Folders Are Part of Your Notes, Not Just a Way to Organize Them

Knowledge management
1

This note-taking method was inspired by JSON.

If you’re familiar with JSON, consider this: What would it look like if you used folders and notes to represent a JSON structure?

We usually treat folders as a way to organize notes. Whenever we write something, we feel the need to decide which category it belongs to.

I’d like to propose a different perspective:

A folder is part of the note itself.

Folders Represent What We Know. Notes Represent What We Know About It.

Sometimes, you already know exactly what you want to explore. In that case, simply create a note inside the relevant folder.

But more often, the subject isn’t clear yet. When that happens, don’t worry about where the note belongs. Just write it down. Start thinking.

Once you’ve reached a stopping point in your train of thought, ask yourself: What is this note actually about?

Then put it in the folder that represents that subject.

For example, if you’re learning Obsidian:

Obsidian/
├── Shortcuts.md
├── Plugins.md
└── My Workflow.md

The folder name, Obsidian, represents the subject you’re exploring. The three notes describe different aspects of it.

Note titles can be short because the folder already provides the context.

Why This Works

Human understanding is always directed toward something. Identifying what we’re trying to understand is an essential part of deepening our knowledge, not an additional organizational task.

And classification comes after identifying the subject. To classify something is to understand its relationship with other things. That naturally happens later.

In the traditional approach, you have to categorize a note as soon as you write it. You may even need to design an entire classification system in advance.

This interrupts the thinking process.

With this approach, your thinking remains uninterrupted. Once you’re done, you only need to answer one question:

What is this about?

Broader classification can wait until there’s a genuine need for it.

Let the Structure Grow with Your Understanding

  • Promotion: Suppose Plugins.md keeps growing. Eventually, you can promote it into a folder:

    Plugins/
├── Dataview.md
└── Templater.md

    This is similar to expanding a value into an object in JSON. Everything else stays exactly where it is.

  • Collection: After using more and more tools, you may eventually notice commonalities between them. Only then do collections begin to emerge:

    Tools I've Used/
├── Obsidian/
└── Git/

    Categories grow out of the objects themselves, rather than being imposed on them in advance.

What Counts as an “Object”?

Anything you want.

I’m only proposing a kind of syntax, not prescribing how you should take notes.

Just as JSON doesn’t restrict what kinds of objects you can describe or how you choose to describe them, this approach doesn’t impose those restrictions either.

Your structure should grow alongside your understanding, not be designed before you begin to understand.

A quick note: English isn’t my first language, so I used AI tools to help translate this article. If anything sounds awkward, unnatural, or inappropriate, I’d really appreciate your feedback. I apologize in advance for any awkward wording, and thank you for your understanding!

1 Like
2

You’re basically describing the Johnny Decimal system without the numbers.

The numbering of folders enhances the structure and makes it easier to remember where a folder is located because humans have an easier time remembering short numbers over alphabetic strings.

3

Your “classify after understanding” idea made me wonder about notes with two genuine subjects—for example, one meeting covering two projects. Would you give the note one folder home and link it from the other project, or handle that differently?

4

I don’t actually have any meeting notes in my vault, so I tried to find a similar scenario from my own vault that might help answer your question.

Here’s part of my current vault:

├── JSON Note-Taking Method/
│   ├── Core Concepts/
│   ├── Supporting Concepts/
│   ├── Practical Application in Obsidian/
│   └── description.md
├── JSON Note-Taking Method - Article/
│   ├── Obsidian Forum Version/
│   │   ├── Replies/
│   │   └── Obsidian Forum Post.md
│   ├── Obsidian Chinese Forum Post.md
│   └── Untitled.md

JSON Note-Taking Method represents the note-taking method itself. As the folder structure shows, this method involves several different subjects.

JSON Note-Taking Method - Article, on the other hand, represents an article about the method.

Going back to your original question: suppose an article genuinely involves two subjects. How would I handle it?

Well, you’ve already seen what I did. I wrote the article in Obsidian first, then simply copied and pasted it into the forum.

Honestly, the old me (before I came up with this note-taking method) would probably have thought: “I must link this note to the relevant existing notes, right?”

But I didn’t.

I’m not even sure why. It wasn’t until you asked this question that I realized my way of thinking had changed.

Looking back, I think there might be something worth exploring here.

The description inside JSON Note-Taking Method/ was written before I started writing the article. Looking at it now, some of its content is already outdated. Or, to put it more accurately, I reorganized my thoughts and developed a new understanding while writing the article.

If I had insisted on linking everything to existing notes while writing, perhaps what you’re reading now wouldn’t exist. It might have ended up as another version that already feels outdated to me. :rofl:

Wait, I think I’ve stumbled upon a deeper question.

If notes inevitably lag behind our understanding, could requiring every new idea to connect with existing notes actually limit our thinking, suppress innovation, or even make us unconsciously resistant to change?

Of course, my experience with this new note-taking method is still very limited. I only formally came up with the concept yesterday. So far, I’ve created just 39 notes across 25 folders using these new principles.

So I’m not sure whether this is a perfect analogy.

What do you think? Does this example make sense, and does it help address your original question, at least to some extent?

1 Like
5

I think there’s an interesting distinction between a folder providing context for a note and being part of the note’s identity.

For example, Obsidian/Plugins.md might become Tools/Plugins.md six months later. The note itself hasn’t necessarily changed, but the folder now gives it a different context.

That becomes important when notes are encountered outside their folder structure, such as in search results, exported content, or an LLM retrieving individual notes. A title like Shortcuts.md makes perfect sense inside the Obsidian folder, but might be ambiguous on its own.

I also think your question about linking potentially limiting new ideas is worth exploring. Maybe the solution isn’t to avoid links, but to separate writing from linking. Write without worrying about existing relationships, then add links later when you discover connections that are actually useful.

To me, folders answer “Where does this primarily belong?” while links answer “What else is this related to?” Those are different questions, and neither needs to be answered while you’re still developing an idea.

I’m curious: in your approach, would moving a note to another folder count as changing its meaning, or simply changing the context in which you understand it?

6

Thank you so much for asking this question. It helped me discover a potentially better way to explain this approach.

I think this might involve a shift in the way we think: instead of thinking about notes themselves, we start thinking about the actual subjects we want to understand and explore.

For example, Obsidian/Plugins.md represents Obsidian’s plugins. At this point, I’m thinking about the subject of Obsidian.

So six months later, it wouldn’t simply become Tools/Plugins.md.

As I gradually learn more about plugins, I might eventually want to focus on a specific plugin, such as Dataview. At that point, the existing structure would evolve into something more specific:

Obsidian/
└── Plugins/
    └── Dataview/
        ├── What Is It Used For.md
        └── How to Use It.md

This isn’t simply about changing where a note belongs. It’s about discovering more specific subjects to think about as my understanding deepens.

Coming back to your question:

Would moving a note to another folder count as changing its meaning, or simply changing the context in which you understand it?

Based on my experience so far, I think there are roughly two situations in which I move a note to another folder.

1. Moving a note into an existing folder

Sometimes, I use a keyboard shortcut to quickly create a note. I write down my thoughts first, then move the note into the appropriate folder later.

This is because I’ve set Obsidian’s default new note location to Same folder as current file.

In this situation, I already know what the note is about. I simply haven’t put it in the right place yet.

2. Moving a note into a folder that doesn’t exist yet

The other situation occurs when my existing note structure is no longer sufficient because my understanding of a subject has become more detailed.

I think the evolution of a folder structure into deeper levels is essentially a reflection of deepening understanding. What was once a broad subject gradually branches into more specific subjects.

In this situation, moving a note isn’t merely changing its context. It reflects a refinement of my previous understanding.

Let me give you an example of something I’m currently working on.

To respond to this forum thread, I’ve created separate folders and notes for different users’ replies.

├── JSON Note-Taking Method - Article/
│   ├── Obsidian Chinese Forum Post.md
│   └── Obsidian Forum Version/
│       ├── Replies/
│       │   ├── felipercel/
│       │   │   ├── 1.md
│       │   │   └── 2/
│       │   │       ├── Chinese AI-Refined Version.md
│       │   │       ├── en.md
│       │   │       └── raw.md
│       │   ├── Mrlaura/
│       │   │   ├── 1.md
│       │   │   └── raw.md
│       │   └── oldsagemonkey/
│       │       ├── 1.md
│       │       └── 2.md

You can see that the replies are currently at different stages:

You might be wondering why the Chinese forum post is still just a regular file rather than a folder. Well, that’s because nobody has replied to it yet. :head_shaking_horizontally:

  • felipercel: I’ve finished and posted my reply.

  • oldsagemonkey: I haven’t started writing the second reply yet, so I’ve just used 2 as a placeholder.

  • Mrlaura: I’m currently working on the second reply, and so far I only have the raw material in raw.md.

My usual writing process looks something like this:

First, I write down my initial thoughts using a mixture of Chinese and English. Then I use AI to help refine them into a Chinese version. Once I’ve confirmed that the revised version accurately expresses what I want to say, I generate the English version and finally compare the two side by side.

As the writing progresses, the folder structure evolves along with it.

For example, the reply I’m currently writing initially looked like this:

├── Mrlaura/
│   ├── 1.md
│   └── raw.md

After refining the Chinese version:

├── Mrlaura/
│   ├── 1.md
│   └── 2/
│       ├── Chinese AI-Refined Version.md
│       └── raw.md

After completing the English version:

├── Mrlaura/
│   ├── 1.md
│   └── 2/
│       ├── Chinese AI-Refined Version.md
│       ├── en.md
│       └── raw.md

As you can see, I didn’t design the folder structure in advance. It gradually took shape as my work and understanding evolved.

One more interesting side note.

While writing this reply, I found it a little inconvenient to read the entire forum thread directly in Obsidian. My initial thought was to organize everything using links between notes.

But then I reconsidered. Perhaps Canvas would be a better fit.

And that’s how this file came into existence:

JSON Note-Taking Method - Article/Obsidian Forum Version/Replies.canvas

Haha, just a little side note. :rofl: