Help unscrambling a vault once thought hopeless

[Pixionus]

Oh wow! This Quadro is really interesting! I think I’m probably going to end up working this or something like it into my workflows, so thank you for sharing!

Sorry for the delay. Life got in the way. Hopefully, Quadro turns out to be your solution .
So as I said before, I feel it’s hard to grok the situation and your preferences in text so that I can provide useful feedback, but I was trying. In the end, I decided to just give my use-case as an example, though some of it may or may not work for you, and so I went back and forth on if it was constructive.

Just in case it’s helpful here’s that long update I only just finished editing to post:

Personally, I subscribe to a let the best parts rise to the top approach, so if we’re thinking the same thing, I endorse that strategy.
I don’t worry too much about the input method as long as things end in text.

Here are some strategies that I use that I found helpful reprocessing my own vault:

• My early vault notes exist in a mess of directories and formats so they are relatively undecipherable so I created a new directory named 1.0 for the mess, and one named 2.0 for the newer greener pasture. 2.0 is quickly becoming my actual vault.
• I’ll compose new notes in 2.0 and if I link back to or revisit a note in 1.0, I’ll add a maturity label and some tags and move it to 2.0. I’ll even sometimes just spend some time tending my vault (I think of it as weeding). Adding the emoji tags for maturity and seeing real progress as the new tag and file systems develop, just kind of gamifies it enough that I enjoy ‘weeding’ from time to time.
• I label notes with one of 3 grades of maturity. The idea is that a note progresses from a seedling () → to budding () → to evergreen (). I don’t recall where I got this system, but it really fits with the evolution of a note for me and comes in handy, so it’s become the heart of how I have reprocessed my old mess into a cohesive and reference-able, more Zettelkasten, “second brain”.
  Maturity Definitions

  1. Seedling / - A rough note with no formatting and maybe missing links and the like to tie it to ideas that are adjacent or overlapping… These can be audio or video recordings that I still need to process into a note. I make a point to tag Seedlings when I actually make them but otherwise don’t worry too much about the content. Basically, a seedling that with some attention can grow into something greater.
  2. Budding / - A note that has enough polish as to be useable by me. It generally has headings and I’ve started tying it into other notes. I usually re-label to Budding the second time I visit a Seedling as a result of a search or to add information. At this point I’ll spend a minute or two of attention on it, adding headings and links, but not caring if they are neat / easy on the eyes or something I’m actually completely happy with.
  3. Evergreen / - A note I’d actually feel is of a quality that I might post online. If I’ve ended up linking back to a note repeatedly, revisited and found useful, or for one reason or another just thought it was really worth cleaning up, I’ll spend about 5-10 min getting the note to the point that it’s got some polish. Notes for projects that I am actively working on tend to become Evergreen the fastest because they have the traffic, and the neatness contributes to the work I’m doing. Evergreen notes are always evolving. Few notes are ever “done”, and if that ever happens, maybe I’ll come up with a fourth emoji to signify something that isn’t growing anymore, though I almost feel like at that point a might fit
• I use one of the following Dataview metadata at the top of a note to label its maturity. The syntax means I just have an emoji as the first line. This clearly and pleasantly marks the notes maturity for when I next visit without all the metadata syntax and still makes it more actively reference-able in Dataview

  (Note Maturity :: #🌱)
  (Note Maturity :: #🌿)
  (Note Maturity :: #🌲)
  

• When working on a new note, If something feels familiar, I’ll search the vault with line:() for words that are pertinent (this finds tags as well) until I find where it’s come up before, then tag the note , move it to 2.0, and tie the notes together. Even a very loose tie of a [[wikilink]] link between the two notes is enough for a .
• I also try to follow an “atomic” strategy of note-taking when reprocessing notes to a higher maturity. I don’t stress too much about having this perfect and if I feel I want a different phrasing in the new note, I’ll just write it in how I like it but leave a wikilink to the atomic section. It’s not 1 or 0 for me but some softer mix as is appropriate. It’s becoming a large part of achieving status, but a lot of what I record is technical and YYMV.
  How I use 'Atomic' Notes without extracting content

  I like that splitting notes into their component parts (where each note is a specific idea or input, with descression) means that if I need to pull in an explanation from another note or a section I can use the ![[fileName#section]] syntax to pull in that section or bite-size note directly into another note. I feel this makes use of a good inherited source of truth strategy in my notes, so they are easier to tend to and more compact.

• The next step for me, now that the most important notes from 1.0 have risen to the top, is to set up something that will randomly bring up Seedlings when I open Obsidian (there’s a plugin for this, but there are a number of ways you can do it. I think I’ll just use Dataview on my daily notes to list notes with and randomly pick one from that list when I feel I have time).

Since I first started writing this note, my vault got to a point of maturity/stability where I just felt 2.0 was redundant because the system really worked. I decided I could just move all the directories out of 2.0 into my vault’s root directory and delete the now empty and superfluous 2.0. There are still a bunch of notes in 1.0, but that directory is dwindling every day. Some week soon, it’ll be gone, and all my vault will feel in a much less “scrambled” state.

There are other things I have been doing, but I feel this strategy with normal tag connections, dataview, and wikilinks creates a lot of the relational data map without index notes or properties, etc. Keeping it simple has been key to this process’s success. I think it can be applied to your desperate note types. It also breaks the whole process down to basically:

• Rebuilding the file structure off of what you’ve learned, but without the clutter of the old one because it’s hidden away
• Adding tags at the top of a page (I have a line under the H1 and will just turn important words into tags in line).
• Following a maturity grade. It gamifies things a bit and makes the vault less scrambled.

If this is helpful at all, please let me know. I am working on a basically fool proof backup strategy that I’d be happy to share as well (since you mentioned that in your original edit), but I feel your current 1 note with a printout strategy would be untenable in the long run as the vault grows. For me, my vault has become enormous and I need to remain agile with it and every day I revisit ideas and improve things, as is the Zettelkasten way.