5 Tips for Long-Term Use of Obsidian
I’ve been using Obsidian for over two years now, and I have to admit that there have been some ups and downs along the way (which isn’t over yet!). In particular, big changes in the way I work, or new features integrated into Obsidian that have made me rethink the structure of my Obsidian Vault and the content of my notes. And it’s bound to happen to you too, because I don’t think it’s possible to have something that will work perfectly for you for years at a time.
With thousands of notes now, I’ve had to find some tricks so that I don’t have to change everything overnight if I ever want to do things differently. That’s what I’m going to share with you today.
Don’t be a perfectionist
First thing, and one of the most important: don’t be a perfectionist. I tend to be one too often, and I think it’s a bad character trait, even more so when it’s linked to Obsidian.
There’s no point in always wanting to have perfect notes, with the same structure, the same properties, etc… It’s not tenable in the long term, unless you find the right templates for your notes at the first attempt that you’re going to keep all the time.
In the beginning, as soon as I changed a note template, I modified all my old notes so that they corresponded to that template. Now I’ve got too many notes to do that, so I just let it go, and it doesn’t matter anyway.
It doesn’t matter as long as my notes are still useful. Let’s say, for example, that I now decide to tag all my book revies with #book-review, then it’s in my interest to modify my old notes to add this tag, because if when I search for all my notes tagged with #book-review I don’t have all my notes, it’s useless.
In short, don’t be a perfectionist, but gauge what it’s useful to update in the event of a change in your vault.
Be minimalist
To minimize the work involved in changing your vault, be minimalist and keep only what you need.
If you’ve just discovered Obsidian, you’ll probably want to put lots of things in it: plugins, todo lists, calendars, daily notes, etc. Start by asking yourself what you really need.
The same goes for the properties of your notes and the tags you use, there has to be a use for them. Almost all my notes have createdand modifiedproperties which contain the creation and last modification dates of the note respectively, but what’s the point? For me, none, and it clutters up my notes unnecessarily. But as I said above, there’s no need to be a perfectionist, so I leave these properties in rather than waste time removing them.
Also, avoid redundancy. For example, there’s no point in tagging all your book reviews with #book-review if they’re in a “Book Reviews” folder. Use either one or the other.
Think about the future, but not too much
Who’s to say you’ll still want to use Obsidian in a year’s time? This goes back to the first tip: don’t try to think of everything and make the perfect vault from the start, because if you do, you won’t be talking about it in a year’s time.
But don’t do anything stupid either, because if it turns out you’ll still be using it, and it’ll be a bloody mess.
For example, don’t think straight away about all the tags you’re going to need, because that’s not predictable. On the other hand, you can ask yourself how you’re going to manage duplicates, because after thousands of notes you may end up with duplicates. For my part, I name my notes as follows: {{Title}} — {{Timestamp}} .
After that, if you don’t think about things like that, it’s not a big deal. Your vault won’t be perfect, but that’s not a problem, as I said earlier. Design your vault in a modular way
I’ve already mentioned the concept of a component structure in a previous article. To put it simply, the idea is that your vault is made up of different parts that you can remove at any time without affecting the rest.
The simplest example is to organise similar notes into folders. For example, instead of having one big “Notes” folder, it’s better to have a “Zettelkasten” folder, a “Book Reviews” folder, a “Daily Notes” folder, etc. The day I don’t want to use daily notes any more, I just delete the folder (and possibly make a copy of it beforehand just in case) rather than manually searching for each daily note in a big “Notes” folder.
This may seem obvious to you, but that’s because it’s a simple example. I’ve already created more complex systems in Obsidian than simple folder structures, for example my daily notes were linked to my todo lists, my projects, my calendars, etc. The day I stopped using my daily notes, I couldn’t use the rest of them either.
Think modularity, and above all avoid overly complex systems where too many things are dependent on each other.
Automate Obsidian
Automate everything that can be automated, that way you’ll simplify your life, spend less time on maintenance and more time on the real content of your notes, and you’ll avoid silly mistakes (for example forgetting a tag in a note).
The easiest way to automate Obsidian is to use templates. For this you have the basic Obsidian plugin, otherwise you can use the Templater plugin for more advanced uses.
You also have the QuickAdd plugin, which lets you automate a number of actions simply. It combines very well with Templater, and allows you, for example, to create a note according to a template and automatically move it to the right folder.
There are also other plugins, for example to create film notes directly using the OMDB api, or to create book notes, etc. For each action you perform and the notes you create, try to see if it’s possible to implement automation. If you have some knowledge of code, you can also develop solutions tailored to your needs (for example, I’ve created a small app in Python that brings together various functions that I use regularly: https://github.com/estebanthi/obsidian-utils — see Improve Obsidian with Python).
Final Note
That’s just about all the advice I can think of, and that’s not bad. Above all, the most important thing is not to get bogged down with the form, but to concentrate on the substance: the content of your notes. Don’t forget that Obsidian is basically just a Markdown editor, so don’t make things unnecessarily complex.
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