better. Thanks for the inspiration!

[@Wanderloots]

No problem! Glad you felt inspired ✨ what about this system do you like better than tag wrangler/tag pages?

[@plaus1blepotent1als]

Thanks, this was super helpful.🙂

[@Wanderloots]

I'm so glad! It's my pleasure 😊 was there anything in particular that you found helpful or hadn't heard of before?

[@plaus1blepotent1als]

@@Wanderloots I've been struggling with the Tags vs Topics methods, and I needed to make decisions to be able to move forward. This was helpful in making a decision to use the Topic method and use tags as my method for progressing the notes through my system via the status method you recommend. So thanks a bunch!

[@Wanderloots]

@@plaus1blepotent1als Amazing! That's great to hear. I found myself struggling in the exact same way at first haha, I think it's a common issue with overthinking Obsidian at the beginning 😂

[@eshwarnag]

This is Amazing! This should blow up!

[@Wanderloots]

Thank you! Appreciate it a lot 😊haha the best way is to share the video with someone you think might find it helpful 🫡

[@joecrumpler6865]

Unbelievably helpful. Thank you so much.

[@Wanderloots]

Thanks Joe! Appreciate it 😊Was there anything in particular you found helpful? I'm making more videos on organization, so I'm curious what resonated!

[@joecrumpler6865]

@@Wanderloots your demonstration of how to use tags. It helped me understand that I was mixing tags/folders/notes and making in harder to find things in my huge vault.

[@Wanderloots]

@@joecrumpler6865 Awesome! That was the key idea of the video, so it's great to hear that was the most helpful for you 😊 On that note, you might find my automatic inbox & index tutorial helpful, as it's the best way I've found to find things & surface insights in my also massive vault: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2aslJqnodyMg6M

[@MorgsBrew]

Howzit I think your content in this field is very useful and well explained. You add really nice supporting information instead of just pushing a video. When I first found your channel I was not sure you were not a AI Google podcast because you spoke so clearly. I have been in a deep rabbit hole trying to figure out hierarchical organized folders vs file dump with tags. I am more convinced that good Metadata is critical for any notes so that they are able to act photonic like. Both a wave and a particle or a file and a tag 😂 Lekke

[@Wanderloots]

Thank you! That means a lot, that's exactly the vibe I'm going for 😊 lol definitely not an AI podcast 😂 but i'll take it as a compliment. I agree, metadata is the foundation of the future of using these notes in effective ways, especially when plugging them into AI (like I talk about in my NotebookLM video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/amPdlqqap6ilhcU) I've actually the exact same thought on the quantum nature of notetaking! It can operate as a stateless format until you actually create the ghost note and turn it into a topic note haha

[@PawFromTheBroons]

25:57 What are those numbers that appear regularly throughout the video? The 0 after Zettelkasten and the 22 after Augmented PKM?

[@Wanderloots]

Ah! that is the "Better Word Count" Plugin. It provides a word count beside each heading, so you can keep track of the distribution of words in the document better. I use it for optimizing for SEO, since you want less than 300 words per subheading.

[@josephb7128]

This is a great explanation. I wish I had this when I started using Obsidian rather all the over complicated PKM Zettle Code heavy videos that were dominant before. I will definitely remember to share this to new Obsidian users first. The other creators are good too, but I think overcomplicate things for beginners, which can lead to unproductive side quests of perfectionism. My wife for example won't touch Obsidian (even though she can code) because the videos she saw me watching made her think Obsidian was a complicated nightmare.

[@Wanderloots]

Thank you! Appreciate you saying that, and also for any future shares 🫡 I completely agree, I felt overwhelmed by a lot of the videos when I first started out, so I wanted to make one that helped people really get the core essence of how to bring in structure vs emergence in Obsidian, so I'm glad that you felt it came across that way. For sure, it's so easy to go down the rabbit holes of perfectionism & completionism, which is kind of the opposite of what Obsidian is meant for haha. Well, if your wife wants to give it another go, I do have an Obsidian for beginners video too 😊: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmOlnKmnl7mDoM0 Do you use a zettelkasten system now? That's what I'm actually working on explaining for my next video, but in a simplified way (I hope haha)

[@josephb7128]

@@Wanderloots I have a very messy attempts at Zettelkasten, but ultimately don't use it. I'm looking forward to your version as I do think it is an interesting concept, but I came to Obsidian and this process in middle of a PHD so it was hard to justify the time. I had a lot of advanced writing already done or mostly wanted Obsidian for brainstorming ideas. Another issue for me was that I couldn't do on my work in Obsidian because I needed to do a lot of writing in Word to share with others. I only recently discovered the Writage app for Word, which has been a game changer. I think the way you describe the use of Topics as a way of getting emergent patterns is 100% useful and I wish I had done that from the beginning. It would have been far more useful for me than trying to pigeonhole zettlekasten. When I finish my defense in the spring, I will get to reimagine how I use Obsidian and probably how to incorporate zettlekasten more. It's an interesting method.

[@Wanderloots]

@@josephb7128 Completely fair! I started with Obsidian as a brainstorming system as well, but then used it to publish 50+ newsletters with over 150,000 words (around 3 non-fiction books' worth). Over that time, I established my zettelkasten system to turn my notes in more atomic structure so I could build off of the research I did for the newsletters (touching on PKM, AI, Creator Economy, Blockchain, Data Theory, etc.) Thanks for saying that re: emergent patterns, it's a core element to my system so I'm glad you appreciate it! I think what's nice about this emergent system is that you can start adapting your notes as you use them. Just create a "topic property" and then add it to each note as you go, and eventually you can enable emergence through your system without much extra work. It's surprisingly intuitive! Good luck with your PhD defense! What is your thesis related to?

[@Wanderloots]

@@josephb7128 I actually just put out my explanation of Zettelkasten if you're interested in simplifying it 😊 kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZmGvfKaMbc1psLssi=wJ3c6bj2QBfZvQEg

[@josephb7128]

@ it’s on the list but haven’t had time for a long form video I need to focus on :). That isn’t a complaint just an explanation

[@DavidHurtadoToran]

Great video, thanks. Quick (and quite offtopic) question: what font do you use for the text? it's lovely

[@Wanderloots]

Thank you very much! Glad you liked it 😊 I believe it is the default font of the "Atom" Theme. If you go to Settings --> Appearance --> Themes, you can change the theme to "Atom" and it should modify the rest of the interface 🫡

[@marcof247]

Thank you for the great video! May I ask how you added multiple topics under the same "Topics" property in 20:34 of the video? I tried adding multiple topics via the brackets [[Example]] but Obsidian just treats it as a single note (so if I did [[USA]] [[California]] it would just end up creating a note called USA]] [[California. Adding a comma to separate them didn't work either.

[@Wanderloots]

My pleasure! Glad you found it helpful and thanks for watching 😊 ah yes, you have to change the property type to “list” rather than “text”. Right click on the property icon beside the property name and you can change the type 🫡

[@marcof247]

@@Wanderloots oh got it! I have to say, despite downloading Obsidian months ago, I've never really been interested in learning to use it until I stumbled on your videos. After watching the Zettelkasten video you did, it gave me a new perspective so I decided to give it another go. Thanks again!

[@Wanderloots]

@@marcof247 Oh that's awesome! So glad I could help getting you going on it 😊 Obsidian has honestly changed the way I work with information and has greatly increased my productivity in a sustainable way. That's great to hear about the zettelkasten video too! I actually just released part 2 of that one, showing how I template my system if you're looking for more information: kzbin.info/www/bejne/raDVoatmgbSYf6s

[@triciaaanderud8864]

I appreciate you sharing your ideas - very helpful. Also I really like your lamp - so if it goes missing you should NOT come to my house to look for it. It is not here. ;-)

[@Wanderloots]

My pleasure! So glad you found it helpful, thanks for letting me know 😊 lol alright good to know 😂 it's actually a homemade lamp!

[@nildesperandum2034]

Thx!!

[@Wanderloots]

My pleasure! Glad you liked it ✨

[@lee_sanghyeok]

06:32 bookmark❤

[@Wanderloots]

Glad to hear it! The local graph view for emergent patterns? Or are you bookmarking for the topic itself?

[@PawFromTheBroons]

My Rule of Thumb is Topics for storing knowledge and Tags to aid in Dataview retrieval.

[@Wanderloots]

That's a great rule of thumb! Thanks for sharing. That's kind of how I think of it too, because I use tags as part of my inbox & index system, which I talk about more in this video on automatic inboxes & indexes: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2aslJqnodyMg6M

Ya know, you'd have to do a lot less explaining if you did a bit more showing. Why no content in any of the notes? Zero context. I knew tags when I came in but I'm not sure anything else is gonna stick. Thanks for the upload though. Always appreciate the efforts of those who do, over those who don't. Like me!

[@Wanderloots]

hmm I feel as if there were actually quite a few examples with context. Did you watch to the Map of Content section, in particular, to 22:38? I went through a few use cases for AI, Epistemology, and Neuroscience. But also keep in mind, the goal of these Topic Notes in general is that they are contentless until turned into a map of content. About 80% of my Topic Notes are empty, merely used to link between files. What would you find more helpful for showing context? I'm working on some use-case videos as I finish out the basic tutorial series. Also, appreciate you saying that! It's rewarding to post here, but definitely a lot of work haha.

@@Wanderloots Lack of topic note content was a feature not a bug? :) I didn't pick up that up, tbh. I expected these topics to be part of a narrative, existing within a paragraph or article, or as a content heading, or perhaps stacked at the end of a piece to identify the themes within it. That makes better sense from the perspective of the tutorial. Now I'll try and make better sense of it from my perspective. I note the MoC section you referred to , but again, an MOC is just an index. For me, this is like trying to explain a book through the table of contents. Sure, I got a good idea of what it's about but I think i might skip attending book club this month! What I would find more helpful is something that looks more like a working model, a specific use case, with a para or two of content, and not using AI as an example would be my preference. Look, this is just my two cents. I see comments from others who have no such gripes so take mine with a pinch. Thanks for engaging, and the for the work you and other content provides do to empower us all.

[@Wanderloots]

@tezhug yes! It is definitely a feature :) The key difference between a tag & topic note is that topic notes have the capacity to add information to them ~when you're ready~. Until content is added to a topic note, it can effectively behave as a tag and then you can turn specific ones into Maps of Content when ready. The topic notes then become part of the narrative as I write, or as part of the metadata. E.g., I have a "Topics" Property in the YAML where I add the key topics to new notes. But, as I'm writing, I link to specific topics as keywords in the flow of the sentence structure. For MoC, they are, by definition, an index. BUT if you want to make them more, that's totally up to you. The key is to provide entry points to further exploration of your vault, so for some people, bulleted lists would work, and for others, a paragraph intro into various subtopics would be better. Some people include quotes or embed other notes into their MoC, it can be very flexible to what works best for you so you don't skip book club lol. Thanks again for the feedback! I am organizing my working model series now actually, so this is very helpful. I wanted to get the basic tutorial series done (which has 2 more videos that will bring topic notes into my zettelkasten system) and then I'll show more practical use cases :) Any other suggestions/ideas are much appreciated 🫡

@@Wanderloots That's a great explanation. What you say makes perfect sense and is actually what I've been looking for. I don't know why I couldn't join the dots. Maybe my inexperience with Obsidian and being a bit thick sometimes. I'm working on a local history project and all my data is in Excel tables. Which is great for storage and linking to local content, but not for connecting. I'm not sure if I found Obsidian or if it found me, but I think it's just the right app and I love it so far. Sadly, what I love about it most is that you can get really techie with it and lose focus on why you have it. That's dangerous but it's great anyway. My research project is about an ancient parish in Wales and the Excel file includes references and links to 2,800+ newspaper clippings, 300+ journal articles, 1200+ BMD, historic maps, estate conveyances, wills, census records and more, all of which are held locally as images or PDFs. I've been working with Claude at Perplexity (!) on crafting VBA, PowerShell and Python scripts to help me clean the data, and then import the dozen or so worksheets into Obsidian. With so many records coming in all at once, albeit one dataset at a time, it's important to get the set up right. That said, I do have the ability to import, wipe and wholly or partially re-import so it's not so desperate. I've successfully imported the newspaper clippings. Each one a note with links to the online resource and the local copy, including thumbnail. Name and place name fields are imported into the body of the note under relevant headings and five 'Theme' fields are imported as tags. I could never have done this without AI. My coding days are last century. Literally. Many of the 'Theme' fields are Subthemes really, they lend themselves well to tags. For instance: Death, Obit, Drunk, Entertainment, Church, Livestock. One thing I do know is I'll be using Dataview... a lot. So I'm prepping my imports for that. Anyhoo, bringing it back to what's relevant, my project does have some very specific longform themes so I can absolutely, with a bit of forward planning, see a very good use case for what you describe; Topic Notes and MoC. So, thank you. The next time Claude and I have a code sprint I'll refer to this video. Thanks for bearing with and I look forward to more content. Subbed.

[@Wanderloots]

Awesome! I'm glad to hear it clicked 😊 haha it can be a confusing system & very abstract at times, which makes it hard to see the practical implementations. Wow! that sounds like quite an intense project. Thanks for laying out how you're doing it, that sounds fascinating. I think prepping for Dataview like you're saying is a great call, as it really makes generating specific inboxes for relevant information based on tags/topics very easy. I actually talk more about building that out in this video on automatic inboxing & indexing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2aslJqnodyMg6M Re: the MoCs, yes! Exactly. A bit of forethought & understanding how your system can emerge more over time (and leaving room for the emergence) can really help reduce the planning needed to have an efficient & effective system. My pleasure! Happy to answer any more questions, and good luck with your project! 🫡