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@RikD this is interesting as always.
I like your approach of always taking notes in your own words.
In my various experiments I’ve tried saving full articles, copying and pasting bullet points, and writing my own summaries/reactions - all as daily predecessor actions to writing a report length analysis on a given topic that would arise from a collection of notes. While there are merits to one or both of the first two approaches, taking down notes in my own words is more productive in working towards that end goal of producing a proper, full length analysis.
I’m curious - how long are your typical atomic notes? Are you strict about linking back to original sources/citations, or do you not worry as much about that?
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Atomic notes start in the Inbox as just a few words (manner of speaking), a few lines which gradually develop into full blown content notes of about an A4-page (should you want to print them out).
Longer means I probably am not on an atomic level.
I do care about original source material. Mostly mentioned in the “research” part of the note. In the “Interesting Links” part I make links to other “droplets”, “clouds”, “concepts” and “Mental Models”.
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感谢您的分享
If my Google Translate is write this means ‘Thx for sharing’…
My response: You’re more than welcome!
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I’ve a few questions and comments if you don’t mind, just curious.
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Does your Inbox get cluttered with these atomic notes or do you usually have a small number of them at a time inside the folder?
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Is your inbox the folder where all of your new notes are created?
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Have you read this thread yet: What A Seedbox Is and Why It Has Been Valuable to Me ? Your description of your workflow seems to be based on it, your workflow either IS based on it or would be a helpful extension from your current workflow if you haven’t read it yet. (Your comment reminded me of this thread, which reminded me of the value of inboxes/seedbox, so thanks
)
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- My Obsidian Inbox is kept deliberately ‘small’, this to enable keeping the focus on the things we are working at in the workflow.
- Indeed: suppose a mail comes in the Inbox with a link to Feedly RSS I received (sent from within the Feedly App btw). That article is read, if interesting the template is loaded and in own words an new note is made. This could spark other things and links to existing connections (for example)
- What’s in a name? I coined the drop, cloud, concept, mental model long before Obsidian and other stuff existed. It’s just a way I spin out ideas from zero. Surely there is tons of ‘likewise’ material to find. I am not the only one in the world thinking about how to grow knowledge
Thanks for the remarks and thoughts.
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Perfectly. Thanks for the visualization!
The little I have done to get started, your info graphic makes the most sense so far.
I am using ZK only because I tend to remember dates approximately better than a term I may have been comfortable with using at the time, but have since refined it.
Book reviews and synopses is not my goal, although I may just quote books, but I want Obsidian to collect my Obsidian thoughts over my life ending in autobiography.
I like the idea of a some templates for structure, but is there some suggested template layout that could be more suited to my use case?
Sorry if these come off as dumb questions, but they nevertheless are things I want to establish before pulling all my ideas collected over years, into one place.
Sorry for the later reply.
Holiday season tends me to re-focus on things that are really important in life
Little remark on your date question:
I started using the daily note add-on which is fantastic.
Not only it saves all your daily notes in one place (whatever your choice). The calendar view is great too.
If you’re purpose is to make an autobiopgraphy using daily notes and mentioning(linking) the notes you have worked on in your daily notes gives you the link to the date.
My five cents (it’s how I decoupled dates from filenames for this moment).
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Thanks for your 5 cents worth of sage advice. I did not consider the calendar.
Hi! Thank you for sharing your workflow—I find this to be really helpful for thinking about my own system. I have a couple questions though:
- What is your process for processing a resource like a book or lecture?
- How do you process notes in your inbox and know when they are ready to “graduate” to the next phase (i.e., from a drop to a cloud, cloud to concept, etc)?
If you could share any examples, that would help immensely! Thank you!
Many thanks for this… I tried them all, settled on IMF and changed it a little for my way of work. Without your input it would have taken a lot longer. Actually… I would not call my way IMF anymore, but it was a very helpful starting point. 
@mediapathic Thanks for sharing! Without some good ideas it’s quite overwhelming if you have to start on a clean state and really don’t know how to begin.
@RikD Thanks for the info on how you work. I found the drops/clouds/concepts/models structuring very interesting and logical for me. The image also helped a lot!
Both: Your explanations gave me some more insight. I’ll now start collecting (atomic) notes, settle for IMF and see what comes out of it.
Anyone got a good suggestion for bilingual people? I’m half Brit, half German, and recognise that I constantly write (and think) in both languages, sometimes even within the same note.
This of course leads to all kinds of mixtures, searching problems and different tags. My everyday communication and work is about 50:50, so I can’t really decide on one language—and I’m too lazy to translate everything.
How do others handle this?
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Rik, I love your metaphors of drops and clouds. It made me immediately think of philosopher Peter Sloterdijk using metaphor of spheres: bubble (self), globe (world), and foam (plurality). I haven’t read the book yet, but it’s on my list. More here Bubbles
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Did you come up with a rule for your language problem? I‘m having a hard time to choose what language to use for different contexts. It’s all a big mess in my head.
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I find that certain aspects of my life tend to utilize one language more than others. So for example my personal Projects and media input are often English while other parts of my life are in my native language. Apart from languages I just use for thought there are also notes in my vault for languages I’m learning.
So to juggle all of these I have made English the official language for my vault meaning MOCs are in English and generally notes that help my organizational structure as well as tags. If a topic doesn’t really fit any language specifically I will also give it an English title. Any notes that do have a language associated with them get name in that language and I will define aliases in the other languages. So far I have had almost no issues with this approach. Hope this is helpful
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I second this! I absorbed most of his playlists on Linking Your Thinking in about a day. He’s relatable and makes everything very easy to follow.
And as a noob (I installed it yesterday), I’m also finding @nickmilo’s LYT Kit Vault *VERY HELPFUL!!!
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Hello RikD
Thanks for sharing your workflow, it was helpful as I structure and restructure mine. If you have the time, could you expand on how you are using Python with your notes? I have not yet incorporated Python and would be interested in hearing how you are using this to process notes and tasks.
In addition, I would be interested in hearing more on how you are using your graph view as your inbox? No sure how to get more out of this view?
Thanks for any additional information you can share.
Hello, I am very new to all this.
How do you keep the templates separate from your notes but at the same time use them to create new notes?
When I imported Bryan Jenks’ templates filled up my graph you with a ton of notes and small files.
Thank you for your help.