After dozens and dozens of youtube tutorials I have nothing but a mess in my head, I don't know how to build the structure of a vault

Knowledge management
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I’m losing my mind. I’ve been stuck on watching endless youtube tutorials for Obsidian for a few days now. I don’t know how many vids I watched, too many. My brain just boils, especially because I have to watch it in a foreign language (eng).

Every video tutorial is the same, just the very basic stuff like writing a heading, making text bold and linking a note.

All I want is to know how to organize the damn vault, how many folders there should be, what is the methodology behind linking notes to each other etc. They just tell you to read two books, I don’t want to read them, I want to start transfering my notes to Obsidian asap.

All these content creators show the structure of their vault but it’s weird and I can’t relate to it (figure out how could I make a use of it). Then I somehow found and downloaded a few vaults and it’s a nightmare, it’s like 10k notes with a million of stuff which I can’t grasp.

I need to transfer thousands of notes from apple notes to Obsidian. I’m so confused with these tags, these content creators call links ‘tags’ and tags ‘progress’ or ‘status’, which doesn’t make any sense to me.

They have folders called ‘Indexes’ and ‘references’ which I don’t understand either. And they have a different beginning of each note they call Frontmatter, I don’t understand what’s the difference between a ‘property tag’ and a normal tag and a link-tag…oh my god.

And the worst thing is that all these vaults I download have tons of coding, and I’m not a programmer, I have no idea what these codes mean and how would I even write one myself. I can’t create my own templates, I don’t know which properties I need and which not, and this damn YAML code or whatever.

Please tell me where can I look up a normal person’s vault (not content creator or IT-guy)? I want to see how can I make a vault for personal knowledge, for different topics I find interesting and fun to know. Without overcomplicated structure like Map of content having other map of contents and some folders named 100, 2000, 1000, _0001 and a scary code.

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Recommending building your vault around:

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I propose a different approach.

How about you sit down and you really think to the way you work/study. Maybe jot down a diagram to help.
After you do that, think about a system that works for you, for the way you process information.

  1. Implement that system and use it for 6 months.
  2. if it works well enough, just keep using it and move on with your life. END
  3. If it does work well, ask yourself where it doesn’t work well and why it doesn’t work well. Write down your problems and solutions. Search what other people with the same problems have done to solve them. Make a synthesis/decision on how to change your system. Go to step 1.

The people you are watching may be offering solutions to problem you don’t have and perhaps you will never have. Or they may even manufacture both problems (and relative solutions) that should not exists in the first place.

The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist.
Elon Musk

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There is no special number of folders you need. There is no best methodology for everyone. There is no naming convention that matters if it doesn’t make your organization easier or more effective.

You don’t need to use maps of content or indexes, if you don’t want to. You don’t need to use properties or YAML, if you don’t want to.

You don’t need to perfect your structure before you start taking notes. Keep it simple, and you can fix things later when you have a better idea.

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I started very similar to you, doing lots of research before I started. Today, my vault looks nothing like how it did when I started and thought I had it figured out (it’s changed many times since then, and will continue to change over time). I think the best things to focus on are:

  1. Change - Know that whatever you’re doing today is at some point going to change to fit into a different system once you’ve learned more about Obsidian, more about your data, and more about your needs.
  2. Predictability - Make your data predictable, so like things are always alike in your notes, which will make it easier down the road to automate changing your notes to fit a new need.

Spend your time learning about links, tags, yaml, inline fields, and tasks. Learn what each has to offer, different ways they can be used, and which lends itself best to what you’re trying to make possible.
Whenever I’m adding a new type of information to my vault, I’m always thinking how I can make it more flexible, so if I don’t like the way I’m doing it now, it will be easy to change it to a different way later with scripts or search/replace. Try to avoid a situation where a change in your needs demand you revisit every note and parse it by hand to get it to fit into the new way of doing things.
Know that tomorrow, a new feature or plugin might come out that completely changes the way you think about using your data, which may cause you to want/need to reorganize it and/or make changes to how the information in the notes is structured. That’s just the way it goes…

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As a “normal person”, (non-coder, no MOCs, no numbered folders) I would suggest not focusing on the idea of structuring your vault up front.

Either do the research involved in importing your Apple notes into Obsidian, or just start from scratch, with taking the notes you need to take, today, in Obsidian. Then, once you have a feel for it, you can import the bulk of your past notes. Each note, when you create it in Obsidian, just has a title and your text content, that is all - and you never need to expand beyond that, if it works for you.

What I found was that as I went along with my daily necessary note-taking I would find myself thinking…I wonder if there is a way to do this, or that…? and then by looking in the Obsidian documentation, or the community plugins, some of the “structure” provided by folders, tags, links, etc. slowly started to find a place in my notes/vault. But this only happened organically as I used my notes over time and slowly became comfortable with different features.

And some things I am still not yet comfortable with, and so I have not tried to incorporate them at all. An example would be YAML frontmatter (Properties). I currently don’t have a use for it in the notes that I take, or the use I make of those notes, so I don’t use it at all, and that is ok. Just because a feature is there doesn’t mean it is going to be useful for you.

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I personally am really fond of Kepano’s folder structure, but just because it’s so simple. I just sort my notes into “notes from me” and “notes from others”. That’s it.

For looking up some content I heavily really on the search function.

It’s chaos to some point, but for me it works and it’s very comfortable to use.

And as all the others stated: Take it easy. Just go ahead and start note taking in Obsidian or just import your notes from Apple. Everything can be reversed, altered or changed.

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Thanks so much, to you and the other commenters!

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Like somebody else mentioned, search is your friend.

And yes, I’ve changed it like10 times :slight_smile:

I have 10 main folders (Topics important for me)
Each have a +projects folder and a +resources folder.
For the the rest all MOC and Atomic notes in the root of the related main folder.

Projects, files grouped together to be worked on towards MOC and Atomic notes or it stays in there forever.

Resource, basically a dump of sources, information for future use. With a light organization since each main folder has a resources folder.

I mostly start with lookup notes by quick switcher or search.

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Given, that I’m using obsidian merely a few weeks, I’m probably not in best position to share tipps to kick-start your obsidian journey, but on the other hand, that’s maybe the benefit of the unwise.

After realizing that obsidian has the potential to paralyze, I reacted quite defensively and tried not to outsmart myself: skip plugins unless you have an immediate need, don’t invent tags or properties, unless you have an immediate need, start with only those folders you have an immediate need.

Boooring? Yes, and that’s a recipe for restructuring you vault someday, too. But hey, by that day you know what you’re doing and in between you’ve been productive.

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Others have already pointed out that everyone’s needs are different and there’s no one right way.

But since you already have a lot of notes you’re planning to transfer in, I’m going to disagree somewhat with the suggestion to not worry about your structure. What I would suggest instead is to look at what notes you already have, because you probably already have a structure for those in your head.

Since you’ve already been making notes for a while, you have clues to what kinds of things you make notes about. How do they group together in your mind? Whatever groupings your own brain uses are what your main folders or numbering sections should be.

If you think you’ll take notes later about other things that don’t fit into those groupings, just ensure your structure is open-ended enough to allow for new groups later.

Ultimately, the right vault structure is whatever works for you.

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Take a deep breath and take a fresh approach to how you want to create a vault that works for you.

First, Obsidian is all about data management utilizing the markdown coding language as a means of practical and perpetual portability over time.

Second, employ the KISS principle to each and every step or additional functionality you want to incorporate in a vault. KISS stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid”. The acronym is a simplistic reminder to not waste time and energy “overthinking” or “over-engineering” a task.

Third, always analyze and consider any layout or organization method you intend to utilize from a mathematical inferred formula expressed as function over form. This ensures that you are in compliance with KISS. If you find that your methodology is flipping the dynamics of this formula to form over function, then one needs to backup and adjust as necessary. To many people get bogged down watching YT videos that engage in building vaults heavily invested in form over function. Form has value to a point in any system, but not at the expense of achievement of one’s overall goal or objective.

These three understandings and tactics should serve as a guide for anyone wanting to get started. You are the only person who knows what you want to do and there is no perfect solution or completely right / wrong solution to creating or utilizing a vault in Obsidian.

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