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When people first hear about Zettelkasten and note-taking, they often have a heap of unresolved questions like, "What do I write down? Which app do I use? When about tagging? And how should I structure it?" Or at least, I felt that way. I already talked about choosing the right application in this video right here, so you might want to check this out.
But if you go on the internet to find the answers, you'll be met with an overwhelming variety of different setups, many of which contradict one another and seem like rocket science. Well, it's really simple, guys, really simple. I just use Obsidian and 25 plugins on top of it, along with a folder of custom-written Python scripts and CSS snippets. I have 253 different tags, each with four subtitles corresponding to four different levels of my Maps of Content. While Maps of Content are organized into dashboards, all of my notes are also evergreen with 12 different flavors of greenness and sorted into 39 different folders with special simple preferences: encoding, status, field, products, subtopic, lunar phrase, and the blood type of the author.
But what I came to learn the hard way is the benefits of the system don't increase with its complexity. In fact, most often quite the opposite. Tinkering with tags and thinking how to best structure your notes can distract you from what actually matters: absorbing ideas, writing them down, and finding the connections. Remember, the original Zettelkasten system, pioneered by Niklas Luhmann, was built using paper cards. Yes, computers can make the workflow more convenient and more efficient, but they also have an inherent danger of pulling you away from the fundamental principles and distracting you with shiny, colorful lights. And I think this is what's happening right now.
Today, I'll tell you about my quite simple and elegant solution, without any over-complications, that I built over a year ago, and it still does an amazing job for me on a daily basis. If you're interested, buckle up.
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My name is Artem. I'm a computational neuroscience student and researcher. Here, we explore mental and digital tools to help us study and learn more effectively. If you're interested, consider subscribing to the channel not to miss anything.
What I'm about to show you is my very simple, but yet quite powerful, implementation of Zettelkasten in Obsidian, which consists of just four folders and two main tags. I will walk you through step-by-step on how to set it up from scratch. But before we begin, a little technical detail about how Obsidian works under the hood. I think it's important to know what you're dealing with when you're creating files and folders inside of Obsidian.
As you may know, it functions as a wrapper on top of your local text files. Obsidian basically gives superpowers to a folder of text. That means that each note is actually just a single Markdown document on your hard drive, which can be opened and edited in any software. The most upper-level structure of Obsidian is the vault. I think it's a really great term because it reflects the meaning. A vault is where all of your notes live. Inside the vault, they can be structured in nested folders. Everything can be linked with everything else, really. But Obsidian has no access to what's outside the vault. This is like a boundary of your own tiny universe.
But on the hard drive, the vault is actually just an ordinary folder where files can be copied, deleted, organized into subfolders, just like anywhere else on your computer. One little detail, though: Obsidian creates a hidden subfolder called `.obsidian` where it stores all its system information, like the theme and the plugins. But you don't need to access it directly, so forget it's even there.
Let's step inside the vault and see how the folders are organized. As you may remember, the key idea behind Zettelkasten is that you don't impose an artificial structure on the system. You don't create folders to separate the topics. Instead, you put everything into one place and let this structure emerge by itself through interconnections. I have a video dedicated specifically for the philosophy of Zettelkasten, and the link to it would be somewhere in the top right corner. This is how Luhmann originally went about his slip-box. And similarly, I have one single folder in the root of the vault titled `Zettelkasten`, where all of the atomic idea notes are stored on absolutely every topic.
Now, you might ask a question: "Didn't you say it had only four folders? What the is this monstrosity then?" The thing is, the Zettelkasten itself consists of those four folders and nothing else. However, since I use Obsidian more generally as a notebook, I have other folders as well, such as `Lab Notes` where I store everything related to my research, `YouTube Video Scripts`, as well as some personal stuff. These are completely separate from this Zettelkasten system, so we won't talk about these, but pretend they don't exist.
So, what are those four folders? First of all, the main one with all the ideas. `Reference Notes` are something that I jot down on books, papers, lectures, etc. Many of them don't contain any actual information but serve as a fast way to insert a reference to know where a certain idea came from. `Files` is where all of the attachments are stored, mostly images. And `Templates` is where all the template notes are stored, but we'll get to the templates later in this video.
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The first thing to do is to create the four aforementioned core folders: `Zettelkasten`, `Reference Notes`, `Files`, and `Templates`. Next up, go to Settings and then Files & Links. Change the default location for new notes to "In the folder specified below" and select the `Zettelkasten` folder we created. Similarly, change the default location for attachments to the `Files` folder. You can change the theme, that is, how your Obsidian looks, for something more pleasant in the Appearance section of the settings. For example, I really like the dark version of the Atom theme, so I'll select that. Note that when you install a particular theme, it's just a `.css` file in the hidden `.obsidian` folder. With just a little bit of CSS knowledge, you can take Obsidian customization to a whole new level.
Next, go to Settings > Hotkeys. One hotkey that we'll use very often is "Templates: Insert Template." Go ahead and assign your desired key combination to it. I have it as Command+T. In Settings, go to Core Plugins. This is just additional functionality that's pre-built in Obsidian but disabled by default. I really like the following plugins: `Tag Pane` to see all your existing tags on a nice panel, and `Templates` ā this one is essential. I have no idea why they left it off by default. Oh, and when you see the "Zettelkasten Prefixer" plugin, leave it off despite the temptation. This will make the titles of your notes look ugly, plus it introduces friction in creating a new note. In a moment, we'll do something more elegant.
Next up, Community Plugins. And oh boy, once you turn off Safe Mode, there is a lot to choose from. But be careful not to get lost in this rabbit hole. I know that feeling. We search for plugins, installing insane amounts of them, customizing different options, and all of this feels productive, like you're actually doing something. But in fact, it's just another form of procrastination. Just like the exact software you choose for digital Zettelkasten hardly matters, plugins matter even less so. Don't let this tweaking get in the way of you actually writing down ideas.
However, I will mention two plugins that I use every time I open up Obsidian. There's also a third one, but it's only relevant when you're working with bibliographies and citation managers. If at some point I make a video about Zotero and how I use it with Obsidian, I will mention it then. But for now, to build a very simple and elegant, yet quite powerful, Zettelkasten system, just two plugins are enough.
The first one is `Sliding Panes`. It allows you to open multiple notes side-by-side and easily slide through them as if they are paper cards lying on your desk. The second plugin is called `Admonition`, and this, this is the plugin I've just fallen absolutely in love with. Basically, it allows you to insert sections of text in your note, which then get rendered as really great-looking blocks. There is quite a few types of those admonitions available. You can find the full list on the plugin's GitHub page.
`Templates` is an amazing function that lets you save time and effort when creating a new note. So let's configure our templates folder. Go to Settings > Plugin Options > Templates and select the `Templates` folder, which we created earlier. Now, just press Command+T (or whatever hotkey you happen to have set up) and select the template. Now, since we don't have anything in the templates folder, this menu would be empty. Let's fix that.
So, what is a template? Basically, any note can act as one, and when you apply it, the contents of this note will be pasted to where your cursor is currently located. But this wouldn't be so useful if you couldn't tell Obsidian that in this template, this piece of information should be unique for each time you apply it. For example, you can insert the current date, time, title of the active note, and other useful things. And with special plugins, you can take it to a whole new level. But again, this is the territory where it's easy to get lost in the variety of features and get distracted from what really matters: putting ideas into notes. That's why I use it in a very simple fashion, which is good enough to get the job done but doesn't get in the way.
The most important template in my system is the one that which I use 99% of the time. It is titled "Core Zettel Idea." That scary line at the top will paste the current date and time at which you created the note. Kind of like the Zettelkasten graphics or plugin status indicates that this note is one atomic idea. Tags is where I classify notes in one way or another, but we'll get to tagging in a bit. Title will automatically make the heading with that note's title.
Now the folders are set up, plugins are turned on, the template is created, so let's dive deeper into creating the notes. Before we begin, a quick tip: you can create notes with the usual hotkey Command or Control+N, and this will immediately create a new note. But I strongly encourage you to use Command or Control+O instead. What it does is that it opens a window where you can start typing the title of the note you want to create, and it will show you whether you already have something like this, so that you can elaborate on the existing note instead of creating a duplicate. This becomes extremely useful several months into note-taking when you start to forget what you have created and when. And the fuzzy search is just amazing. In case you don't have anything related from this menu, you can create a new note with that title.
So, suppose you're reading a book and you discover an interesting idea. Create a new note, apply the template, and explain that idea in your own words. For example, "I really think that this concept of habits compounding over time is really valuable." Under References, I usually write down where this idea came from, because it can be useful later on. And the exact format of the references doesn't really matter, as long as you can find the source if you need to. For example, when I'm watching a lecture on YouTube, I can just insert a link with a timestamp. If I'm working with a source that could potentially contain a whole collection of ideas that I'm likely to turn into Zettels, like a book or a huge online course, I will create a separate note dedicated for this source and put it inside the `References` folder. This is primarily to save time, since I can easily insert a link to that reference note instead of writing down the title and author every time.
Which, by the way, takes us to linking. This is the most powerful feature of Obsidian and the fundamental pillar of the Zettelkasten system itself. To insert a link from one note to the other, just type double square brackets, and it will bring the menu where you can start typing the title of the note you want to link to. As your knowledge base grows, you start to have a lot of linking material.
But now, what about the tags field at the top of the template? The thing is, you can create a link to a note even if the note itself does not exist. You can write down pretty much anything here, and because there is no such note, the link would be of a darker color. Now, importantly, once you put a link to a non-existent note, Obsidian remembers that, and the next time you type double square brackets, it would be on the list. That way, single nodes can function as tags, and these non-existent ghost nodes will be displayed on the graph view.
Pressing Control+G (or Command+G) will show you the graph of the entire vault, where the nodes are the nodes, and the edges are links between them. As you add more and more nodes and tag them, eventually, in the graph view, you will see the emerging structure. That is, the main Zettel idea core notes will be clustered around some ghost notes, which initially played the role of tags. If you see these hubs emerging, that means that this particular topic is recurring over and over again in your second brain, so it must be important. And this is the next level of organization, kind of like folders would be in a conventional note-taking system. But unlike folders, which come before you create the notes, this structure emerged from the content itself.
I have adopted the terminology that's quite popular in the Obsidian community nowadays. We're going to call these hubs "Maps of Content" or MOCs for short. When you see that a lot of atomic idea nodes cluster around something, you can then create an actual file for this instead of it just being a ghost. And here is where the second template comes in: a template for a Map of Content. It's practically the same as the core ideas Zettel template, it's just the status is changed to `#MOC` and references are removed. Once the note is created, it can serve purely organizational purposes and remain empty, or you can actually write something down or insert diagrams. You can see how the system is dynamic. New MOCs appear, some get split, some merge. Don't be afraid to change the architecture on the go if it feels necessary.
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If you have a system that's already working for you and which is totally different from what I just showed you, also, everyone is different, and every second brain is different as well. If some points resonate with you, great. Use them as the inspiration to slightly tweak and adjust your system if you feel like you want to, but don't go and spend a week completely restructuring your vault just because someone on the internet has a different layout.
If, on the other hand, you feel lost, frustrated, and don't know where to start, I totally feel your pain. Give this simple workflow a go for a few months, see how it works out. The point is to start simple, go with the flow, and then adjust your system one step at a time, depending on your personal needs. As your second brain matures, it will kind of tell you the most natural structure. It will be apparent. If, for example, you are a mathematician and you find yourself writing a lot of theorems as entries, it could make sense to introduce a `#theorem` note status. But don't overcomplicate things from the beginning. Instead, take the notes, connect them, and see where it takes you.
Also, note that this is a work in progress. If you ask me in a year, probably my setup and my workflow will change, but that's the natural process. As your personal knowledge system absorbs more and more ideas, it evolves, and the structure evolves along with it.
That's all I have for you today. If you like the video, press the like button, share it, and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Stay tuned for more interesting stuff coming up. Goodbye and thanks for the interesting knowledge.
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