Dear All,
I’ve been using Obsidian for more than a year now, and data has started to get organised around daily notes.
However, I remain puzzled on how to find back the information between stuff present in daily notes versus stuff in some subject-specific notes.
Data is piling up and I still find it too unclear/fluffy to me.
For example, I keep a “discover” note which contains 3 sections: Play, Read and Watch.
But then, if I capture something during the day, I need to have it in that subject-specific note. Over time, I feel like stuff I’m writing only in my daily notes end up in some kind of a sink hole (sync hole ).
If I have a meeting, for now, I mention it as a link in my daily note, and put the details in the linked page.
What are the best practices there? Use daily notes exclusively? With links to pages? Or with tags? Or consider having some pages running next to the daily notes?
I’m also considering to keep a set of 4 or 5 main notes in which I would append subject-specific updates, preceded by a date/time stamp.
I think a lot depends on your approach to daily notes. I use them for two purposes:
journaling or logging, where dates and chronological sequence matters
drafts, temporary notes, fleeting notes
The former part is to be kept in the long-term, the latter part is meant to be processed.
Meeting Notes
I might start a meeting note as a draft in the daily note, but then I take the time to move it to a separate note. I might link the meeting note in the log part of my daily note, as a reminder of what i did that day.
Discover Note vs Tags
Such lists were a major source of confusion in my vault. I got (mostly) rid of them.
Part of of the solution are tags. In your case maybe a tag like #discover or nested tags like #discover/play, #discover/read and #discover/watch.
Tags give you the freedom to store game/book/video titles anywhere in your vault. For example if you found an interesting book, you could mention it in your daily note or in a topic note and add a tag:
My friend P mentioned “How to read a book” by Doren and Adler. Sounds interesting. I should read it someday. #discover/read
If you want to see a list of all those books, search for them with tag:#discover/read.
Subject-specific notes
I do collect supject-specific updates in subject-specific notes. However I distinguish between subject notes and project notes.
In subject notes I describe/explore/document a subject similar to a Wikipedia article. These notes evolve continuosly. I don’t timestamp additions.
In project notes I’m working towards a specific goal. They might include some time or task related information.
Thanks so much for the detailed insights!
I see the value of this, both to keep chronological order adn to have a “first place to write a draft”, potentially linking to a dedicated page.
What I still miss is: stuff you keep in your daily notes, you are sure the order is followed, but don’t you sometimes miss the “overview” of what happened day after day?
I hesitate between sticking to the daily notes “model” (with tags and links) and a model where stuff would be stored in just 4 to 5 notes, each item starting with a timestamp…
I’d treat the Overview as a separate note. Maybe a note that contains some queries (embedded Obsidian queries or Dataview queries). Or a weekly note, where you highlight the most important stuff (and add links to the daily notes, when it happened).
It’s a matter of preference, if you want to have some kind of automatic analysis of your week, or if you rather sit down and take a minute to review the past week.
What kind of data do you want to collect in those 4 to 5 notes? What’s the purpose of the timestamps?
But your reasoning helps me realise that daily notes are really valuable. It’s a matter of linking to more detailed notes when needed, or having the proper tag to find information back.
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