My simple note-taking setup | Zettelkasten in Obsidian | Step-by-step guide

when people first hear about zettle cast 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 zelda casting system pioneered by nicolas lumen 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 [Music] 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 xenocast 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 epsilon 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 node 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 nodes 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 boat 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 dot 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 zettlecast 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 xerocustom and the link to it would be somewhere in the top right corner this is how lumen originally went about his slip box and similarly i have one single folder in the root of the vault titled zeddle casted where all of the atomic idea nodes 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 zettocastion 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 edel casten 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 jolt 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 nodes are stored but we'll get to the templates later in this video [Music] the first thing to do is to create four aforementioned core folders zeddle casting reference notes files and templates next up go to settings and then files and links change the default location for nodes to in the folder specified below and select the title casting 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 dot 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 the templates insert template go ahead and assign your

desired key combination to it i have it as a 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 this one is essential i have no idea why they left it off by default oh and when you see the zerocast 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 the 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 searched 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 casting hardly matters plugins better 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 sitting there's also a third one but it's only irrelevant 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 xero casting system just two plugins are enough the first one is sliding panes it allows you to open multiple nodes 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 in to insert sections of text in your node 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 plugins github page templates is an amazing function that lets you save time and effort when creating a new node 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 node can act as one and when you apply it the contents of this node 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 a 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 is titled core settle idea that scary line at the top will paste the current date and time at which you created the note kind of like the zettocast 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 tegan in a bit title will automatically make the heading with that notes 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 nodes with a usual hotkey command or control n and this will immediately create a new node 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 zeddles 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 preference note instead

of writing down the title and author every time which by the way takes us to link this is the most powerful feature of obsidian and the fundamental pillar of zellcaston system itself to insert a link from onenote 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 ctrl 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 zedl idea chord 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 mocks for sure 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 idle template is

just the status is changed to hashtag mock 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 marks appear some get split some merge don't be afraid to change the architecture on the go if it feels necessary [Music] 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 bolt 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 hashtag theorem note status but don't over complicate 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 the 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 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 [Music] you