mjt91

My Zettelkasten Note-Taking-System using Obsidian

[ writing productivity ] · 12 min read

Why Obsidian is Great

I am a big fan of simplicity. Plain text is simple. No wonder I am a big fan of Obsidian. It is a beautiful piece of software. Andrej Karpathy agrees:

To be fair it is by far not perfect but it does what I want it to do.

I always was impressed with the idea of a digital garden or the zettelkasten system. 2024 marked the time I decided to try it on my own. Most notes I take at work. As the time of writing I am working at a large German company where the primary OS is Windows I defaulted to use OneNote. Also since my colleagues shared books with each other all the time.

I was never a fan of OneNote. In fact many people dislike it. For me there are many reasons: the UI is cluttered, most functionalities I simply do not need, text formatting can be a pain (you can paste whatever & wherever you like in a document). It gets points for very quick search and integration capabilities for other M365 products though.

Obsidian makes it just very easy. Simple text files. It has something puristic about it. Not to forget that switching from obsidian to some other tool like vim for note-taking should be a breeze.

How I take my Notes

I am trying to follow a zero-effort zettelkasten system. There are so many ways how to organize it and one systems looks more complex than the next. The most relevant youtube videos on the topic when you search for it are vastly different in complexity.

Notable mention:

I am not the biggest fan of over-complex systems where I need to add a note there and then a workflow starts pushing my notes somewhere else, then notion template gets created pinging my on my phone etc. This is what most people have build, but then I found Artem Kirsanov and his brilliant simple take on it. See the video below:

After following this I created my vault with the following structure:

❯ tree -d

.notes
├── 000 Zettelkasten
├── 100 Work notes
│   ├── 15-5
│   ├── Projects
│   │   ├── **REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALLITY**
│   │   │   └── **REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALLITY**
│   │   ├── **REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALLITY**
│   │   └── **REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALLITY**
│   ├── Performance Reviews
├── 200 Blog
├── Files
├── References
└── Templates

Here is a rundown of what each folder is used for:

  • The 000 Zettelkasten folder is holing my zettels. Also my default folder when I create a new note with Ctrl + n .
  • The Files folder is the default safe-directory when I paste pictures
  • References holds all reference notes
  • Templates is the Obsidian default folder holding all templates (see section templates below)

The are non-standard folders that do not really belong to the zettelkasten method, but I did not want to create separate vaults for my work notes (i.e. 100 Work notes) and my blog post drafts and ideas (in 200 Blog). In addition I found it easier to work with sub-folders in my working directory. For instance there is a 15-5 folder where I put my weekly 15-5 notes.

My Templates

I have some templates I use very often. And there comes the power of obsidian into play. Applying a template is as easy as pressing Ctrl + Shift + t . The power of templates is making use of the metadata (obsidian calls this properties) and variables.

Here are the templates I use:

📖Reference Template

---
author: 
tags:
  - literature-note
source:
---
# 

# 📒 Summary + Notes

When I read a paper, an article or watch a youtube video that is a potential reference I create a new note in my References folder and apply the template. I fill in the author and source field. Source can be a link, name or some other reference to the source.

📚Book Template

---
author:
tags:
  - book
---
# 

# 🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

# ✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

# 📒 Summary + Notes

Same as above just for books. I put 3 sections in there that function as a super short summary in my own words (think: elevator speech about that book). Nice quotes I want to remember and full summary (sometime split by chapter).

Core Zettel Idea

---
date:  
tags:
  - idea
---
# 


---
# References

This is my main template that is used when I do Ctrl + n and create a new zettel in 000 Zettelkasten. Very simplistic with the idea to use the references section to link to other notes and references.

SCR Framework

# Situation
- ==The framing of the important, recent context the audience already knows and accepts as fact.==
- ==Answering the question: *Why is this important?*==

# Complication
- ==The reason the situation requires action.==
- ==Answering the question: *What went wrong?*==
- ==Often implies the question: *What should be do about it?*==

# Resolution
- ==The action required to solve a problem (or capture an opportunity).==
- ==Answering the question: *What is the solution*==

I always have a template ready to sketch ideas or presentations following the SCR framework. In my professional life I found this to be an effective communication tool to have. People sometimes find it hard to define the different buckets situation, complication and resolution correctly. This is why I have added a explanation text (that will be deleted after setting up the core idea).

Bonus: Eisenhower Matrix

# Eisenhower Matrix ✅

### URGENT + IMPORTANT
*Do it now*
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
- [ ] Task 3

### URGENT, NOT IMPORTANT
*Delegate or do it after tasks above*
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
- [ ] Task 3

### IMPORTANT, NOT URGENT
*Decide when to do it*
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
- [ ] Task 3

### NOT URGENT, NOT IMPORTANT
*Do it later / Dump it*
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
- [ ] Task 3

The Eisenhower Matrix is a tool help to decide what tasks to work on. A great way to make use of it in a workshop with colleagues to define and talk about what is important! I do not use it too often lately, but it came in handy once or twice in the last three months.

My Plugins

I do not use many plugins. The ones I use are little helpers to enhance my experience with obsidian. There are a TON of plugins out there and some are very impressive.

Admonitions

Link: javalent/admonitions: Adds admonition block-styled content to Obsidian.md (github.com)

A great little addon that adds different types of admonitions to Obsidian. It functions basically as different css styling of <blockquote> tags. For instance I use the > [!quote] or >[!todo] a lot.

Start your block quote by typing [!quote]

Note: this is not rendered correctly on the web, sorry😅 Just refer to the docs of Admonitions

Open-in-new tab

Link: patleeman/obsidian-open-in-new-tab (github.com)

I rely on the file viewer on the left hand side alot and found it very annoying that my notes would not open in the reading pane as a new tab (it just opens it in the same tab closing the currently active file). I found this plugin and was surprised that many people would love to see this as a native feature of Obsidian.

The author comments on this in the repository README.md with a cynical note:

I’m not putting much effort into expanding on this plugin since it would essentially be a game of wackamole to hackily patch all potential use cases. If you’d like this functionality natively, I suggest submitting a feature request to Obsidian.

obsidian-git

Link: denolehov/obsidian-git: Backup your Obsidian.md vault with git (github.com)

Basic support for git to backup my vault. I have two vaults: one at work and one private. Currently I only backup my private one (for confidentiality reasons). What is more to say other than it just works! To be fair, my vaults are quite small still and I need to find a better way to handle images.

Dataview

Link: obsidian-dataview repo.

I have seen so many people hyping this plugin that I found it in my list of installed plugins. I am yet to make use of it properly. I think I will leave it installed to someday finally find the time to make proper use of it.

Image Context Menus

Link: obsidian-image-context-menus (github)

I found that for my workflow I am stronly relying on images. Be it a screenshot from a paper, video or presentation. Sometimes I need to share some images with my peers.

Unfortunatley, Obsidian handles this not very nicely. All files I add will be saved to a dedicated Files folder (this can be set in settings). When I need to send an image ad-hoc I always needed perform the following steps:

  1. find the image
  2. jump to the source (my Obsidian Files folder in the navigation)
  3. Right click the image
  4. Show in system explorer
  5. Open in Windows Image viewer
  6. Right click copy
  7. Paste it into chat window / email

How horribly slow…

After looking around a bit I found many more people face the same problem. I those threads a real hero came forward and linked to a community plugin solving this problem: obsidian-image-context-menus (github) This plugin adds a small right-click-copy-to-clipboard functionality, that allows me to quickly share this image.

Resources

A collection of resources that helps me to refine my zettelkasten system incrementally.