Obsidian Workspace (Placeholder)

Obsidian Workspace

I tried many note-taking systems before Obsidian clicked: linear documents felt too rigid, Notion databases too heavy. Obsidian sits in the right spot: plain Markdown files I own, enough structure to find things, and enough flexibility to let structure emerge.

Vault goals

Three rules that guide every structural decision:

1. Everything searchable — if I can't find it in under 10 seconds, it's not worth having.
2. Capture first, organise later — friction at capture time kills the habit.
3. Backlinks over hierarchy — deep folder trees are a trap; let the graph surface relationships.

Folder layout

vault/
├── 00-Inbox/        ← everything lands here first
├── 10-Projects/     ← one folder per active project
├── 20-Areas/        ← ongoing responsibilities (health, finances, career)
├── 30-Resources/    ← reference material, research, books
├── 40-Archive/      ← completed projects, stale notes
└── 99-Meta/         ← templates, config notes, this structure doc

The 00-Inbox folder is the relief valve. Notes go in raw, get processed weekly into their permanent home during a Friday review.

Why not tags for top-level organisation?

Tags are great for cross-cutting concerns (#to-review, #reference, #person) but poor as the primary navigation structure. Folders answer "where am I?" immediately; tags answer "what kind of thing is this?" — both have a role.

Daily note workflow

Every morning a Templater-generated note opens automatically:

The dataview block pulls open tasks from all active projects that are due today. I don't maintain a separate task system — tasks live near the project note that created them and surface here automatically.

Plugin lineup

The core principle: every plugin must earn its place. I audit the list every three months and remove anything that hasn't been used.

Templater example

A project note template that auto-populates metadata and creates a linked tasks note:

<%*
const title = await tp.system.prompt("Project name")
const slug = title.toLowerCase().replace(/ /g, "-")
tR += `---
title: ${title}
status: active
created: <% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") %>
---

## Goals

## Tasks
[[${slug}-tasks]]

## Notes
`
await tp.file.rename(slug)
%>

Audio walkthrough — the vault in under 10 minutesListen

Sync setup

The vault lives in a folder synced by Syncthing across my desktop, laptop, and a VPS. Obsidian Sync is expensive for what it is; Syncthing is free and faster. The .obsidian config folder is included so plugins and themes stay in sync too.

Using inline code for the conflict-resolution rule: if Syncthing flags a conflict, the .sync-conflict-* file is always the older version — delete it, keep the main file.

Notes are compressed thinking. The vault is less about storage and more about making space to think clearly.

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