Linking data between concept/atomic notes under the same topic

Knowledge management
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i’m only making a post as a last resort, i tried to go through many resources but they don’t seem to be talking about my exact problem; which also means i’ll have to dive a bit deeper into the problem itself so this might be a bit long. i’m fairly new to obsidian by the way, my vault is a bit messy because i mostly just exported notes from notion and organized it into many different structures till i found my own

so to start off; my current system has me taking notes on a single note for the lectures im watching in a folder for sources and then another folder for the “concept” cards. in the source notes, i create links to the concepts that i will create notes on

problem is; linking all those concept notes later on. so for example, i was studying the basics of discrete math today and i made a note to jot down all the information i needed into a clean note with headings and points, of course that’s not my final notes though

i then made a flow chart on paper that connected all the concepts in a way that made sense to me while side-by-side making concept notes on the concepts i was making on the chart (this was a bit messy but i’ll seperate the processes next time)

so here’s the problem (below is a poorly represented relation sorta thingy to explain the concepts and their relations)

discrete math => sets, logic

sets => notation, relations

relations => function

back to the first level but going into logic this time

logic => statement

statement … etc

you get the idea i think, i have this heirarchy here, but what i’m struggling to understand how i can actually link these notes together

so obviously i’ll make seperates notes on every single concept i noted there but then how do i connect them?

1 - have headings in discrete math for all the concepts that come under it with links to them but no content under the header, that’s under the linked notes themselves, this just makes it so that all those notes link back to discrete math. continue this pattern for all notes under it too. basically, every note has all notes that come under it listed as headings , sorta creating a table of contents on every note for child concepts

1.1 - the problem with that is obvious, (discrete math => sets => relations) doesn’t necessarily need a link between relations and discrete math but then when i think abuot it… it kinda does, doesn’t it?

1.2 - this would mean creating links to ALL topics that come under a topic which is ridiculously hard in the long term i imagine

2 - i tried using breadcrums and making up:: field link to the heirarchy thing from my tree diagram, but again then i worry about whether this is a good way to link things together for retrieval in the future

yeah, i dunno, i’m really confused about how exactly i’d structure the links in the notes for stuff like this despite having spent days watching videos and reading articles on organization methods lol

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Check out my post: Zettelkasten linking for surprising connections - #7 by syncretizm

What you need is to go beyond the first level and start using 2 degrees and beyond. Single-degree connections are so… 2000-2010s.

Many ways to utilise this.

A recent way: GitHub - TfTHacker/obsidian42-strange-new-worlds

Another way: GitHub - SkepticMystic/graph-analysis: Analyse the structure of your Obsidian graph using various analysis techniques

Yet another way: GitHub - tadashi-aikawa/obsidian-various-complements-plugin: This plugin for Obsidian enables you complete words like the auto-completion of IDE.

Yet another way: GitHub - zsviczian/excalibrain: A graph view to navigate your Obsidian vault

My favourite way, on top of using some of the above: Local graph.

Also, you need to find what you’re comfortable with. Are you someone who works a lot with emergence? Bottom-up kind of thinker, finding connections? Or are you more architectural - you start with a broad idea, then fill in the details? Are you a mix of both?

Check out @nickmilo’s work on Linking Your Thinking as well.

3 Likes
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I don’t think you need to worry so much about it. Obsidian’s search and autocomplete make it easy to find things that you know exist. So if you’re reading a note and it mentions a concept that you haven’t linked, and you need to refresh your memory, then turn it onto a link and follow it.

I think your pages of links under headings are a nice way to add some order.

Aside from those, a simple, easy linking rule you might follow is “if you mention it, link it”.

When you find yourself making a hierarchical structure, consider if you really need to. Sometimes they’re useful, but sometimes they’re just busywork. If you’re making one, I suggest linking only between adjacent levels. So if “discrete math => sets => relations” represents a 3-level hierarchy, I’d link the first 2 and the last 2 but not “discrete math” and “relations” (unless there was a compelling reason to).

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4

the plugins here sure seem interesting, i’ll look into them and see if i can integrate them into my workflow. regardless, they seem to be things that’ll help me a little bit regardless of what method i use to organize my links

a small question; when you refer to “single degree links”, are you talking about the depth of levels in a local graph ? i’m assuming that’s what you mean so correct me if i’m wrong

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indeed, i decided to go further down my learning process and make notes to see how my workflow feels and making ALL topics under “discrete math” come under it feels a bit painful to manage. i also noticed that this makes it so my note-taking note for the course and the discrete math note become kind of the same thing, just that the latter has better structure so here’s my plan for now

use breadcrumbs to maintain a hierarchy, only link relevant notes to a single note

as for the overall structure, i’ll maintain this in the note-taking note for the course so that all the information i got from the course remains there and i’ll organize the hierarchy in that note itself while doing the course (i found that this is something more natural to me due to my previous experience with notion where i used to take notes on a single page for every chapter/course)

paired up with what the person before you said about plugins that help you find further connections, i think this is a decent workflow that shouldn’t be too limiting and hard to manage

but yes, i think the idea of “don’t worry too much about it and figure it out as you go on” is quite helpful here.