Do you use obsidian as zettelkasten?

[Amielbr]

I want to start it but i don´t know what to do. So I want to hear the experienced guys to tell me what do it with obsidian. can you help me?

[vanadium]

Obsidian is quite ready for setting up a Zettelkasten right out of the box, without having to use any extra community plugins. Create literature notes and permanent notes, linking carefully where appropriate. There is no need to worry about where to put the notes, although you can if you prefer.

The title of each note should be one line summary of the main point of the note so you can easily spot what it is about. Carefully link related notes, which is at the core of the Zettelkasten system. Obsidian makes linking so easy.

Make a habit of creating new notes using the Quick Switcher. This has the benefit of revealing notes with similar titles. Thus, before making a new note, you can see you already reflected about the topic before, and instead update the existing note rather than creating a new one.

Optional: you could place related notes “next to each” in the file system by applying a numbering system to the file name, such as in the original Zettelkasten system, i.e., 1, 2, 3, then when you have a new note related to 1, 1a, etc. However, in an electronic system, that system can also be replaced by links.

Obsidian has a core plugin, Unique note creator, which applies a time stamp at the start of the file name. That allows to create “proximity” based on time, and guarantees each note has a unique name. Personally, I am not inclined to do it this way. Instead, as indicated before, I would then rather consider if the notes with a very similar name should instead be joined, or renamed differently to sufficiently reflect the difference in content.

A Zettelkasten will work only if you sufficiently “talk” to it. For this, the “Random note” plugin. can come in handy. It randomly opens a note in your vault, giving you a starting point to interact with your vault through the connections.

[Amielbr]

Thanks for your answer. how long do you work with zk?

[henryfaber]

I love how you refer to your conversation with your notes. I try to do that based on how recently I create seeds, the earliest form of an idea or note. Here’s how I structure my notes, with a recent example from a presentation I was attending:

I have implemented my own unique note creator with a Templater template and QuickAdd. I don’t use tags for anything other than status or meta identifier. Instead, I use the properties to make connections between the original note (if applicable), or related contexts which are topics that eventually become Maps of Content (MOC).

This allows me to converse between contexts, the original source, and related notes from a variety of pathways.

It’s also important to me that I track how these notes are ideas come from interactions or ambient activity and develop into various outputs. I’m currently creating an updated one, but I think this previous version is a good representation of how I think about this.