Simple approach to organizing notes

Knowledge management
1

Here is a very simple way to start organizing your notes. It can help you grow a structure that supports your priorities and interests. If the starting point feels too simple, you can start at a later step.

  1. Write everything in 1 note.
  2. When it gets too messy, divide it with headers.
  3. When it gets too unwieldy, split it into multiple notes. Give them names you’ll think of when you try to find them later, if possible. Try the Quick Switcher (filename search) as another way to open them.
  4. If you start to feel like you’re seeing too many notes in 1 place, put the biggest related group into a folder.

If at any point you want a way to conveniently reach 1 note from another, put a link in the place where you’re most likely to want it.

However you organize, you will probably want to reorganize someday. To cheaply explore different setups you can sketch them out as nested lists representing folders and notes (and maybe headings), and see how they feel. A more intensive way to explore is to copy some or all notes and folders to another place and reorganize the copy.

7 Likes
2

I really like this progression.

What stands out is that each structural step is triggered by friction, not anticipation. The system grows under pressure instead of being designed upfront.

It reads almost like structure crystallizing from usage — content → headers → notes → folders → links — only when the previous layer becomes insufficient.

Do you feel this approach reduces the restart cycle beginners often fall into?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this growth pattern recently — would be genuinely interested in exploring it further if you’re open to it.

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It might. Hopefully it provides a good enough system to keep someone going for a while, but I think redesigns are inevitable as a person learns more about how they like to work and as their needs change.

Sure.

1 Like
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Something that worked well for me: don’t overthink the folder structure upfront. Start flat, use tags heavily, and only add folders when you notice a natural cluster forming.

The “just put everything in one folder” approach actually works surprisingly well in Obsidian once you have good search habits and a daily note linking things together. MOCs (Maps of Content) can replace folders for most navigation purposes.