How can one deal usefully with information that is already available?

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1

I sometimes write How2s in the form of short markdowns on certain procedures. In the meantime, quite a few have accumulated on various topics. I store these How2s in an alphabetical folder system at the appropriate place.

For example, if I wrote a short tutorial on how to add watermarks to photos, I save it under …/A-Z/P/Photography/Signature/Watermark.md.

All my data is stored this way (often rather intuitively) in this alphabetical system and I can generally find it very quickly.

Recently, I’ve been working my way into Obsidian in the hope of making all this data more interconnected and, most importantly, more accessible. In the graph view, I hope to see better grouping across meaning-related data. There are several ways to integrate How2s and other already stored information into Obsidian:

(1) I link directly to the original file in the alphabetical folder system in the Obsidian note.
(2) I drag the original file to the Attachment folder and link to it in an Obsidian note.
(3) I create a new note with appropriate heading, text and link via tags.

Now finally my question to you all:
What makes more sense in terms of Obsidian?
(1), (2) or (3)?

Thank you for thinking along and for your time.

Best regards,
Alexander

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Everyone is ought to find what works for them best.

I use titles that are descriptions and aliases (which work thru the Various Complements plugin as well). When I need to find something, I use the Quick Switcher or for global/vault-wide content search the regex proximity/range search /searchterm1.*searchterm2. (Backslash for regex and dot+asterix to account for any characters between searchterm 1 and 2.)

As for the question in the title, I believe in repetition and a genuine interest in learning. “Second brain” should not become “first brain.”

3

Your original folder structure is kind of lost on Obsidian, so you need to preserve that information somehow.

Either through changing the file name to incorporate it there, or by introducing metadata, like tags or fields.

I’m not sure how rigid and/or well forked your folder structure is, so I’m not sure if I’d suggest going for nested tags as in #photography/signature/watermark, or if it would be better with something like “topic: photography, signature, watermark” or “tags: photography, signature, watermark”.

Both of these have their advantages and can be utilised within Obsidian. Tags are the most readily available for use in graph view, but it can be tricky if you only want parts of the tag. So yet again, it’s a little dependent on the rigidity of your folder structure.

Not sure if this helped, or just made you more confused, but go for something where you move information from your folder structure into the file and/or file name. The file should, in my point of view, be self-sufficient in terms of not relying on external information like folders.

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If you can already find your how-tos quickly, I question the need to change anything.

When linking, think about what would help future you. If you’re looking at one note, what links would be useful from there (if any)?

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Hello all,

I have now received some statements from you. All of them say something true and some aspects gave me new impulses. In some places, I fear, I have probably not been understood quite correctly. Therefore here the attempt of a more exact explanation.

My goal is not to import or mirror the complete folder structure ~/A-Z/… into Obsidian. That would be completely pointless. This structure is much too extensive and too complex for that. It also changes constantly. New things are added, obsolete things are removed. Maybe an example will help you to understand what I mean.

Let’s stay with the example “Photography”:
In the folder structure ~/A-Z/ everything I want to subsume under the keyword “Photography” can be found in the folder ~/A-Z/P/Photography/.
In the folder /Photography/ are further subfolders to more special areas of photography. For example, the folders /exposure meter/,/photo paper/,/HDR/,/Intrepid/,/LostPlace/,/ND filters/,/zone system/ and many others. Some of them contain further subfolders.

However, other areas also belong to the subject area “Photography”. For example, ~/A-Z/D/Printers/. If I am looking for a manual for a certain camera, I go to ~/A-Z/M/Manuals/ and there to the corresponding subfolder. Info about the scanner I find under ~/A-Z/S/Scanner/, because the scanner is not only needed in connection with photography. Info about ICC profiles I find under ~/A-Z/I/ICC-Profiles/, because it makes no sense to store this info under ~/A-Z/P/Photography/ICC-Profiles/. After all, this info is also needed for printer and monitor.

I try to keep an overview of all the different info with this folder structure. This is not easy. So manuals could be stored in ~/A-Z/H/Handbook/ or in ~/A-Z/M/Manual/. In such cases softlinks help me. In the folder /Handbook/ a softlink leads me to the folder /Manuals/, where all manuals and operating instructions are stored. If you want to put something into an alphabet, you have to decide on a letter under which it will be found again for sure. This is usually done intuitively, but is not always trivial. In such cases I help myself with softlinks.

I try to keep track of all the different info with this folder structure. This is not easy. For example, manuals might be stored in* ~/A-Z/H/Manual/* or in ~/A-Z/M/Manuals/. In such cases softlinks help me. In the folder /Manual/ a softlink leads me to the folder /Manuals/, where all manuals and operating instructions are stored. If you want to put something into an alphabet, you have to decide on a letter under which it will be found again for sure. This is usually done intuitively, but is not always trivial. In such cases I help myself with softlinks.

For many years, I have been using Luhmann’s note box, also known as Zettelkasten, to collect and structure interesting information of all kinds and, above all, to make it findable. With great success. This electronic box is now immensely large and continues to grow. What it can’t do is to visually display the amount of information and the clusters that arise all by themselves. In the context of knowledge management, I saw this for the first time at Obsidian. Here, link clouds make it immediately visually tangible how individual snippets of information are related and how close or far they are from each other. That excited me and that’s also the reason why I’m currently intensively working with Obsidian. At the moment I limit my experiments to the subject of photography. So it remains reasonably clear, even if this topic still has enough complex ramifications.
an’t do is to visually display the amount of information and the clusters that arise all by themselves. In the context of knowledge management, I saw this for the first time at Obsidian. Here, link clouds make it immediately visually tangible how individual snippets of information are related and how close or far they are from each other. That excited me and that’s also the reason why I’m currently intensively working with Obsidian. At the moment I limit my experiments to the subject of photography. So it remains reasonably clear, even if this topic still has enough complex ramifications.

I hope now it has become a little clearer what I am about.
Thank you very much for your interest and your statements.

Best regards,
Alexander

6

Seems like you need a tagging system rather than a folder system (which you can still keep but will need to curate over time to not have Manual(s), Handbook, etc. folders).
I use A-Z folders as well (literally: A, B, C, etc.) because I look at all things as lexical items/entries. But beyond that I no longer use more folders, but tags and mainly backlinks only. I especially want only 1500-2500 files in one folder only as no OS likes to deal with 10000 files in a single folder.

My main problem is having longish files that makes typing in Obsidian laggy. But if I want to cut up the longer files into smaller units (thus Heading 2’s, 3’s into H1’s in newly-made files), I’d increase the number of files which I already have loads of. So there are challenges we all need to overcome, indeed.
I watched a video (Obsidian VS Logseq or something) yesterday on Danny Hatcher’s YT channel where at about 20 mins they were talking about page vs. block-oriented information handling. I expect Obsidian to integrate many new features in the coming months which again would cause us all to rethink how to handle our data.

One thing I omitted mentioning is the frontmatter for metadata. You can use them in YAML instead of in-text tags and organize them with many plugins including the Metadata Menu plugin.

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