In what ways can we form useful relationships between notes [LONG READ]

I’m now almost 2 months into Obsidian use, and I’ll say that I’m reasonably happy with where I landed, with slight modifications. As I noted somewhere up-thread, I’ve taken a hybrid approach, with relatively few base folders, and most of my notes going into date-based buckets. So I have a top-level 2020 folder, and in this an 06 folder for June, an 07 folder for July, etc. The main change I’ve made is that each new note starts with a DD designation for the day followed by a short, descriptive name. So notes created today would look like “15 My awesome thoughts on PKM”, where previously I hadn’t prepended the DD. I found a bucket full of alphabetically sorted notes less helpful than date sorted. My daily notes get just the DD, with no label. This naturally sorts everything in the File Explorer by date, which is great, and is perhaps my compromise with the hardcore Zettlekasten folks who prefer the 20200715104223 type identifiers. I average 3-4 notes a day including the daily note, so at the end of the month I’ve got 90-120 files in my monthly folder, which is a manageable chunk size for me. The daily notes, with their very short DD name, make it visually easy to scroll through the list, since the extra blank space breaks things up by day, and it’s oddly satisfying to open a new month with a fresh folder. For me, remembering roughly when I was thinking about something is a useful axis for recall.

I try to make everything a regular note, meaning it just goes into the date based hierarchy with the above naming scheme. I’ve also had a [small] bit of stress over the decision of “should this be a base note or go in the date bucket”, and try to just put stuff in the bucket, but be sure to link it somewhere. Topics will naturally bubble up that want to have a MOC to link them together, so I add them when I feel it’s necessary.

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