How I organise Obsidian

When I started using Obsidian in 2022, I didn’t know what to expect from it. It was a bit rough around the edges; it didn’t have tables, Bases, Properties, and there were fewer community plugins than today.

Since then, Obsidian has evolved into a powerful note-taking app, but without a clear structure, it can end up a mess. Like any other note-taking app.

I didn’t create my organisational system as a “dogmatic”, “ultimate productivity hack”. It’s something that I used and edited constantly since my Evernote days. I believe everyone thinks differently and needs to organise their information in a way that makes sense for them. Use these examples as an inspiration to edit and personalise.

I use Obsidian to organise my Zettelkasten, do a daily journal with simple task management, write blog articles, and, most importantly, a shopping list. :))

My personal rules

Setting personal rules reduces decision fatigue and keeps everything organised.

• Pluralise tags and categories. Inspired by Kepano’s rules.

• Use the PascalCase format when writing tags.

• Capitalise the value of properties. They look nicer this way.

• Use lowercase for property names. By default, Obsidian provides: “tags”, “aliases”, “cssclasses”, and most of the plugins use lowercases.

• Keep a note of all the hotkeys you use frequently.

• Create custom tags. For example, I use LogIdeas- for ideas I want to come back to, LogJournal- for journal entries, and LogZettel for zettel notes.

• Create templates for all your notes.

• Aim to have properties reusable across your vault.

Vault structure

I grew up with Windows, so my default organisation format is folders. I try to organise them with a three-level deep maximum, and I have adapted a version of the Johnny Decimal numbering. Some level one folders don’t have folders inside, like Zettelkasten, for example. Others, like Projects, have more.

Capture

This folder acts as an Inbox, where I dump things to be processed.

Clippings

All notes created with Obsidian Web Clipper.

Attachments

Images, PDFs, and similar, all organised in folders based on projects.

Admin

Admin is the folder where I place my daily notes, Bases, templates, and various personal documents.

Archives

Here, I add past projects or rarely used notes.

References

These notes are collections of read books, people’s profiles, places to visit, and an art archive. They are used for creating Bases: to read books, food recipe lists and similar.

Zettelkasten

All Zettels are here. The notes are organised by Zettel ID, directly under the main folder. I have a Hub note where I add links to each note. In the Hub note, the links are organised alphabetically by topics (and each topic receives a number). Each alphabet letter has a heading 1, so I can navigate faster.

Projects

All my active projects. Every project has an attachments folder and an archive. I prefer to keep these together because it’s easy to work with them.

Sources

Clippings organised by creators and topics.

Theme

Minimal was the first theme I tried, and I still use it. It’s stable, has support for most plugins, and a lot of customisation options.
My most used fonts are iA Writer Quattro V, Avenir, and IBM Plex Mono. I’m always using the dark colour scheme, currently the Gruvbox flavour. Accent colour, tags colour, are all based on Flexoki.

Tasks

I don’t keep a complex task system in Obsidian. For my day-to-day tasks, the Tasks plugin is enough. I have a few project tags, so I can filter them. I tried the Kanban plugin, TasksNotes, and other plugins, but all were disrupting my daily note flow.

Daily Notes

My Daily notes have a few sections that help keep them clear when I revisit them. I have a Notepad section where I add text, tasks, links, and ideas that will be processed later. Another section is Tasks, which is a query using the Tasks plugin syntax, to show my to-dos grouped by project’s tags. The next section is the Journal-where I record my work progress, ideas, or impressions. The last section is reserved for article notes and the links archive. If I read something and I have a highlight, or it’s a link to a tool, place, or whatever, I add it here and include two or three tags.

Conclusion

How we organise information is something personal, intimate. Yes, you can choose a pre-made system, and that can help you. But, my recommendation is to try and test more options, and always keep an eye on how you can make it make sense for you, for the way you think and visualise information.