Hi Obsidian Community!
Use case or problem
I have a problem with the number of contexts within which I operate - sensemaking, professional knowledge, academic interests, journaling, specific projects, etc. I want to be able to control the “context” within which I am working much more easily than having to open multiple vaults simulteneously. Also, I find that multiple contexts may naturally share certain types of notes. For example, things that come up while journaling feed into all the others, or how a dedicated learning context will overlap with more structureless sensemaking jot-downs.
Proposed solution
It is mostly a request to control the visibility of files and of link suggestions. It is easily to imagine the Obsidian app allowing me to create a set of Contexts with the following behaviours.
- Each context has a name, and each note / folder is linked to one or many contexts.
- At any one time, you are operating in a specific context within the app.
- By default, everything you do assumes you are creating / editing notes that are linked to the current active context.
- Apart from (3), when creating links you should be able to specify a context outside the current one, so that you can make a cross-context link. I think both of these linked notes should now have both contexts linked to them.
- From the above, I would expect each file to have a “home context”, but through the links they have with other files, have “linked contexts” due to these links.
Current workaround (optional)
I am currently using subvaults and adjacent vaults. For example, I currently have a main vault, which contains two subvaults - sensemaking and development. Inside sensemaking, I’ll be writing a lot of nonsense notes, but also a lot of interesting and potentially useful notes. Inside sensemaking I’ve placed the learning vault, which itself houses professional knowledge and reading. Inside reading, I’ve placed the journal vault.
The way I’ve structured my vaults is that each have a set of meta-folders (new notes and attachments), along with object-type folders. The journal vault, for example, has folders like Books, Places, People, Events, etc. This is why I’ve arranged my vaults in the way I currently have - the decisions are informed by which object-folders need to be visible by which other vaults.
But the problem with this workaround is that I cannot manage shared folders. I’ve prefer if all these subvaults were adjacent, but that Books could be visible by the Journal, Learning, and Sensemaking subvaults (which I’d prefer to call Contexts).
Related feature requests (optional)
Main note I found that I was having the same problem as:
Context Overwhelm, Concentric Vaults, and Sensemaking - Thinking On Thinking In Notes - Knowledge management - Obsidian Forum