How I structure my Obsidian vault (Obsidian tour 2023)

[@nicolevdh]

THEME: AnuPpuccin (kzbin.info/www/bejne/bV62gKqupb-EhKs) PLUGINS: Novel Word Count, Dataview, Obsidian Publish (core), Buttons, Periodic Notes, Bookmarks (core)

[@pr3dated]

I understand why one might be hesitant to share their structure. As an AuDHD person, getting exposure to other working structures is helpful. I often have 2 competing weasels inside, 1 trying to establish complete control, and the other railing against that control. I do like the concept of using a folder as a namespace for note separation. I spent a great deal of time creating an "easy" Johnny Decimal system that I'm finding I end up not being able to use outside of keeping specific project notes together.

[@SofiaVicares]

Obsidian overwhelms me. I dont know why it does not convince me. But i am truly afraid of Notion losing data out of the blue so thank you for this vid it helps

[@cmdurham]

Thanks for sharing. This is great. I love "Folder Heathens" - as an Enterprise Content Management consultant, I've spent around a quarter century trying to convince people how misguided the use of folders is for anything at a scale much beyond your local hard drive. Links, tags, MOCs all the way. Every time I get the urge to organize into folders, I just think like 2 steps down the road to where I'm deciding what goes into it and save myself the sanity roll. I have a folder for MOCs, one for Sub-MOCs, then templates, files, and an archive of files I migrated from Evernote. A Daily notes folder because the plugin just puts them there. Everything else goes in a Notes folder. I Really love your data view idea of putting all meetings with a person in their note. I'm going to do that. Thanks again, keep up the great content.

[@Muhammet-Kuruoglu]

Can you expand upon that a bit more? Like when you said, the urge to make folders is dismissed by thinking two steps ahead. What kind of issues arise at scale? Your comment got me really curious about managing content at scale, can you tell me more about that in generall? If not then thats fine, but at least somewhere read/hear about it, any recommendations?

[@megh_na]

Thank you so much for this. Honestly I just wanted Obisidian as a way of storing information as of now and i was really confused about how i should organise it. Your organisation and themes just changed the whole experience for me. Do keep sharing more such setups.

[@pickenchews]

My 75 y/o Mom writes beautiful essays & entries about her thoughts, ideas and memories. She also collects a lot of articles etc. She hates the idea of saving on clouds. I think Obsidian is perfect for her, but I'm looking for a short digestible video she can watch that will get her oriented with it, without overwhelming her. Any suggestions?

[@jermaineroliver]

Get her started with minimalist note taking, and it doesn't necessarily need to be obsidian. Once she seems more open to the idea of virtual notes then maybe present obsidian as an option. Also keep in mind that virtual note taking is not for everyone, so it's okay if it's ultimately not the best solution for her. There's also the creativity aspect of writing, which can often get hampered if not using the right process that works for the individual.

[@ba_samsoum]

Linking Your Thinking has a playlist for beginners they're short

[@luvdaroc]

I would also recommend looking your thinking. I just learned of Obsidian and went through the #LYT beginners guide. It's been less than 24 hours and I'm liking the results!

[@pickenchews]

@@ba_samsoum i love that series of videos. It gripped me back when i first discovered Obsidian. Idk if it would help her. I think all that Matrix talk might lose her 😂

[@pickenchews]

@@jermaineroliver by "virtual" do you mean "on the computer"? Because she already uses the computer for her writing and her collecting of articles. She just needs a better system than using Word etc, and she loves the idea of an offline vault and organizing it with links & tags instead of folders.

[@LawrenceCarriere]

I am truly a folder heathen. I try not to be but I always end up with a bunch of folders where notes go to die! I see the chaos in your vault but you're explanation on why and how you do it makes it less chaotic. Thanks for popping the hood and letting us have a look. It sparks ideas for me on what I can do with my vault!

[@animalrave7167]

Im very much that way as well. Old habits die hard

[@GaelyneGasson]

Loved the video. Our methods are different but I enjoy learning about how other people structure their notes and it's refreshing to see people who choose to do things the way it works well for them. I've always been a folder gal but I also have a background in library work. I understand serendipity though... I was at first disappointed the libraries were doing away with the card system that I loved, to replace them with computer entries. The card stacks always let me open a random drawer and find something interesting or learn about something new I'd never explored before. I feel Obsidian has finally given this back to me with the way things are interconnected and the graph view. And yes, I like that girl in red. She's pretty smart!

[@ThomasTrutt-o1i]

Love your videos.. I actually use a LOT of folders.. For example i have one called entities that has sub folders, people, organizations, projects.. But i find that i use the folders to separate major pieces of data, and the notes there act as a landing page. So for instance in people i will have all that persons information but then data views that show meetings, slack conversations, projects, etc.. So if i know person X and i talked about a subject i can go to their page and skim their data tables for mentions.. I find this is the most helpful for Slack messages that i archive, since slack move so fast and is hard to tack items in. Like you i don't use tags to much, i mainly use them for main note types like Slack Message, Email, Meeting, quickNote, etc.

[@Metruzanca]

I also use this CHAOS system. Except mine is a bit more extreme and I only have: private, notes, blog (which publishes to a specific rss feed), and _meta (mainly templates). I use links and tags heavily.

[@calabi-yau4894]

Great video as always, Nicole! I am also revisiting my setup because I've been too hierarchical previously and now am way too chaotic with linking things in a standard but flexible way. I'm using Canvas to map out all my disjointed material and thinking of ways to easily connect/organize them without resorting to 50 folders (trying to stick to 4 or 5 maximum). Great food for thought here!

[@darkoreignoreaper]

I mind blowed by your explaining the way your use your use the arranging your vault .... hmm it gave me a lot to think by the way i am glad to hear your thoughts thank you for your view of thoughts

[@lavaa7392]

I feel like Obsidian makes me scared to write notes sometimes. The more notes I add, the more difficult it feels to restructure them all. So, i genuinely feel like i need a really good system before committing to anything or else reorganizing will be a pain later on. Do any of you feel similarly?

[@chaosordeal294]

You can put a shortcut to a file in many folders, and you can crosslink, so you actually can put files and folders into many folders. I have ebooks in my Horror folder that are also in my SciFi folder, without any duplication. I take your point, but . . .

[@d3lirious]

To be honest, seeing the thumbail with the bright color hair I was a bit worried coming into this video. I was really impressed by how well put together your explanation is. It's easy to listen to, very clear and full of wisdom. Thank you!

[@stephenjbro]

Dyed hair worries you?

[@goodcitizen4587]

@@stephenjbro Kool aid hair is usually a bad sign.

[@pablomarkaide5466]

Thank you for sharing this Nicole! I have a similar organization system, inspired by your previous videos (and other Obsidian creators). Keep up the good work!

[@PoulJensen]

hi, love your videos. regarding the assets, which are jpgs and pdf. Can you make them searchable within the image with some sort of ocr?? thanks

[@blakenator123]

Thanks for the tour! At around 12:15 I saw that your front matter had a list of dates. Are these modification dates? If so, how do you do that in YAML?!

[@badrGamer11]

Thanks a lot. I enjoy learning from you. Please keep up the good content

[@iconoplasty]

Thanks for sharing this. I've been trying to figure out my own organization scheme, and was leaning toward fewer folders as well. One of the things holding me back is that directories decrease in performance as they get larger (more files / other directories inside). That doesn't really get to be a problem until a directory has around 10k children though ... so it's good to know that even an extremely prolific note-taker doesn't seem to be approaching that. One question though... how many years does your vault go back, currently?

[@prophet9154]

What is your plugin/theme that enables colored folder layouts?? I LOVE that and it would be so useful to my highly visual mind

[@nicolevdh]

It's called AnuPpuccin, and I have a video on it too! :)

[@RaineInChaos]

I apologize because this is unrelated to the topic at hand but I've watched a couple of videos since you did your hair this color and it looks SO CUTE! (Edit: I realize now it's the curly texture and not the color itself, but it looks so much more vibrant like this I love it!) Seriously though, I did appreciate this video. I'm a bit of a folder heathen but it really does annoy me that I can't put things into multiple folders. I haven't figured out a way to not lose my notes yet.

[@nicolevdh]

Hi Raine! You're so sweet. I've been embracing my messy hair recently and I'm glad you like it! I appreciate you!... even though you're a folder heathen.

[@ZiadMunson]

Where can we get the 'minimal cards' css snippet? Looks great, but a quick web search doesn't come up with anything. Thanks!

[@malcolmmerlyn9153]

Hi Nicole, where do you put your daily notes ?

[@AlessandroScaltritti]

The video I was looking for! Thanks ❤️

[@ClemensLaengle]

How can you make these Folders that nice looking colorful? 06:59

[@vitezslavackermannferko7163]

Please, what is the music at 19:30?

[@dsiu]

hi there. great video for organizing the vault. how do you show the keys of frontmatter in nice icons?

[@AmeeliaK]

If I don't use folders, I can't color them in AnaPuccin, so they are definitely a must! 😊

[@animalrave7167]

I have no issues with folders. I am 100% a folder Heathen. I have metric shit-tons lmao. That's what happens over decades of amassing notes from thousands of books. I already have a way of using all that old information to combine and collect ideas together to form something but its much more cumbersome than linking things as i need to sort and review alot. The value of zettlekasten is in the linking and the value of those links then approaching it from the bottom up. Going forward based on project by project my zettles will grow. I'm about 6months in so far with over 1000 of them. Already ive seen ideas emerge almost by themselves that i never anticipated that have been useful. i still make and keep longer form traditional notes from content ive consumed. Some concepts need a longer description than a few lines to flesh it out and yes i will still be a top down folder heathen going forward.

[@rexyduplex]

Hi Nicole, thanks for sharing your experience. Do you know how to query block in order to get something like the dataview tables based on tags within those blocks?

[@rolf911]

beautiful mix of structure and chaos. The Vault is almost as homely as my own ;-)

[@klinebottle]

I wish there was a way to overlap vaults between people. For example, I almost want to subscribe to quite a few of your notes. Some like "Command and Query Separation", I would reference but never contribute to. Others, like notes on System Monitoring, areas where I have my own notes already (not nearly as organized as your notes), but I have them set up for my own memory. Likewise, I have a lot of notes on things that you would never want to know (like ServiceNow or Pentaho), but maybe I have notes that you would subscribe to, like research into principles for ethical AI and data governance. Still my best notes are generally garbage compared to your worst notes. I do hope to put some on my website eventually using Quartz (and your tutorial). Your videos are amazing, and I appreciate what you're doing.

[@malcolmmerlyn9153]

Do you use the same structure for your Windows/Mac/Linux Folder structure out of curiosity ? I have ADHD and I am alas perfectionnist and I was seeking the holy grail in your video :)

[@jonr6680]

Girl in red? Did I miss something? My fave feature is the sidebar that lists the possible link targets in the active page. I think it's a plugin. So all I have to do is click the words I want to convert into links. The magic is that it automatically uses the word as an alias, so the full path is hidden. But I really must get my tagging on point. For me, tagging is like another layer or dimension. In other systems tags # or contexts @ seem to be the standard so am trying to formalize that. Also to say like adjectives or something, a tag is great for anything NOT needing it's own page. So like Nicole I might tag the note status... #chaos is popular for some reason!

[@vitezslavackermannferko7163]

9:08 Would it be crazy to imagine obsidian supporting mdx files? MD file meets javascript+react+jsx

[@_taylor_v]

This is great! I can definitely relate to your views on tags, folders, and links (haven't used bookmarks yet). How do your Maps of Content typically form? Do you create the structure first and then fill in the notes later? Or create the individual notes first and build the MOC after? (Top/down vs bottom/up is how I've heard this compared before) Thanks!

[@nicolevdh]

How to create Maps of Content

[@EuOrganizado]

Nicole, I have a question. do u have a categorization within your personal folder? something that helps you sorte through everything?

[@jsigncst]

your hair is (much) better now (in serendip-chaos 😅) cheers from Argentina Nicole

[@lillithsleeps]

Thank you for this!

[@jessysuzuki9288]

I've watched a bunch of these videos from you and decided to finally try it out! But while getting started with some things, I've noticed for example if I mention something in a daily note that could link to other places, it doesn't because it's in a folder. Is the explicit Obsidian URL the only option to keep them in a folder, or just leave everything in the main folder that doesn't need to be isolated? Edit: Found linking it from the mentioned page works, but uses the Wikilink method which doesn't work while in the Daily folder

[@bob39buck43]

Hi, how did you get that effect for the front matter?

[@KhoaDương-h2c]

How to make sidebar display as isolated section and colorful folders like that? Please anyone share how to do that! Thanks! ❤

[@nicolevdh]

Hey! It's an Obsidian theme called AnuPpuccin. Here's my video on it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bV62gKqupb-EhKs

[@jivexero]

After watching a cluster of obsidian videos, I realize that obsidian kinda stresses me out…

[@shawnmiguel]

is how your sidebars look (they seem sepeterated from the main edit window) related to the theme, or is it custom CSS?

[@nicolevdh]

It's related to the theme! It's an option in Style Settings gor Anuppuccin.

[@shawnmiguel]

@@nicolevdh thank you so much for the quick reply! appreciate you for all your work, I've learned a lot about obsidian from you!

[@wilsonlamlyt7138]

@@nicolevdhoooh! may I ask what plug-in you have used to make the yaml front matter to look different from usual? I remember using something similar but has a problem in it.

[@TyiZeak]

I keep hearing you say the term "markdown file". can you let me know what your definition of this is?

[@nicolevdh]

Hi! Markdown is a markup language, and it's also a type of file (with the extension .md at the end of the filename). It's the format that Obsidian notes are saved in. :) Here are some of my notes on it: notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com/obsidian-playbook/Using+Obsidian/02+Making+Notes+in+Obsidian/Markdown

[@TAC3O]

MOCs are love :3

[@dani.meisner]

Obsidian vault

[@Crivoh]

Im trying to move away from notion. Just so many apps. Main issues with notion is I just want to write. If I'm trying to learn about let's say abortion or being vegan and the mortality of it and pros and cons and every different perspective, i have trouble trying to look for the page the next day just SO I can place or tag it the same way So it connects. Sometimes I talk about or write about these things way down the line if I happen to hear a podcast or see a video talking about it and I just quickly want to write quotes and my perspective on said quotes and how my opinion differs and why. My mind doesnt work in an organized way. l just want to write things down from videos and things I've read of topics I want to learn more about. And have it connect for me some how without me having to tag it or link it bc Im not gonna remember how i linked or tagged it in the first place. That's my main issue. So I have all these pages on notion that have to do with abortion but they are all over the place that now I don't even no what i have wrote or haven't wrote to see where I left off. . l just need someonthing that can make this a lot easier where i focus on writing and learning from my thoughts and only that and ideas of other ppl instead of focusing on trying to organize and connect those ideas or look for them from past notes.If obsidian can do this alone without me having to structure anything I will gladly switch. But I haven't been able to find something that is somewhat like my messed up mind is. Just clutter and confused but something that can just organize it for me In some way without much effort

[@jlstrick1]

I do listen to The Girl in Red 😊

[@nicolevdh]

Same! ;)

[@mageprometheus]

Nothing about how you structure your vault rubs me up the wrong way, it all looks perfectly reasonable.

[@Andrew-7324]

we really need to know what #sex tag points on😉