I've been using Obsidian to serve my reading, studying, and some productivity needs. I see my Obsidian setup like a draft; it's never complete, but I'm satisfied with what I now have.
Folder hierarchy
Daily notes, evergreen notes, templates, personal notes, and the index.md note are all in a folder titled '000' for convenience. Anything I'm working on (only drafts and projects) is in its own folder in '001 Working.' All my other notes are in '100 Reference' as I don't need quick access for these and would rather have a "storage box." I categorize them in a way that's convenient: any notes on knowledge findable on Wikipedia or elsewhere will go in 'Knowledge' otherwise they go in 'Notes.' This keeps source/reference material away from the interpretive/argumentative notes.
Workflow
My workflow has been kept flexible on purpose, but I do have a typical flow: reading → capturing notes → linking concepts. I don't have a rigid way of capturing notes or linking them, as not all notes deserve equal attention.
My captured notes don't have a dedicated folder, as it'd require an additional step of placing them into a 'Captures' folder. Where they need to go is obvious enough to simply put the note in the proper folder. And, interestingly, arguments for my drafts seem to formulate on their own through the linking process. One note links to another which is linked to an entirely different note, and upon closer inspection, those two distinct notes find themselves connected to one another in a way I never would have done intuitively without this process. Last week I connected a note on discipline that linked unexpectedly to one on workplace shame, which later became part of a draft on productivity culture.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics and feel matter a lot to me. It's not so much about decorating the software. What matters is whether I enjoy the process of writing and note-taking. I've found some plugins and customizations to help me with that, so here's my setup.
Settings and plugins:
Settings
- Theme: minimal
- Accent color hex: #7a7a84 (gray)
- Interface font: SF Pro
- Text font: Georgia (Courier Prime when in edit mode through 'minimal theme settings' plugin)
- Font size: 16
Plugins
- Better Word Count
- More powerful than the default by providing a convenient way of seeing word counts of specific paragraphs, sentences, etc. and stats like # of footnotes, files in vault, etc.
- Click Clack
- I thought typewriter sounds were gimmicky until I tried them. Now I don't want to use another platform.
- Editing Toolbar
- A functional way of making Obsidian feel like a word processor, a place for writing and not just productivity or note-taking.
- Minimal Theme Settings
- minimal status bar maximize media, and trim file names in sidebars
- Notebook Navigator
- I had gone from Ulysses → Emacs → Obsidian and missed the notebook navigation from Ulysses.
- Omnisearch
- Easier to search for notes.
- Reading Time
- More info on how long a piece is
- Remember cursor position
- Useful since drafting and revising isn't done linearly.
- Status Bar Organizer
- Reduces visual clutter
- Style Settings
- better customizability and theme tuning. I used it to hide the 'settings' and 'help' buttons.
- Typewriter Scroll
- I've been experimenting with this. Zen mode is good for focus while the typewriter scrolling mode is too clunky to actually use.
What I'm still figuring out are usually minor things like why 'Typewriter Scroll' keeps glitching or how to get transparency to work on the 'Notebook Navigator' plugin. Has anybody fixed these issues? (I have the translucency from the toggle option in 'Appearance'). Another question I have for the community is how do you guys use it for productivity? I've stuck with having TODOs and daily notes where I stick whatever I need done, but I know people go further with calendar integration, notifications for reminders, an agenda-styled plugin to mimic Emacs, etc.