I won't get into the obvious advice that is the best advice: Just write notes, it's a notetaking app, all you need to do is write in it, use it, and everything else usually follows organically.

My actual advice is something I just discovered in my old "Misc/Old Notes" folder while sorting through it. Now, this is only for people who want to get more out of their vault, if you're only using it as a notetaking app, that's perfectly fine, and it doesn't need to be anything more than that. But if you're trying to squeeze more juice out of your usage of Obsidian then keep reading.

What I found when I went through my folder was that I actually wrote down a long list of all the things that I wanted to be able to do in my vault. I don't know where I got the advice from originally as I was bad at recording sources at that time (lol), and I'd totally forgotten how immensely useful this list was to me, but my advice is to take a moment and seriously write out a list of all the things you want to be able to do in your vault, once you have this list it becomes a lot easier to go ahead and do all those things because you have a clear direction on what you want out of the app.

As you work on the various points on your list, the document becomes a "living note' that evolves as you gather your research and make the necessary changes you require to your vault, and you can tick things off once they're done.

I read my list and was genuinely shocked that I had accomplished all of the things I wanted from it. It's an old list, and it took a few months to get everything done, but wow, I don't think I could have the vault I have today without sitting down first and writing out all the things I wanted to get out of my vault.

Here's a short snippet of my list, I didn't include everything as a lot of it is personal, but hopefully this old note will help someone out there get started. It's pretty haphazard as it was my first crack at the list, it's messy but it helped.

What Do I Need From My Obsidian Vault?

• I want to use Obsidian to help me write essays, articles, and keep up with my online education, as well as manage my personal life (daily habits, tracking reading, meditation, writing notes, thoughts, etc.).
• I need a reliable task list.
  • Life tasks that happen daily, so I can track them.
  • Work order of things to be done today.
  • General tasks that are added on a moment to moment basis when I need to keep track of different responsibilities I need to get to.
  • A way to track what I need to do on a day to day basis, and I need to track my workouts.
• A way to input my progress at the end of the day to inform my actions tomorrow.
• A personal journal for daily self-improvement.
• A place to write up my moment to moment thoughts on any given topic and have the ability to organize those thoughts into a structure I can come back to whenever I need to.
• A space to track my habits and hold myself personally accountable for bad habits and to create good habits for myself.
• A place to unburden myself of all my thoughts and to have a space to process all of them, a journal space.
• A dream journal and a place where I can process and discuss these dreams with myself.
• A mood tracker that allows me to be consciously aware of my emotional state each day and have the ability to track it.
• A space for meditations and thoughts and lessons gleaned from from the practice.
• A space to process what I've learned from CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).

Like, literally anything.

I use a modified zettelkasten that works well for me, and every single thing I want to remember is just stored in my vault and is always conveniently available.

I like throwing whatever comes to mind and seems important into the vault whenever I please, articles, videos, books, thoughts, personal essays, dreams, anything, then sorting through my inbox at the end of the day, adding tags to the ones that need them, and linking whatever I like to whatever else I want to link to. lol. It's so freeing.

I like that I can consolidate all notes related to my #ArtHistory tag all into one Base if I'm ever bored and just want to go through some stuff, and whether it was an article, a YouTube video, a tv show, a book, a TikTok or a random personal thought I had, wherever its been saved, all those notes will appear in my Base and I can browse through them. Any subject, any thought, as long as I've tagged it it's there.

I like that I can remind myself of other notes and thoughts I've had on a subject through tags and properties, and links, and I get to just throw everything I want into my vault, and when I'm seriously thinking over a particular topic, all my thoughts on it can be collected into one place and properly thought out because I linked, tagged, or added the relevant properties to it. It's freakin' amazing! There's been so much research, and random thoughts and observations I've had that I'd totally forgotten about, and get randomly reminded of whenever I use my vault. It's made doing most of my work so much less stressful as I don't have to remember where I saved things.

I love how I get to organize my life, hobbies, thoughts, schedule, finances, work, all my stuff, into my zettelkasten and it looks nice and neat, but it's also useful to me because I can focus on one area, and come back to that area while dealing with something else that's totally unrelated to it and I can combine two thoughts with a simple ![[Previous Thought]] or be specific with it ![[Previous Thought^]].

My heads a mess of various thoughts, feelings, and work projects on my best days, so it's nice to have a place I can just throw all that crap into, sort it out, and come back to it whenever I like, and it'll be immediately available to me, like instantly.

Having a vault it such a freakin' relief for an overthinker!

Shout out to Auto Note Mover! Shout out to Templates! Shout out to Daily Notes! Shout out to Notebook Navigator!

Shout out to all the developers making their plugins available to us to use on our vaults!

Shout out to all the creative people sharing their themes with us!

Shout out to the Obsidian team!

Shout out to the Obsidian Community!