Here are a few fancier snippets of how I use Obsidian. It’s one of the many ways you can use it. Take what you like.
My vault1
Warning
It contains a fair bit of scripts, which is bit of an indulgent hobby of mine to customize from time to time. Use at your own risk.
Obsidian ultimately is just a writing tool; these are for fun things I experiment with and will likely be simplified as my own use evolves.
Journal
I use both daily notes with theme logs, which I wrote more about here
Daily note for interstitial journaling and general scratch place
Logs for thoughts collected under a “theme” or topic of interest
Milestone
I prefer the framing of milestones over goals: the former is fundamentally made from what you have done, while the latter is part of an unrealized future. Plus, a milestone can function as a mini-goal when it is set in the future while not implying a totally fixed outcome/direction → plans are worthless, but planning is everything
Milestones I keep for my current job
Collected in monthly notes and the year wrapped canvas
Personally, I notice that the more time I spend planning for goals, the less I actually spend doing them. Planning gives direction, but in excess it takes away the energy of actualizing it and becomes straight Copium.
Logging
Any logging within Obsidian is a byproduct of a behavior that matters to me, which is writing itself. To the extent I do logging, they are done in external apps with better interface (i.e. Strava, HappyScale, IMDbs, etc).
I primarily keep track of my sleep & meal time from my journal, which I rarely check now after building it (it’s just a fun-to-look-at thing). I don’t own any smart watches, but I imagine it does a much better job logging those health metrics for you
Home habit dashboard, adapted from Prakash’s
Year wrapped canvas
Occasion
Occasions are days in a year that I felt are particularly special
List of occasions that get auto-updated
A trip I took - an occasion spanning multiple days
Work
I’m a software engineer, so work related stuff are tailored towards that end
In my personal vault, I keep
- a
Dev logas a dumping ground for technical learnings (and link out to bootstrap concepts, like in daily journals) - a
Work logfor progress I make at work. I write a few lines on the subway rides to work or back home (planning or retrospection). They naturally build up the milestones, which are used as a reference to a master resume I keep.
Below are part of my work vault
Discussion points with coworkers
I consume a lot of docs on my job, sometimes I need to discuss things with people later but want to preserve the general context around the docs
To do this, I drop a bullet task and link to the relevant people who are the subject matter experts; those discussion points then get sorted automatically with dataview
Code navigation
I sometimes keep code links in notes
With a “back-of-the-sheet” note (i.e. picture/drawing on one side and text on the other), it’s an alternative way to navigate code visually by system architecture.
Most other times I search by the file names, which is sometimes faster as it has better conceptual correlation in my head than the package name.
Footnotes
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a folder on your local file system where Obsidian stores your notes, attachments, and configuration files ↩