Can someone please help me understand backlinks?

[ragoofi]

esp. wrt to Zettlekasten?

Hi,

I’ve watched and read a lot of material on this topic in the last 2 days and I’m trying to get my head around it, for example Understanding Obsidian Features - Backlinks - #9 by Steve and this great post “https://jamierubin.net/2021/02/15/how-i-capture-reading-notes-in-obsidian/”.
This really blew my mind:

One important idea from Zettelkasten is that a note should contain a single thought or piece of information (say, a passage highlighted in a book). … Zettelkasten, however, suggested that rather than adding that highlight to the book note, I’d create a separate note for just the highlight or annotation, and then link it to the book note–as well any other notes it might make sense to link it to.

The problem comes when I try to apply it to my own notes (it’s a huge change in thinking from keeping endless scrolling documents). For example, yesterday in my daily notes I dumped all the Obsidian stuff I had learnt and my notes on the above post. In today’s daily note I want to reference the same post. So, I should have backlinked pages for Zettlekasten, and the post?

Thanks in advance >.<!

[ragoofi]

kind of how im imagining the links for now. each blue box is a page :3

[CawlinTeffid]

A backlink is a link in another note that points to the note you’re currently looking at. The backlinks pane is a list of other notes that link to the current one. (Sometimes you’ll see people say “backlink” when they mean “link”.) They can be helpful, and you can use them as part of a deliberate plan as perhaps the people in those links are doing, but you can also safely ignore them. I almost never look at the backlinks pane.

In general, when linking it’s useful to think about how you want to access your notes. Will I want to conveniently access this other note from here? Link it!

[ragoofi]

Thank you!