A Great Setup to Organize Your Life with Obsidian — Part. 4 — Template Vault
This story follows the Use Obsidian Like a Pro series. You can find the other stories here:
After sharing my Obsidian setup through 3 stories, some people asked me if I had a vault template to give. So I’ll take the opportunity to share it in this article, along with detailed explanations of how the setup works.
The vault template is obviously free to download, here is the link (it’s from my GitHub): Template Vault.
This story includes many links to stories I made because I won’t repeat things I’ve already talked about in a much more detailed way, so feel free to check them for more information!
Indexing
The folder names in my vault are preceded by a number. This is useful to index them and to make them appear in a precise order.
000 Inbox
The inbox is the entry point of the vault. Each note should be created here (except for some cases, we’ll discuss that later).
This way, all the notes that need to be processed are gathered in the same place.
001 Templates
This folder is used to store templates. I use templates a lot as they make me save so much time.
002 Attachments
This folder is used to store files related to the vault, but which are not .md files.
003 Archives
When I don’t need files or folders anymore, I move them to this folder instead of removing them. Indeed, from time to time I don’t know if I will need some files in the future or not. In this case, I prefer not to delete them and I put them in the archives.
004 Technic
I think you won’t need this folder. I use it to store things such as JavaScript or Python scripts I run to perform specific actions in my vault, plugin settings, etc…
005 Workflows
Simplicity doesn’t always work, so I sometimes have rather complex workflows. So I added a folder in my vault to write my workflows and refer to it when in doubt so that everything I do is consistent.
006 Action
This folder is used to set up a Life OS in Obsidian. If you don’t know what is a Life OS, you should read this story: A Great Setup to Organize your Life with Obsidian — Part. 3 — Life OS.
It is also used to track tasks (check this: A Great Setup to Organize your Life with Obsidian — Part. 2 — Tasks and Events Management)
007 Kanban
Just a folder where I put some “standalone” Kanban boards I can’t put in another folder.
008 Events
This folder is used with the Full Calendar plugin to implement a calendar in my vault.
I also use Google Agenda, but having calendars in my vault is useful because it allows me to link events and notes. It also allows me to create events with QuickAdd macros. QuickAdd is a bit complex to understand, so in the template vault, you can find some examples. Else, you can also find a tutorial I made about QuickAdd here.
100 Zettelkasten
This folder is used to implement a PKM in my vault. For more information, check this story: A Great Setup to Organize your Life with Obsidian — Part. 1 — Introduction and PKM
200 Watch List / 300 References
These two folders are very similar. They store informative notes about external content.
The watch list folder is used to keep track of content I want to read/watch/listen to, but have not done yet.
The references folder is used to keep track of content I’ve read/watched/listened to, and what I’ve thought about it.
400 School or Work
This folder contains all my school-related stuff (as I’m still a student, I need such a folder). Depending on your situation it can be everything.
500 Personal
This folder contains more personal stuff, such as my trading journal, my music journal, my travel notes, my cooking recipes, etc…
600 Periodic
I store here all the periodic stuff, such as daily notes, weekly notes, and monthly notes.
Learning Center
I like learning so much that I’ve made a note to track things I have to learn or things I already know. This is the Learning Center.
Basically, it just consists of some Dataview queries to retrieve notes from my Watch List and my References.
More info about it here.
Home
This note includes links to the main components of my vault, such as the Tasks Dashboard, the Learning Center, the Periodic Overviews, etc…
I’ve pinned it below the Obsidian file explorer so that I can quickly access it from any note.
Things to Know about this Setup
- I intensively use Templater and QuickAdd to save time. I don’t think the setup would be efficient without these plugins.
- Therefore, if you’re not comfortable with using community plugins, you should look for another setup as mine is mostly based on plugins.
- My setup gathers almost everything I need to manage my digital life in the same place. Some people prefer to keep things separated. You can use just some components of my setup, but it will lose efficiency as it is designed in such a way that all the components are linked.
- Thus, my setup may be a bit overwhelming and overkill for what you want to do. It’s up to you to adapt it to your needs and eventually simplify it.
Putting it into Practice
- Check the vault settings to see whether they suit your needs or not.
- Remove what you don’t need and add what you need (folders, notes, plugins).
- Eventually, modify the templates notes.
- Play a bit with the setup to understand how to get things done with it. Try to create values, projects, tasks, events, Zettelkasten notes, MOC, (quick tip: you can do these things easily using QuickAdd), etc… Try to understand my QuickAdd macros and my Dataview queries, modify them, add yours, etc…
- If you don’t understand or can’t do something, check this story to see whether I already talked about it or not.
- If this does not solve your problem, leave a comment or contact me, and I will be happy to answer you!
Final Note
My setup is a bit hard to understand. After all, it’s been more than one year since I work with Obsidian, so I build this setup over time while adjusting it to fit my needs, and ended up with something complex.
I have not changed it for the last 10 weeks so I guess I have something almost perfect for me, but who knows, perhaps tomorrow I will have to change things.
What I want you to understand is that the best setup you can use is the one that works for you. So if you can’t work with mine, don’t try to work with mine, if you don’t like some things in my setup, change them to like them, or remove them, etc…
Find all my Obsidian-related stuff here: Use Obsidian like a Pro
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