Welcome to the first in a four-part series where I share with you how I use Obsidian as a creative.
It's an extensive look at how my Obsidian vault is setup and how I use it to store my thoughts, learnings, and ideas.
Introduction
I last wrote about my Obsidian Setup way back in March. I was still finding my feet with Obsidian and trying lots of different things to see what worked well for me.
Since then, I've made a lot more changes to develop the system I use today.
This system allows me to track my goals, remember content I consume, and manage my content creation process.
Technical Details
I'd like to share some technical details with you before we dive into the actual content of my system.
How I Have Setup My Obsidian Vault
My primary Obsidian vault sits inside of Google Drive. This allows me to view my notes from anywhere.
I don't use the Obsidian Sync service, the Obsidian Publish service, or the Mobile app (I don't know of a way to use it currently with Drive).
I keep my Knowledge Vault which I use personally and a Work Vault which I use for work-related material.
This post will focus on my Knowledge Vault because it has the most fun and interesting stuff to talk about.
How I Backup My Obsidian Vault
As mentioned I have my Vault stored on Google Drive.
I also sync my vault to a private GitHub repo manually.
I've worked my backups this way for the last several months and have had no issues.
What Plugins I Use
Here is a list of the Obsidian community plugins I currently use as part of my Obsidian setup:
- Advanced Tables - Really useful for managing tables. Github URL
- Better Word Count - Shows word count and character count of notes. Github URL
- Cycle Through Panes - Allows you to cycle through panes like browser tabs with CTRL + Tab. Github URL
- Dataview - Is a big part of my current setup, it allows me to add metadata to my notes and query based on that metadata to retrieve relevant notes. Github URL
- Day Planner - I don't use this much any more as I don't really plan out my days other than the main 4 or 5 things I plan to do that day. Github URL
- Kanban - I'm just messing around with this plugin at the moment but it works very well so far. Github URL
- Reading Time - Adds estimated reading time to notes. Don't have too much of a use for this but sometimes it's nice to know the length of some notes. Github URL
Directories
My Obsidian vault is divided up into different directories/folders to help me organize my content.
Here is my current directory setup:
- 00-inbox
- 01-life-os
- 02-literature
- 03-evergreen
- 04-resources
- 05-content-creation
- 06-topics
- 07-people
- 08-sources
- 99-attachments
- 99-daily-notes
- 99-templates
The perfect system doesn't exist
It's important to mention that this setup has evolved over time. Take a look at my last Obsidian setup article and you'll see a lot has changed.
I didn't start out with a perfect setup on day one. I still don't have a perfect setup. It's always evolving based on what I need and any new experiments I try out.
If you like a particular part of this system, try it out for yourself or modify it to suit your needs. Your own system should always be evolving as you evolve.
For me it's the most enjoyable part of this whole system. I can create something completely tailored to me!
The rest of this series of posts will go through each directory in detail talking about what it's for and how I use it.
I'll try to be as detailed as possible and include screenshots where relevant. With that said, if there's anything you'd like to know more about, let me know over on Twitter.
That's it for part one of this series. The next post will be released next Monday. I'll link them all so you can easily find them.
I can't wait to share the rest of these posts with you!
In the meantime you can read the original article I wrote over on my website: A Walkthrough Of My Obsidian Setup
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