Hi everyone,
I’ve been using Obsidian for academic work since 2020, and have settled on my own Zettelkasten-ish system that works for me. Recently, several non-Obsidian-using friends asked me to show them how I use Obsidian, and I decided to write a comprehensive guide documenting my approach. Since I learned a lot from lurking on these forums, I decided to host the guide online and post it here – hoping to help others & to get some feedback on my approach.
About the Guide
The guide covers how I use Obsidian for studying and research. Beyond just explaining what I do, I tried to also offer the principles according to which I do things, and the reasons for believing these to be good principles.
The guide is available here: https://obsidian-guide.neocities.org/guide
An exact table of contents is available on the page, but the basic flow of the guide is from theoretical approach (what are the goals of a vault, what valuable roles can a vault play, what are principles for vault-building & note-writing) to practical implementation (how to link, tag, use folders, implement note types etc.). I finish with opinionated takes on plugins, AI integration and collaboration.
I would be very interested to hear what you think and where you disagree (and how you do things differently). And I have a lot of more specific questions, including:
- Would you choose a different set of principles? Do you think some are missing or superfluous?
- What do you think about the vault roles?
- What kinds of note types do you use? And (how) do you write reading notes?
- What are your experiences with Obsidian AI integration, dashboards, and collaborative vaults?
The system I present in the guide works well for me, but I’d love to discuss & refine it. Thanks, and I hope the guide is useful to some of you!