How I Use Obsidian for Taking Notes, Part 2
- Nohra Murad
- Oct 3
- 6 min read
A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post that provided a birds-eye view of my note-taking system in Obsidian. In this post, I will get more granular about how I use Obsidian for zettelkasten as well as in my daily life.
Why do I have a note-taking system in the first place?
I started my Obsidian practice because I was tired of learning things and having them not "stick."
When I would pick up a new idea from a book or podcast, it would become an overarching theme for my thoughts for a week or so, but it would completely disappear once it was replaced with a new idea. I wanted somewhere for those ideas to incubate and grow in a way that felt personal to me.
One major innovation of systems like Obsidian is that, instead of building an architecture of folders to categorize my notes, Obsidian enables a slower infrastructure to emerge with hypertext and tags. The lovely term digital gardening is often applied to these more bottom-up systems.
I experimented with Obsidian also being a to-do list, but I found it wasn't really suited to this purpose. It was, however, great for managing parts of my life outside of the digital idea garden, like hobbies and personal journaling. I'll discuss how that works below.
My everyday Obsidian workflow
While my personal notes (i.e., the "zettelkasten-ish" system I referred to in my previous post) are the heart of my Obsidian practice, I also use Obsidian as a:
Daily scratch pad, which includes my diary, personal journal, and gratitude journal
Reading tracker
Read-later list
Project repository
Word processor
Hobby tracker, where I track my karate classes, sewing projects, recipes, and other such things
Thought dumping ground, where I use an iOS shortcut to quickly capture fleeting thoughts (the "Quick Notes" in the screenshot)
All of the notes in Obsidian are actually Markdown files that live in my iCloud; Obsidian is essentially just the GUI that allows for viewing and editing them. One implication of this is that, even if Obsidian were to go down in the distant future, my files are still preserved.
Plugins
If you use Obsidian or want to get started, here are the plugins I use most frequently. All of these are community plugins unless otherwise specified.
My Essential Plugins
Templater. Probably my most regularly used plugin. I use it to make and easily apply templates for my most commonly used notes (daily notes, project dashboards, karate class tracking, etc.).
Bases (core plugin). This is a new core plugin from Obsidian introduced in version 1.9 that lets you easily filter and view your notes. It is a game-changer for me: I used to use the Projects plugin, but Bases is much more powerful.
Daily Notes (core plugin). Creates a new note for each day.
Book Search. Lets you easily search for books and and pull their basic data from Google Books.
Breadcrumbs. Shows parent-child and sibling relationships between notes. I find this great for helping me grasp how notes are connected in my zettelkasten.
Dataview. Queries and displays data from your notes. I used to use Dataview more frequently to create indexes (which are bottom-up, as opposed to lists, which are top-down) and filter notes into lists and tables, but now Bases can do pretty much everything that Dataview can in a much more user-friendly way. I could update my templates to use Bases instead of Dataview, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Paste URL into selection. Creates links by letting you simply highlight text + paste the link. Much easier than manually typing it using Markdown format each time!
ReadItLater. Saves webpages, YouTube videos, etc. as notes. I use it both as an alternative to Pocket and to save sources locally.
Other Plugins I Find Helpful
Recent Files. Lists which files you've been in recently.
Admonition. Expands on Markdown's built-in admonitions so you can make your own.
Advanced Tables. Adds additional functionality for editing tables.
Calendar. Displays which days have an associated Daily Note and shows one dot for every 250 words written.
Iconize. Lets me add pretty Lucide icons to my menu.
Formulas
Here are some of the features I use in my Obsidian and which plugins I use to build it. I've also included relevant Markdown templates as .txt files for use with the Templater plugin.
Templater + Breadcrumbs = Zettelkasten
As described in my previous blog post, my zettelkasten is the heart of my Obsidian. Each note in this folder is a "zettel" that is written to capture one idea and any references.
These notes are never "done." I change, refine, and grow them over time. When I read something new, I think about if anything I learned from what I read connects or builds upon an idea that already exists in my zettelkasten.
What I love about my zettelkasten is that all of these zettels all live together regardless of their origin. Ideas aren't constrained to one subject or application: instead, they are free to mingle with each other, which makes for more connected thinking.
Keeping track of notes that all live together can be challenging, though, so I use the Breadcrumbs plugin to display the degrees of separation between my notes as parent, child, and sibling relations.
Daily Notes + Templater + Dataview = Personalized Daily Notes
My Daily Notes serve as my everyday hub where I keep track of what I did today, practice gratitude by listing three things I'm grateful for, journal if I feel like it, and see which notes I've created using Dataview.
I also have the weather, just for fun.
Bases + Book Search = Reading Tracker
In Obsidian, have my own virtual bookshelf where I can keep track of books I've read, want to read, and am currently reading. I use Bases to create the bookshelf, and the Book Search plugin helps me easily search for and save books.
Each book is saved as its own note. When I read books that I want to take notes on, I keep the notes I take within the book note so everything lives together. I often take my notes in a Rocketbook, which lets me scan my notes and easily import them into Obsidian.
I also have a book summary template that I add to the book notes when I'm done reading so I can summarize the main idea. I do this so the book is "stickier" in my brain as well as to help jog my memory if I ever go back to it.
Quick Notes with an Apple Shortcut
When I want to capture something quickly with my phone, like an idea or a fleeting thought, I use an Apple shortcut to append it to the Quick Notes note. I haven't used it in a while, as you can see – the last entry is from four months ago – but it's helpful, I swear!
Once I consider the idea captured, I check it off.
Zettelkasten seems like it takes a lot of time. Why do you do it?
I mentioned in my last blog post that I don't know how long I'm going to keep a zettelkasten.
My main concern with my zettelkasten practice is how much time it takes. Synthesizing information into my zettelkasten after reading a book or an interesting journal article can take hours. I tag notes or ideas I want to build out further so I have a backlog of ideas to explore.
I'm thrilled that modern technology can create a solution to so elegantly and powerfully augment our thinking, and I don't want to squander that.
At the same time, though, I have a life to live, and I don't want to spend it doing productivity theater at my computer. (Why do I need a backlog in my personal life? I don't need that smoke.)
Julian Simpson put it really well in this blog post:
Maybe notes don't want to be indexed and Zettelkastened and back-linked. Maybe they want to just be filled out and worked on until they go from a spark to something actionable? Or they want to be left alone in the dark, to grow on their own, until someone stumbles over them again? Write the idea down and walk away. Maybe that is the key. Maybe serendipity is just flicking through those notes until something catches your eye? Perhaps it is possible to be addicted to the idea of note-taking, while forgetting that the practice is supposed to serve a purpose and, absent that purpose, it is just busy work.
Why have a garden if you could just go to the supermarket? Sometimes, it's because growing your own food is a rewarding and serendipitous experience, but in other times, just buying your groceries is a better choice.
So long as my zettelkasten remains a place to play with ideas, I'll keep going. If (or when) it becomes a place for me to try to control ideas rather than hold them lightly, it will be time to rethink the system.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep gardening. 👩🏻🌾🪴