I am working on a large scale research project that involves a vast amount of data; notes; and references. I have been using Obsidian for some time now, and I absolutely love its flexibility and powerful linking features. Although; as my project grows; I am starting to feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of notes; and I am looking for advice on how to better organize and visualize everything.
My project spans multiple topics, with many interconnected ideas.
I have been using folders to separate topics and tags to categorize my notes; but it is becoming increasingly difficult to track connections and find relevant information quickly.
The graph view is useful, but with so many notes; it is getting cluttered and hard to decipher.
I am also struggling to maintain a clear structure as new information and ideas keep flowing in.
How do you organize your notes and ideas to maintain clarity and accessibility?
Are there ways to make the graph view more useful for navigating complex projects? Any tips on managing node visibility or filtering connections?
how i go about it is that i work: type (a lot)
when i get tired and want to spend time relaxing, i try out plugins
the latest i tried were:
Graph Analysis (there you will need to install an NLP plugin manually as well)
Juggl
the first is not a real graph though - it output lists of notes based on various types of algorithms
the second is an upgraded version of a local graph (i never use global graph with obsidian or juggl)
of course, all tools are only as useful as your vault is well organized, so for example using too many backlinks clutter up the local graph
also, no properties or no well thought-out workflow → no easy way to query or control
so as a general rule, we learn from our mistakes and we may need to evolve in the way we structure our vault as we get to know better how to get the most of obsidian…
i can also recommend a workflow where local graphs and dataview queries are used:
as for large amounts of data being taken in: you can only do it in clusters, really, so visually basically you can take in 7 units at once, so don’t expect too much of yourself…
Being overwhelmed with data is never an easy problem to solve. But you might find it useful to look at the concept of Structure Notes or Hub Notes. There is an article on Zettlekasten.de about this:
Others use the term “Map of Content” (MOC) which is not my favourite, but it is basically the same concept – a sort of index page or table of contents for a particular topic, so that you have a note that gives an overview of that topic.
Some thirty years ago I started researching a book that ended up being 560 pages in length and I think I accumulated around 600 references in six different languages. This was in the days when you used floppy disks … You could say I have some idea of what your problem is.
As the previous poster said, chunking is a good idea. You can achieve that by having a note for each topic that functions as a starting point or gateway with links to notes that deal with aspects of the topic.
A possible way of creating a visual Structure Note or MOC would be to use Excalidraw, or you could use Canvas.
also, the dev of Excalidraw, Zsolt is the maker of Excalibrain, which can be used for visualizing relationships, but again, needs a setup
on the heels of this, let me also say the breadcrumbs plugin is similar to this and apparently breadcrumbs is integrated with juggl as well…
also, on the heels of this, the linked data vocabularies plugin can be useful to create the properties used for breadcrumbs and excalibrain…
now you are looking at lots of setup work to do for your existing notes, which are not easy to do as not everything can be done with search and replace regex jobs…
the upside to having to go through your old notes is that you can get new insights and scrap unwanted information
