I am new to Obsidian, and I am gradually learning the main concepts, especially those that allow linking notes. However, I haven’t found the optimal way to use them to align with my workflow.
Let me explain my working method. I am a student, and each day I write down everything I do, covering many topics and concepts. What I would like is to automatically create a hierarchy from my daily notes.
For example, if I write or note down a sentence like “Mammals have mammary glands, which allow them to nurse their young,” I want to be able to automatically “place” this studied phrase into an organized subject, let’s say “Mammals,” and automatically create (without having to manually edit the “Mammals” file) a subsection “Nursing.”
Additionally, in my daily notes, I might write about an entirely different subject a few lines later, and I want to be able to link this new paragraph to another topic. For example, if I learn something about lions, I want to retroactively add this paragraph to a page dedicated to lions.
Things I have tried
I try to type like that on my daily notes :
[[Mamals#Nursing]] Mammals have mammary glands, which allow them to nurse their young,
but there is 3 problems
1- it doesn’t create the nursing section automaticaly
2- it will not bring all the paragraph i wanted to the Mamals files
3- It will only appears to “backlink” with a poor design
What you intend, automatically moving or copying text to dedicated notes, is not possible with Obsidian. It currently cannot automatically edit note contents. If you want a sentence to end up in a note “Mammals”, you will need to place it there manually (or rely on an custom automation solution using scripts).
Your approach of jotting down everything in your daily note is good: that ensures the least friction. However, you need to develop the habit to review your note at the end of the day, and then move anything to the specific note where it belongs. In good note taking, such review step is essential anyway: you may need to edit a bit what you write and make sure the note is clear, also to your future self.
Because you clearly are doing knowledge management, consider developing a Zettelkasten system. Such system contains your knowledge in the form of small “atomic” notes, one concept per note. These notes are linked to relevant existing notes. As such, you store and retrieve your information in a way the human brain works: through associations. This way, you will be much more likely to see other, different and unexpected connections than if you continue like now, i.e., organizing your notes in a single pre-defined structure.
Realize, though, that developping a good Zettelkasten requires efforts and investment. You need to review and elaborate the notes so that they remain useful for your future self.
Thanks you for your answer.
I am a bit disapointed. i really expect to write like i use to, and extract by any methods the paragraph or the sentence i wanted into a sort of wiki(s) (i don’t know if I express myself well, i hope so haha)
You can extract a piece of your daily note to a new one, if that helps. From there, you can easily link it to the relevant topic or embed there. Embedding is possible directly from daily note too.
Extract by either right clicking on selection (or heading if everything under it) or set a keyboard shortcut for that command. If from Heading, it will auto-suggest it as the title of the new note, so it’s quicker unless you have text under the same Heading you don’t want extracted. There’s also a ‘merge entire file’ command, so you might want to try appending it to your main note that way in 2 steps.
Embedding is quick too, but the downside is that it’s only editable in the original note.
I played with it a little and you can actually merge the selection into existing note by extracting. Just choose the destination note when prompted for title. Also, forgot to say that the text in your daily note will be gone when extracting and replaced by the link to the new note
