My Obsidian Setup – Skamandros.de

I have used Obsidian for multiple years now – mostly for work, but more recently also for private note-taking. Obsidian can be used in many different ways and everyone has to make their own experiences and experiment with it. Also the way, how I use Obsidian myself, is still constantly evolving. This page shows my current setup and might help to get some inspiration on what to try. In addition, you can also check out my blog posts related to Obsidian.

Licenses

Since I use Obsidian for work, I have a commercial license, which I think is not only well worth the price but also supports Obsidian. In addition, I use Obsidian sync for my private vault, because it integrates very well with the iOS app and offers end-to-end encryption too.

Core Plugins

My active core plugins:

Backlinks
Command palette
Daily notes
File recovery
Files
Outgoing links
Outline
Quick switcher
Page preview
Search
Tags view
Templates
Word count

Community Plugins

My active community plugins, ordered from most important to me to least important:

Theme

I use the ITS Theme.

Directory Structure

I only have two vaults – one for work and one for my private notes. My work vault is way bigger, which is why I will illustrate it’s structure here:

attachments (hidden) – contains file attachments, e.g. images
meeting – contains a note for each regular meeting I have with a task query of open discussion points for this meeting
organization – contains a note for each organization I work with
periodic (hidden)
- daily – contains daily notes
- monthly – for monthly notes, but I don’t use them
- quarterly – for quarterly notes, but I don’t use them
- weekly – contains weekly notes
- yearly – contains yearly notes
person – contains a note for each person I work with which contains details on their role, a dataview showing what I discussed with them recently as well as a task query of open discussion points for people with whom I have 1on1 meetings
product – notes for technical products
project – notes for software projects
task – contains Kanban boards, notes with recurring tasks and my task overview for the sidebar
- task-details – contains notes with task details for tasks on the Kanban boards
template (hidden) – contains templates
topic – contains notes for topics which belong to none of the other categories

Some useful snippets

Template of a query for tasks linking to the current note

```tasks
description includes [[{{title}}
(not done) OR (done today) OR (cancelled today)
path does not include template
starts before tomorrow
is not blocked
sort by status.type
sort by urgency
sort by status.name
```

Template for a meeting to be inserted into the daily note

## 🗓 «Meeting Name»
> [!kith|family]- List of participants
> - | 

> [!example] Preparation
> - 

> [!note] Minutes
> - 

> [!todo] Derived action items
> - [ ] Share results of this meeting

This template uses callouts instead of sub-headings because this will make backlinks within task queries contain the name of the meeting, which is more meaningful than a generic heading.

Template for a dataview query of things I discussed with somebody

```dataview
list
L.text
from [[]] and "periodic/daily"
flatten file.lists as L
where file.day <= date(now)
	and
	(
		file.day >= date(now) - dur(
			number(default(this.file.frontmatter.frequency, "4"))
			* 2 + " weeks")
		or 
		(
			contains(L.text, "#long-term")
			and file.day >= date(now) - dur("1 year")
		)
	)
	and any(L.outlinks, (x) => contains(meta(x).path,this.file.name))
	and !L.task
	and !regexmatch("\[\[[^\]]*\]\]", L.text)
	and !startswith(L.text, "|")
```

Note that frequency is a property of the note which contains the 1on1 frequency with that person in weeks.

Template for an occurrence of a regular meeting to be inserted into the daily note

## 🗓 [[PM-Weekly]] {{date}}
![[PM-Weekly#^123456]]
- [+] Add topics to [PM-Weekly wiki page](https://link.to.confluence.page) 🏁 delete 

> [!note] Minutes
> - 

> [!todo] Derived action items
> - [ ] Share results of this meeting

Note that the second line will include a section with the open points for discussion from the meeting’s note into the current page. The section is referenced by an ID which is generated after you type ![[page#^ and select a section.

The task in the third line is to remind you to add the points for discussion to the meeting’s agenda in the wiki before the meeting (in case that’s needed) and will remove itself after completion.

How I work with my daily note

The template for my dailynote is really simple:

# {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}

## Journal
-

In the morning, I then create another H2 section for each bigger meeting of the day using my generic meeting template or the specific templates for recurring meetings. From the journal, I link to these sections in chronological order using [[#section]]

As the day goes by, I will add chronological entries into the journal for everything I worked on, every phone call or other important discussion with a colleague. I will also add tasks if any ToDo is derived from those activities. If I work on a topic which needs more details, I might create another H2 section for it below and link to it from the journal.