I find that it is difficult to organize things when creating ideas for creations that are still being brainstormed and developed. Many of the separate ideas have multiple possibly important connections to other ideas. But decisions haven’t been made yet that would assist in establishing the right connections or delineating the correct organization structure.
Putting off the process, on one hand, allows many of these uncertainties to stay unseen and thus less influential on newer ideas going forward. This puts off the actual piecing together aspect of the creative process until later. And in the meantime you are left inventing ideas at the direction of inspiration of recently reviewed content or life itself. This can be good to help move a project in a direction based on your gut, since you are not relying on connections, etc. But, on the other hand, if you don’t put off the process of connecting and organizing, you are somewhat dependent and locked into the assembly you have made so far. And thus each step forward feels exponentially distant from a starting point were you to decide to revert. That being said, I think there are possibly good version control and embed based systems to generate chains and clumps of parts in unison without destructively muddying or disassembly the building blocks, with the use of metadata schemes or well managed modified duplicates.
But both ends of the spectrum tend to result in seemingly flexible systems that, on a higher level, are less flexible if the direction changes. Since this is in relation to creative projects in my case, that is a given. So, I have ended up with a large vault of varying levels of organized and sorted ideas, waiting to be picked apart. I have had to adjust my purpose for using Obsidian from the tool to help put the ideas together as I have them to the tool that I record ideas into only occasionally piecing things together when it feels necessary. The only real use of old notes in this domain is when I feel motivated to comb through them to extract pieces and refresh my working memory of what is there. It really would be nice to find a way to appropriately and efficiently link each reference to other ideas (or parts of other ideas) after the fact. But even the most advanced ai couldn’t solve this. Because only we can read a line and definitely understand what we were referring to and its context, I have come to accept that the only way to put the pieces together is to painstakingly read and link. It is in this process that I wish I could better link between blocks. Like if there were a mode to switch the file explorer to the block explorer and to display things in an unfolding hierarchical manner.
I’ve gone off on a tangent, but in general, I wish I had known what I know now in terms of the futility of creating an organization system for a developing creative project, if there is an expectation it will last. For snapshots, it’s fine. But if, when I started with Obsidian, I had adjusted my hopes for the tool to simply be a place I capture things that can be later organized when I am ready, I would be much further along than I am now. I believe this to be so because by regularly developing systems and then not properly porting the pieces to the inevitable next system, I have ended up with an incredibly complex tangle that mixes the parts with the assemblies, making them indistinguishable. A knot of strings that have knots on them is much more difficult to untie. So when you get to the point where you are just ready to deconstruct everything into its pieces and starting over, you have to contend with all the previous reorganization knots. So, you have to separate those out as individual pieces and the individual pieces they are made up of. In creative projects these pieces are not rigidly defined yet, so you inevitably have many possible duplicates and become disoriented. But the question is, was it worth it? I say it was. But maybe it’s not worth trying to sort things out in what seems like the right way. Maybe the only feasible way is to not try to treat the strategy moving forward as if you must define the logic like a computer making all the right pieces break apart and come together properly. This may prevent you from limiting yourself by trying to solve unnecessary problems and wasting time placing stuff in boxes that go nowhere.
I doubt I was very clear in my explanation here. But it was helpful for me to try to put it into words, for my own purposes.
Thanks!