I have been trying for quite some time to improve my note system. I believe that I have found something that works, at least for me (Thanks to everyone who ever provided me an Idea either in Reddit or here). As I have seen some people with the same needs, I though that it could interest some of you.
Disclaimer :
It is neither perfect nor PKM-optimised but it is working.No matter the set-up I did not want to add workload on top of my existing one (I already spend way to much time at work). So I decided to apply the KISS Strategy (Keep It Simple & Stupid) at all time.
I have been using Obsidian for 3-4 months now, therefore many aspects still need some polishing…
English is not my native language so I apologize in advance for it.
Who am I ?
I am a middle-manager in a industrial tech company. In my position, one of my main challenge is to conciliate short, mid and long term information.
I am given a lot of information on a daily basis. Some of them require immediate action and will be worthless within days, some of them will potentially be useful in the coming weeks, months and some of them will be passed on in the future to my team (on-boarding material, industrial knowledge).
As many, I have to take note of information to integrate them (If I come to your meeting without a notebook, chances are that I don’t really care :p).
Despite not being that old, I have never been able to type notes while in meeting and be good at it. For years I have used a good old fashion notebook that I would never throw away. It was my second brain… A messy one as it was just classified by Date XXX Meeting XXX.
My needs
I have acquired an e-ink tablet for note taking (a Remarkable, as in Europe it ended up to be the cheapest option) which has replaced my traditional notebook. On it I have roughly the same folder structure than in my Vault.
Then I tried to list all the different ways from which I was getting informations and actions.
Supplier meetings
Team meeting
One-one meetings.
Project meeting
Management Meeting
Reporting Meeting.
Emails
And a few type of informations :
Industrial Know-How
Process
People
Products
Companies infos
General updates
Project updates
My Workflow
I go to every meeting with my Remarkable and my laptop. Most of the time my laptop is closed though.
Overall, I tend to make as many links as I can.
The short term :
The short term infos and actions are dealt with a simple “To Do” using the Remarkable. Of course, you could use the task plug-in or a kanban. However to be effecient you would have to type the actions as you go, which I am not able to do.
Mid & Long term :
From meetings :
Before the meeting (except One-One) I create a new note using the following template and I fill out the sections : frontmatter, MoC Links, Attendees.
---
Title: <% tp.file.title %>
Date: [[{{date}}]]
Type :
- " # "
---
*This note has been created on [[{{date}}]] & updated for the last time : `=this.file.mtime`
> [!info] MoC Links :
# 🤵 Attendees :
# 📖 Notes :
## ⚡ Abstract :
## 📜 Complete Notes :
# 🎥 Presentations :
### Supplier :
### MyCompany :
The rest is done with the Remarkable.
When taking my notes on the remarkable I alway have an “Abstract” and a “full notes” section. I either use the embedded OCR to convert my Abstract portion into text and leave the rest as is or retype the abstract later if I was too clumsy.
At the end of the meeting I send the pdf note to myself by email from the Remarkable.
After the meeting I fill out the different sections. Here you have an example of a fully populated meeting note.
Depending of the meeting it is stored the corresponding folder (Supplier, Internal Management meeting…).
From People :
I meet a lot of people, I like to keep track of them. Using QuickAdd, Templater and Dataview I have made a template for each people. The people notes are linked to their current organization and they are linked in all meetings we have made.
---
company:
location:
title:
aliases:
Type :
- " # "
---
*This note was created on * [[{{date}}]] & last updated on : `=this.file.mtime`
> [!info] Liens [[People MOC]]
# <% tp.file.title %>
<% await tp.file.move("/People & Product/People/" + tp.file.title) %>
<% tp.file.title %> works for [[]], a supplier of #. He acts as . He is reporting to [[]] & [[]] is reporting to him.
We have met on {{date}}.
## Notes
## Meetings
Together we have attended the following meetings :
```dataview
table without id file.inlinks
where file.name = this.file.name
Here is an example of a populated one :
From the team :
My team members have their own People note. However with them I have a few more actions and informations :
- One-one meeting on a regular basis.
- Yearly Performance Review
- We have also set a list of goal for the coming year.
This is one exception where most of my notes are taken directly in Obsidian.
For each of them I have a dedicated folder with :
- A kanban for the goals that we have set for the year. Each card is linked to a dedicated note. That gets updated at every one-one.
- 1 note per One-One : YYYYMMDD - Name - I don’t feel the need for a template at this stage.
- 1 note for their yearly performance review that follow my company guideline.
If during the meeting they are giving me a meaning full information, I tend to add directly to related page.
From Industrial Know-How & Process
Theses notes are close to a wikipedia page. Its a knowlege that I deem important either for myself of for future team member (Manufacturing Process, How to… ).
Usually, they start as a recollection of ideas from email, training, factory tour… all of them are drafted using a remarkable then refined within Obsidian.
From Companies infos
Each company that I meet gets its note. Those notes are divided in 3 sections :
- Company info (wikipedia fomat), who are they ? what do we do together ? A link to an internal shared folder with all presentation / roadmap that they have shared…
- Using dataview a list of all people connected to that organization
- Using dataview a list of meeting that I did with someone in that organization.
This type of notes definitely need some work and somewhere along the road I will make a template for it to harmonize the information.
From Projects :
Each project gets a folder. In the folder I put :
- A brief introduction note of the project (no particular format yet)
- A minutes meeting in the format : YYYYMMDD - Project Name using the template for meeting. I juste add one block at the top of the note to embed the Abstract of the last meeting.
Sometimes, as the meeting consists in updating ongoing tasks, instead of embedding the last Abstract, I copy last Minutes of Meeting and update it live.
Side notes :
Cosmetic concern :
On meeting template, I would rather use call-outs for attendees and Abstract (which I find more elegant). However despite putting ‘> [!abstract] # TITLE’ it does not appear the Outline which I find annoying. I am guessing that a CCS snippet would do the trick ?
Embedding blocs
In various notes (Company notes, MoC Notes) I would like to be able to embed dynamically blocs of other notes (Abstract, attendees, presentations…). For instance, I would like to add the abstract of meetings in the Company Notes or in the MoC Process the “What for ?” block.
I have yet to find a way to do so… As of now, the only workaround I found where either to put a copy of the abstract bloc in the frontmatter and then query it with dataview or I use ![[Meeting#Abstract] ] to do it manually but then it conflict with my KISS requisite and I have found very little cases where the benefit of doing manually outweighed the workload.
What else
Date : I always put a date backlink. The main purpose for it is to automatically create a daily note with the list of meetings I find it helpfull while looking for a note. I would love to have it connected to my company agenda. I have the calendar plugin anchored.
Outline : I also have it anchored, my notes tend to be long and structured, this view helps me navigate.
Local graph/Tags : I have the local graph anchored but I am tempted to switch to the tag view, I am still not convinced that one is more useful to me than the other.
Abstract : I could type everything from my remarkable note to be more exhaustive. However, it would conflict with my KISS requisite. I also found with time that Abstracts of meeting acted as mental trigger for me. At the end of the day Obsidian is my second brain, I still have to rely on my first as main brain 
