Evaluate my Workflow

Dear Forum

I have only been using obsidian for a few weeks and so far things have been going smoothly, but I am concerned with the possibility of having included some significant error/s into my workflow, which is why I would like to share certain aspects of it (obviously not the whole thing, that would take too much time to describe) and get some feedback. My purpose is to abet any major paranoias if they are justified.

My notes template which I use when reading looks like this.

# {{title}}
- 

---

- Links: 
- Medium Status: #idea
- References:
- Subjects Tag (3-4 recommended):

Medium Status is meant to describe what kind of idea this is, so sometimes I find that an idea of mine is more of a question, so I write a #question tag next to Medium Status. #idea tends to get used for concepts, either original (of my own invention) or not (in the latter case, the ideas consist of content from my reading which I believe contribute to my understanding of what I study, and which are likely to lead to interesting associations between concepts from other areas of study). Tags are used to subdivide information, so if my note were about a psychological concept I would include the [[Psychology]] note as a Tag, or in most cases a more precise subdivision, such as [[Memory]], as [[Memory]] is itself ‘tagged’ (linked) to the [[Psychology]] note. I always try to keep notes to a minimum and read carefully, to make sure that I understand what I am trying to get out of a book, and thereby know what content is going to stimulate me when I retain it in the notes long term. References contain the content which I refer to, such as videos or articles, and Links refers to the notes which I link to. Most of the time I don’t put the linked notes next to the Link: sign, as the linked notes will usually be referenced in some way within the note itself as I discuss the ideas which it makes use of.

I use obsidian alongside Anki, as the Obsidian notes help me see connections between certain concepts and make content from the associations I have found, whilst Anki allows me to memorise specific chunks of the content which I believe will further my understanding of it long-term. I use Obsidian because it is easier to memorise some concepts by making atomic notes of them and meditating on the their meanings and relationships to other concepts, rather than making flashcards for all the worthwhile concepts I encounter, rather than chunks of that content, especially considering that my understanding of concepts develops over time through learning new things and coming up with new ideas about that content, and editing obsidian notes is far simpler than editing Anki cards (and most concepts cannot be easily placed into a single card, and keeping track of how to edit multiple cards for a complex concept can be tiring, as there are only so many tags you can use to differentiate content in a deck before the effort is no longer worth it).

I also have another template labelled Bibiliographies, which is used for making notes about the sources from which I am reading, whether they be lectures, books, essays articles, or studies, or whatever, etc. Here is an example of how the template looks like.

# MCDB 150 - Global Problems of Population Growth

## Lecture 1 - Evolution of Sex and Reproductive Strategies
- A description of the [[The Abundant Offspring Strategy]], and the evolutionary processes which have caused a move away from that strategy in organisms such as humans. 
## Lecture 2
## Lecture 3

---
- # Note Info
- Author: [[Robert Wyman]]
- Links: 
- Medium Status: #course
- Subjects Tag (3-4 recommended): [[Evolution]]/ [[Reproduction]] / [[Population Growth]]
- References: 
<div
  style="
    border: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222);
    box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.06) 0px 1px 3px;
  "
>
  <div class="w __if _lc _sm _od _alsd _alcd _lh14 _xm _xi _ts _dm">
    <div class="wf">
      <div class="wc">
        <div class="e" style="padding-bottom: 100%">
          <div class="em">
            <a
              href="https://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/mcdb-150"
              target="_blank"
              rel="noopener"
              data-do-not-bind-click
              class="c"
              style="
                background-image: url('https://oyc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/wyman_2.jpg');
              "
            ></a>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="wt">
        <div class="t _f0 _ffsa _fsn _fwn">
          <div class="th _f1p _fsn _fwb">
            <a href="https://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/mcdb-150" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="thl"
              >Global Problems of Population Growth | Open Yale Courses</a
            >
          </div>
          <div class="td"></div>
          <div class="tf _f1m">
            <div class="tc">
              <a href="https://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/mcdb-150" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="tw _f1m"
                ><span class="twt">https://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/mcdb-150</span
                ><span class="twd">https://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/mcdb-150</span></a
              >
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Bibliography notes are often where I take all my notes when reading something. For example, I am presently taking notes on the content of this lecture, and as you can see am not only trying to distill the important concepts which will be relevant to understanding the material of the course, but am also creating a note for those important concepts which are mentioned, such as [[The Abundant Offspring Strategy]], so that i can get a clear idea of what the lecture is about when I see it in the graph view, and so that I can form links with other concepts in other Bibliography notes (in this case, I might link [[The Abundant Offspring Strategy]] to some note in another lecture on Biology). Another reason I keep the bibliography notes is to explain the relationships between the various important concepts, meaning the various notes (links), in the context of the lecture. To refer to the example, rather than just keep a list of links under each lecture for the MCDB 150 course, for that alone would let me see all the important concepts from the lecture and allow me to link them to other concepts I think they mesh with, I want to explain to myself how the lecturer [[Robert Wyman]] is describing the relationships between the concepts he mentions throughout the lecture, so that I can remember the context that links all these ideas together, and I can think of no better way of doing this than making atomic descriptions of Wyman’s explanation of the content in the Bibliography note for this lecture series.

Other than these two templates I don’t use anything else when making notes of content. I use the memory palace and Anki to memorise information long-term, and meditate on the meaning and relationships of concepts often to assist my memory, meaning I read the content of my notes, re-read the sources from which they come from, think about whether i have understood the ideas, think about how the ideas developed, and ‘play around’ with them by applying them to different contexts and whatnot (creative processes are hard to explain, because they involve a blend of reasoned associations and intuitive leaps). Whenever making notes I always keep in mind why I am reading the content which I am making the note for, so as to inform my decision of what information want to retain long-term and make content out of. For example, when reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson, my primary concern is achieving an understanding of the sociological, political, and economic qualities of Johnson’s time, and also of the habits and temperament of Johnson, and of his relationships, whether they be the ones with the renowned literary figures of the time or simply those of his humbler companions and acquaintances. My notes, then, will be concerned with the details pertaining to the above matters, and will be further narrowed down into the information which I believe I could make use of in some project, depending on my particular interests in the above topics (I may not be interested in all the sociological-economic-political details of 18th century England, nor with all of Johnson’s relationships, so I will make notes focusing on the aspects of these things mentioned by Boswell which I will most likely pursue in greater depth), or which can be linked to other topics in the future in an insight-inducing way (for not all links are made equal).

Apologies if the post was too long. I simply wished to make myself clear, and had a few doubts about whether i understood Zettelkasten note taking. I would be grateful for any advice or commentary. If you want any classifications then please ask, and if it would help I would be glad to share an image of some sections of my Vault (including the graph view) to facilitate understanding on the part of the reader.

1 Like

Looks like you have a pretty good handle on things.

My only comment is on the post itself — when you include example markup, it’s good to mark it as code. If you don’t, the forum software will render the Markdown and HTML. (I did it for you here, just mentioning so you know for future posts.)

1 Like

Change it to:

---
links: 
medium_status: idea
references:
tags: 
aliases:
author: 
---

# {{title}}

In this way you can create dataview queries:

1 Like