Almost a year ago, I started building this. You can call it a personal network of knowledge, but you might know it as a zettelkasten or a second brain. After years of searching for the perfect approach to my learning, I think this is it. By far, it's been the most valuable asset for reading, for writing, and even for my thinking.
But before I hype it up to you and show you how to make your own, there's something I should warn you about, a hidden danger. It's one that left me incredibly frustrated when I first started to make my own. It was a pain in the ass to get started, and I mean that.
If you look up how to create a Zetocacin, Obsidian, or how to build your second brain, you'll find probably hundreds of videos with each person showing their own method and their own way of doing it. And don't get me wrong, some of these were great. Like I used them to build my own and I couldn't be here without them.
But the problem is, as I kept watching more and more videos, I was digging myself a trap, one that would be harder and harder to eventually climb out of when I had to. Every single YouTuber I watched had their own method of creating it, one that was slightly different to the next. And if you end up watching 10 or 20 of these, you start to pick out points from every single one. And then it fills you with this almost toxic sense of perfectionism.
For example, I'd find some nice features from one video and then watch another video. And they have something different that stands out to me like a shiny gem. I take that and then that process repeats. And if you combine all their points from all these videos, you end up with this mess.
This Frankenstein's monster of a setup that tries to be everything but fails. I was deluded in doing that. I thought I could steal from everyone else's workflow and make the perfect one, but that's not how it works.
In fact, all it did was bog me down. For months, I didn't really do much writing. I was just obsessed with getting the perfect setup, which doesn't exist anyway. But thankfully, I eventually realized that this system was never going to be perfect. In fact, every time I added a new feature, I was only adding a pointless gimmick that was a distraction from the true work, the writing.
And without wasting more time, I just gripped my teeth and moved forward with what I had already. I abandoned all the weird gimmicks, the plugins and all the bullshit features that didn't actually matter. And I focused on the bare bones. And suddenly a weight was just lifted off my shoulders.
It felt good because now I can actually do what I wanted to do, which was to write. I didn't have to worry on finding the perfect system and optimizing every single step of the way. I do realize now I'm just an extra voice in the conversation.
But I just want to reassure you and say that this setup is free from bullshit. There are no pointless features. There are no gimmicks. This setup is simple.
It's minimalistic. It focuses only on the key features that actually help you get to where you want to be. And I have the experience to vouch for this system.
I've used Obsidian for, I think, nine months now, almost every day. And since the start, after hundreds of notes, it hasn't changed. The setup is exactly the same.
And to me, that's solid evidence that it works. So if you're feeling intimidated by the idea of starting your own, I get you. I was in that same position. But I hope this setup can free you of some of that stress.
really give you the building blocks you need to just get started. If you want an immediate walk through on how to set it up then please do skip to that but for this next portion of the video I want to talk about why should you do this anyway, like what's in it for you. It seems like a lot of effort and it is but I want to cover three main benefits that make it so powerful as a learning tool. Over the years I've tried many learning techniques because I was sick and tired of walking away from my books to the same person, forgetting all the important things and failing to reflect on what was inside.
It was exhausting. and I felt like all the effort I put into the learning was just vanishing into thin air, and it was all for nothing. This all changed when I read a book called How to Take Smart Notes by Sunkarans. Now, I think that's how you pronounce it, but do correct me for German.
This is the book I chose to bring on a three-hour flight, and I thought it would just be a casual laid-back experience on, you know, maybe how you can make your notes a little bit more effective. I was so, so wrong. By the time the plane landed, the course of my entire reading from that point...
would change forever. Those three hours I was just captivated by what I was reading because this was revolutionary. I had never thought of note-taking learning quite like this.
This book tore down lots of misconceptions I got from traditional education and it gave me this fresh and exciting perspective to reading. It was the idea of a zettelkasten, a slip box, which is exactly what we're building today. Now I do recommend you check his book out because it is really good but to keep it brief the zettelkasten is a note-taking system that builds your notes from the bottom up.
It lets you take the ideas you read and embed it in this network of knowledge, one that serves you in all your goals, from learning to reading to writing. There's three main ways it's so, so effective, and almost unlike any other note-taking system. The first reason is that it forces you to slow down. Now, a lot of people don't like to hear that.
All the hustle grindset bros, they don't like the idea of abandoning speed reading. And they might hate me for saying this, but it's true. In most cases, speed and reading are not a good mix.
The best thing I ever did for my reading was to slow it right down and take thorough notes in the process. The slowness of the writing forces you to dwell on the author's ideas. Of course it's slower, you do lose speed, but to me that's a worthy sacrifice, because all the ideas will have a lasting impact on your mind.
It's like when you eat too much at Christmas, and you sit there all stuffed and bloated, and you have to really wait and digest to be able to come to life again. This is kind of the same thing but with your brain. The result is not only a way better attention of what you read but you also start to understand things more deeply. Because you know some of these books are chunky and it's not like you can speed through them and just remember everything.
The second power of the Zettelkasten is that it gives you instant feedback on your learning. I'm not sure how it works in the USA but in the UK we have this thing called A-levels and that's two years of study before going to university and you can pick three or four subjects for that and I did history. And in history there was a lot of essay writing.
We did essays almost every week. Now normally you hand in your essay and you get feedback a week later. But let's say there was a twist this time. Every time I handed this essay in, I would never get any feedback. If that pattern continued for a year or two, I would get to the end of my A-levels and my essay writing would be just as shit as when I first started.
Because to get better at any skill you need two things. You need practice and you need feedback. Now in that case I had lots of practice. I wrote every week, no problem there. But I didn't get any feedback.
And if there's no one there to correct you, you're going to end up making the same stupid mistakes again and again and again. Writing notes is the exact opposite of that situation. Because by doing that, we get instant feedback.
By writing, we get an instant reflection of our own understanding. Because if we struggle to put something into words, then that's a sign that we haven't understood it. It's a sign for you to go back to the book and check your understanding.
This is a prime example of the Feynman technique in action. Which says that if you teach something, in this case writing, you actually learn it better yourself. The third benefit of this system is that you allow your notes to form connections.
Most people store their notes by subject in these clear subdivided folders. Now this makes sense in our head, we've been taught to do it in school, but there's actually hidden danger to it because it has the tendency to isolate your ideas and that stops you from seeing the bigger picture. You'll see what I mean with the example and it's going to sound really weird at first but bear with me.
Why are reptiles mostly in hotter areas of the world? It's because they're ectotherms, which you probably know as cold-blooded. Now this means to effectively hunt and escape predators, they have to warm up using the environment. Like when a lizard sits on a rock to absorb the energy of the sun.
Because we're mammals, we can produce our own heat from within. But this is expensive, because unlike lizards, we have to eat a lot more to keep ourselves warm. Well the hidden strength that we have as mammals is that we can stay active even in the cold. If you travel north to the Arctic as a lizard, it's going to be so cold that you can't properly move.
and you end up either starving or dying to a predator. But since we produce our own heat, we can stay active, and that means we can avoid predators and also hunt effectively. We can out-compete the reptiles even in the coldest temperatures.
Okay, that's that, but let's slow down a second. Why am I giving you a biology lesson? I gave you a simple explanation of that topic, but if you want to understand it in depth... You have to know things from chemistry, from physics, from biology, from ecology.
To understand the bigger picture, you have to pull ideas from all four of these subjects. And if you fail to understand something in that chain of reasoning, you might not get the whole thing. In that same example, if you have no idea why muscles slow down when they're cold, then you won't be able to explain that properly to me.
But there is hope, because if you understand the physics and the chemistry and the biology, you can somehow piece everything together into this clear picture, and you can understand it, and you can explain it to me. This is true wisdom. This is the end result of learning, the most valuable thing you can achieve. And this system, this Zettelkasten, is exactly how you'll get there.
The second major benefit of the Zettelkasten is how it helps you store and mix ideas. Before I started taking notes like this, I would write all of the things I learned in separate notebooks. I love the feeling of pen on paper, because you can be free with it, and you can draw all the diagrams you want. It's satisfying.
Now this was all well and good, but as I was a few notebooks in, I started to realise a problem that was creeping up on me. How the hell am I going to manage this later? Am I going to end up with 100 notebooks? What do I do then?
So I made the painful decision to overhaul everything and prevent this disaster. It may have hurt in the moment, but I knew that this physical method of note-taking was going to hurt me in the future. And it had its limits.
With Obsidian, the app we're using today, all of your notes are in the same place whenever and wherever you need them. Instead of carrying 100 notebooks or flashcards, you have your whole personal library on your phone or computer. And if you store your note files on the cloud, you can literally travel across half the world and you'll still be able to find them.
Even though I love taking notes on paper, this is the obvious best choice nowadays. So the storage of notes is already perfect, but there's an extra benefit of having everything in one place. It's the power of connecting ideas to make new ones. In this system, like we said before, your notes are free from the restrictions of folders. This means you don't have to go through the annoying process of opening 10 different subfolders to find...
that exact note you were looking for. In this system they're all in one arena, they're all free to mingle and to connect. Insights from Socrates, Dante and the Bible can connect with those from maybe Virginia Woolf or Nietzsche or any other modern author you can think of. Every new book, video and article you read can add something valuable to the conversation, something that can form these exciting connections that you never saw coming.
Your network of notes only gets stronger with time and you can't say the same for a system of folders because the more you add the more messy and confusing it gets. This is the exact opposite. And I know what you might be thinking. This looks chaotic.
It looks messy. It's ugly. And I will admit mine is uglier than most people's online.
Without a system of tags and hyperlinks, it is a mess and it is hard to navigate. But if you follow some basic rules in how you construct the note and organize it, it's actually really easy to then navigate this maze and find exactly what you're looking for. And I'm not giving it enough credit here because sometimes you'll write a note and then months down the line, you completely forget it exists. But because of your system of links, you end up rediscovering it by accident and it's the nicest surprise. And here's the nice part, if you're more of an organized type of person, which you know I am too, I like folders, this system still caters to you.
If you use tags you can add this extra layer of organization to your notes and if you want to find something related to a specific topic it's still easy. And if it sounds confusing no worries because we're going to walk through these steps in detail a bit later on. The third major benefit is easier and faster writing and this is by far my favorite one.
It's so exciting to talk about. When I first read about this idea in How to Take Smart Notes, I swear I almost got goosebumps. Because at the time, I knew this was big. This would change how I write forever.
The best way to show you this is to compare two different writers. Our first writer has an idea for a book. And you know, he's got a rough idea of the structure, so all he has to do now is set out to research.
Whenever he finds a useful idea, he just takes it and puts it in his planning draft. He then uses subheadings to sort it out and see what will go where. After many long hours, lots of caffeine, and...
maybe an existential crisis or two, he's finished the book. That sounds all good, right? Well yeah, maybe for now, but you'll see he's screwing himself over in the future.
Our second writer also wants to write a book, but he starts without an idea for the title. He doesn't know what the end product might be. Instead, he just reads about whatever he's interested in, and on the way he picks up the ideas that resonate the most.
With some simple organisation of his notes, he begins to see these areas of interest form around certain topics. In the case of Obsidian, this can be literal clusters that begin to form. For example, the more he reads about human behaviour, the bigger the area of discussion gets. And before he knows it, he's got the building blocks for a book.
With a quick look through the notes, the writer sees how he can order them in a linear way. Now all it takes is some rearranging, some editing, and of course a little bit of extra writing. But then suddenly, you have a book. It was a relatively quick process because most of the writing was already done, in the form of the notes, way before the idea of the book even existed. The first writer didn't have this opportunity, and he's also missing out on a second benefit.
Because the second writer collected his ideas outside of the book draft, he can reuse these notes as many times as he wants in all sorts of different projects. In other words, none of his research is stuck within the book draft, or his article, or blog, or whatever else he wrote. If our first writer wants to do the same thing, and maybe write a second book, well he has to start from scratch.
He has to go through the long and painful process of finding all this research again. It's kind of like how we're taught to do it in school. We start with the essay title, and then do all the research.
Once the essay is done, we just throw the research away. And this system is crazy if you think about it. It's inefficient, it's slow, and it forces you to repeat all the research. You want to spend your time writing, not finding the same old notes from before. With this system, you make your notes work for you, and not the other way around.
I'm writing a book now, and because it's on a topic I care about, a lot of the research already exists in my note-taking software. And as I'm writing it up, notes I made from months ago will resurface to help me. And most of these notes I totally forgot about. but because of the links and the tags it allows me to find them when I need them.
If you invest in this system you're building yourself a personal writing assistant one that only gets stronger with time. I hope I've sold the Zetelkasten system well but if you want more details then do check out the book because I've only scratched the surface to be honest. So we finally reached the setup stage and I want to show you how you can get the ball running without that usual frustration at the start because believe me when I was building this for the first time I was pissed off at every corner. There were so many things I didn't understand and it was just frustrating.
I want to also show you how I'd write a note from start to finish using all the different features. There's no gimmicks, there's no pointless complexity, and there's no bullshit. Just simple and effective note-taking. The first thing to do is install Obsidian from their website.
This is super easy and of course it's totally free. You're then given the option to name your vault, but what the hell is a vault anyway? This is where all of your notes are stored and it's the highest level of organization in this system. When you first make a vault you have to first name it, but also choose the location of the vault. This is because a vault is just a folder on your computer and you can choose exactly where that folder goes.
Every note you make in Obsidian will become a file in this folder. This is great because not only does it let you use Obsidian offline, but you can also easily copy and transfer your notes because they're just files. I would recommend storing your vault on the cloud, somewhere like Google Drive or OneDrive. So obviously it's backed up and you can access it from any device.
Mine is in my Google Drive in a folder called Obsidian. And you might notice that when you do this... It creates an extra folder called.obsidian. This folder holds all of the system files and you don't need to worry about it but it's just good to know where they are.
And what I love about this system is once you choose a location you don't really have to worry. about it ever again. All of the note-taking happens within the app itself. Now before we dive into the setup with all the folders and stuff, I want to let you know that this is going to be a step-by-step approach. I may be wrong, but I think this is the easiest way for you to understand things instead of, you know, dumping everything onto you at once.
This means some things might be confusing in the moment, but will begin to make sense as we progress through the steps. Now let's get into the folders. I use six in my system, but you know, to reassure you, only three of them are really active in your note-taking. The other three kind of sit in the background most of the time. The folders we're focusing on are the numbered ones.
So the two at the bottom, you can ignore them completely. They're just some extra things I use on the side. So let's get into the setup and I'll explain each as we go.
This is what you see when you create a vault. I first like to delete all this crap, all the tabs, and that gives us a clean slate to work from. Much better. Next, I use this icon on the top left to create six new folders.
But you know, to keep things straightforward, let's start with one. The first folder I call rough notes. Here, I jot down anything temporary.
Things like... ideas I had, maybe reminders, or of course, rough notes. It's like a notepad where you write down things you don't want to forget and anything else you might need. For example, here I keep up a list of ideas that I might want to research further.
I also keep a tracker of my daily word count for my writing habits. And to be honest, I don't use this folder that much because I prefer to keep all my rough ideas on paper. So whether you want to use this folder or not is entirely up to you and your preferences.
The second folder is called source material. Here I store the insights from anything I consume. Not just books, but also videos, articles, podcasts, even Twitter threads. Anything. I like to make different subfolders to store different types of source material.
But of course, this is totally optional. And you'll notice that some at the bottom are unsorted. And this is on purpose. These notes are active, meaning I'm still working on them and I haven't finished the writing.
But of course, once I do finish, I can then neatly tuck them away where they belong. Now that's just the setup, but don't worry, I will dive into these notes a bit later on. The third folder stores my tags.
Tags are your best friend in navigating your network. especially when it gets large. You'll need these if you want to avoid drowning in your notes later on.
In this folder I store all of the tags and this sounds weird like since when do you store tags? Now you can make tags a traditional way using a hashtag and that does work but I prefer a different approach one that I think is more powerful. Instead each of my tags is just an empty note. Let's say I'm writing a note about humility and leadership.
Now of course one of the tags is going to be humility which is a topic I'm interested in. To apply the tag to the note I have to make a link to it. To do this, I type the square bracket button twice and then this brings up a search function. From here I type humility and then I close it off with two more square brackets. Here I've created a link to a note but the reason it's grayed out is because it doesn't exist yet.
Once I click on the link it automatically creates the note and this is the humility tag. This is simply a note called humility but we're going to use it as a tag in this case. I don't want it to appear in the same folder as my notes so if you click on the top right it pulls up a drop down menu. So you get the option to take this note and move it to the tags folder.
So now whenever you write a new note and you want to add the humility tag to it, all you have to do is use the double square brackets to then link to this note. You can create as many tags as you like. Now I have quite a large list because I love to read about lots of different subjects. The point of this folder is to keep your system tidy and free from all this clutter. If tagging still sounds confusing to you then don't worry because we're actually going to revisit it later.
The fourth folder stores indexes. Once your knowledge network grows it can reach a point where it's a bit tricky to navigate. And this is what repels most people from starting one. They see this horrible, ugly spiderweb looking thing and think, how in the hell am I going to navigate this? It's just too much.
And that may be true, but luckily we have indexes. They come in and solve this problem. Do you remember the tags from last step?
Well, because the tags are just empty notes, we can use them as indexes too. When a tag gets big enough, as in you've connected a lot of notes to it, you can actually turn this tag into an index. An index is almost like the contents page of a book. You take all of the notes within the tag and give them some sort of logical structure.
And this is super easy because our tags are empty notes. And we can just go inside the note and start filling out the index. Let's take the humility tag again.
You can see here I have a few notes linking back to this tag. Now because there's only a few, I don't bother making an index. There's no point of it because I can see everything in one place easily. But let's say I choose my learning tag.
Now this is a much bigger one because it has 51 relevant notes. linking back to it. So to turn this tag into an index I add some subheadings and then under these subheadings I link all of the notes that fit that category.
The idea of the index is to add a basic level of structure to your notes so that if you want to visit the learning topic you have some sort of entry point for the discussion. Now I have a confession I got a bit lazy and I didn't actually put all of the learning notes in this index but once yours gets big enough do have a go at keeping things neat. Don't be like me. Of course if you're just setting up things now you don't have to worry about this stage. It's just good to keep in mind for later on when you do have this problem.
The fifth folder is called the template folder. This has one simple job and it stores the template for your main notes. Once we set this up later, you can totally forget about it.
So don't worry. Folder number six is the workhorse of this entire system. This is where your main notes go.
Some people call this folder the Zettelkasten or atomic notes. The name is up to you. The point is, this is where every single main note goes in one folder.
Now, it sounds weird to put every note in one place. But remember from before that lack of folders is what keeps this system flexible and open to connection. Plus, as you add to this folder, you'll naturally begin to see different areas of interest form because of the links.
Chaos will slowly turn into order and you'll begin to see patterns in what you're reading. I know it's unlike most other systems, but if you trust the process, it's going to serve you well. So there's each folder covered. Once you set them up with or without the optional ones, there's a few important settings we have to jig around with to make the process seamless like butter. What?
Butter's not seamless. First off we go to files and links in the settings. Here we'll change the default location for new notes. You want to select the one that says in the folder specified below. Then in the drop down menu select your main notes folder or whatever else you called it.
Now my notes are kind of ugly but if you want some more aesthetically pleasing ones go to the appearance section in the settings and you know have a play around with the themes. Next we're going to set up some hotkeys to make your reading as rapid as possible. We want to save all of our mental energy for writing not for creating the notes. To do this you want to go to the hotkey section of the settings, search for template and where it says insert template add any hotkey convenient for you.
Mine is control T which works a charm, on Mac this would be command T. Next go to the core plugin section in the settings. These are like extra quirks you can add to Obsidian. Some of these are built into the app but others are made by members of the community.
In the core plugins you want to turn on the templates. Now there are a few others you can play around with but for now templates is all we need. If you go to the community plugin section you'll be greeted with this huge list of plugins to try.
All made by Obsidian users. You can overlook all of these for now. You don't need any of them. But in case you're interested I use two. I use one called Better Word Count to upgrade the word count feature.
but also one called Smart Random Note, because sometimes I like to be able to generate a random note. But to clarify, this is just my personal preference. You don't need them.
And maybe after you've got into the flow of using this system, do have an explore and see if you can upgrade your process somehow. But be careful, because the power of this system is in its simplicity. If you add endless plugins, you might just overcomplicate the process and distract yourself from the real work. So just be wise in what you choose. There's a reason that after nine months of use, I only have two installed.
Do you remember the templates we messed around with earlier? Now you'll see how useful they are in action. In the settings go to the template section and in the top part select the folder that you created for your templates.
If you now exit the settings and press ctrl t or whichever hotkey you set up for the template it's going to bring up this menu. It's empty because we haven't yet created a template. This is called a template because with the click of a button you can paste the contents onto an empty note and this gives you some basic structure to work with. It lives in the templates folder and because of the setting we changed earlier, Obsidian knows that this is the template. You can copy my template for now.
At the top you can see date and time in between the squiggly brackets. Now I don't actually know the name of those but the point of them is that once you create a new note, the date and time will automatically go there. Below this is status and tag. This is where you add some important information for categorizing the note.
You'll see this in a bit, it's super simple. Next you have the title of the note. And once you type in the title, again it's automatically going to be pasted here.
To make it big and bold like you see here, you simply put a hashtag followed by a space. You can add multiple hashtags to make subheadings. And the more hashtags you add, the smaller the subheading will be. Under this you want to leave some blank space so you can actually have room to write your notes. Then at the bottom, make a heading called reference.
Here you're going to link to the source material, but also any other similar notes. From here the setup is complete, so well done. I haven't touched these settings since I began this system, so thankfully from here it's a low maintenance process.
Now let me walk you through the fun part, how you can actually write these notes. To create a new note, you press Ctrl-O. Now this will bring up a menu, and in the search bar, you can type in the title of your note and then press Shift plus Enter to create it.
The good thing about this menu is that it works as a search bar, so if you type in something and you have a similar note already created, it's going to pop up. For example, I might want to create a new note about purpose. And when I type in purpose, similar notes will come up. Anything with purpose in the title.
This helps me avoid writing the same note twice, which does happen, because you might write a note months in the past and completely forget about it. If I have already written a note, I can simply jump back into it and maybe elaborate and add something. But of course, if the note doesn't exist, then congratulations, you made a new one.
Once you create your new note, it's going to be blank, and you want your template to be pasted on top of it. To do that, press Ctrl T, which is the hotkey for your template, and then you'll see... the one you created pop up.
Press that one. And within a second, this slaps some structure into your note, and it sets you up for writing without hesitation. Now for the writing itself.
You want your notes to be written in a way that serves you. The easiest way to show you this is to make a note myself from start to finish. Recently, I read a book called Confessions of a Cartel Hitman.
And yeah, it's not the most deep or insightful book, but you know, I wanted to change the pace. I also love to study crime from an anthropology perspective. And of course, this guy is a cartel member.
He had first-hand experience, which I found interesting. I have read this book, but now I'm in the note-taking stage where I run through the book again from start to finish, and I look for anywhere I took notes. I then give these notes a formal write-up to solidify them.
To start off with, I make a new note in the source materials folder. I give it the title of the book, and of course if it was an online source, I would add the link here too. This is a book, so there's no need for that. Whenever I encounter a note in the paperback, or maybe something I underlined that was interesting, I make sure to write the page number down. and maybe a relevant quote.
Below this note, I then expand on the topic in my own words. I talk about my thoughts on it, maybe what it reminded me of, or even just explain it to myself in a way that I understand. Now it's so so important to use your own words here, otherwise you risk falling into passive learning. Of course it's easy to just copy the quote and move on, but because this is a quick process, you're not really forced to think about it. So if you want to remember more and actually understand what you read, it's best to take the time to flesh it out as you see it.
This forces your mind to reflect, to think. and to truly dwell on the ideas. My first note here is about how Martin Corona, the author, felt extreme loyalty to his fellow gang members, even early on when he was on the show. on the streets. I have a page number, I have a quote, and below it I expanded on the idea.
I explained how loyalty was the backbone of gang life, probably because it feels fulfilling to be part of this close-knit group. I carry on through the book repeating this process, page number, quote, elaboration. Because I write a lot for each one, this is a time-consuming process, but you know, I'm okay with that. If it helps the idea stick, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. Of course, you don't have to do the same.
You can write as little as you want or as much as you want. Once I finish writing all the source material notes, I then create the full notes. Again, I start at the top and I put a new tab to the side.
By pressing Ctrl-O, I bring up the search menu. I can then type in a new note and create it. I then press Ctrl-T, which shows me the template.
And of course, I insert that. And there you go. There's the full note. The notes from the source material were in context, but these ones, the main notes, are not. This means they're independent from the source material and they're self-explanatory.
Because of that one simple change, it almost standardizes them and it lets them connect to other notes freely. It also gives you a chance to talk about the bigger picture. Once you write the notes in the source material, you can then ask yourself so what? Why does this matter?
What does this mean? So throughout the source note, I might see the same idea pop up again and again and to me that's something worth talking about. The main note gives me a chance to take all of that and wrap it up. as a key idea or a key takeaway. I explain this process a little bit more in a past video, so I'll try and remember to link that here.
For example, this note I've created says that criminal gangs are united by a deep sense of loyalty and belonging. Now this makes no mention of Martin Corona, the cartel member, but what it does mention is the bigger picture, the thing I want to walk away with. Of course you can reference people or events directly from the book, but be sure to explain it.
You want to be able to return to these notes and actually understand what's going on immediately. Let's now go through the notes from top to bottom. The status tag is not that important, and honestly you can do without it.
I will use it for two things. First, I'll either write hashtag baby, hashtag child, or hashtag adult. This sounds weird, but all it means is how developed the note is.
If the note is new, it's badly written, and maybe unconnected, I'll write hashtag baby, which tells me it's kind of in its young stage. Once I write more, edit the note, and connect it to other things, I can upgrade that status to child and then adult. All this does is help me know which notes maybe need more attention and more work.
Again, this is a less important feature, so please feel free to remove it from your template. If the note contains a quote, I also like to put hashtag quotes in this section. I love to use quotes in my writing because I feel like it's a punchy way to get your message forward. So by putting hashtag quote, it just lets me find them more easily.
Next comes the tag section. Now we've already talked about how to make tags, but I must confess this part can be tricky. For months, I looked for advice on how to tag my notes properly. How specific should I be?
How many tags should I add? Should I do it according to my interests or the subject? I had all these unanswered questions and I was lost for direction. I want you to avoid the same rabbit hole.
So here are some pointers for effective tagging, ones that I learned the hard way. First, try to avoid tags that are too vague. Now, for example, I'm technically into self-improvement, but what does that even mean?
It's such a vague idea. That could mean... Fitness, it could mean health, it could mean business, it could mean religion, it could mean all sorts of different things.
If I showed you a note that said self-improvement, you can't really guess what's inside. Of course, you don't want it to be too precise either, otherwise you'll end up never using it again. You want it to be somewhere in the middle.
When I feel the need to create a new tag, I ask myself a simple question. Will I ever use this tag again? Is there anything I might come across that will also have this tag? Another tip that has saved me so much irritation in tagging is to keep tags related to your interests. rather than what other people think is a common category.
The most obvious tags will be things like fitness, sociology, maths, things like that. Now those make sense in the wider world, but this is your system, so the tag should serve you above all. For example, I have a tag called dangers to male-female relationships. Now this sounds quite weird.
It's not a category of content you hear about every day. It may be a bit niche and precise, but it works for me because it's something I'm interested in. I know for a fact that I'm going to encounter more ideas that's going to be relevant to this topic. and this means that the tags are serving my interests and not necessarily what the rest of the world is thinking.
Remember, this system is your second brain. It doesn't belong to anyone else and that means the tag should serve you and you alone. In the early stage of the system, you're going to find yourself creating loads of new tags but remember, after creating one and moving it to your tag section, you can infinitely reuse it. As you progress and you've covered most of your interests, things will calm down a little.
For this note, I know I don't have to create many new tags. I've already talked about ideas similar to this and the tags will already exist. So I apply the loyalty tag, I apply the meaning tag, and this is a good start, but I see something's missing. I haven't accounted for the criminal side of this tag.
Now, I love to read about cartel history and maybe criminology in general. I know I'm going to encounter this idea again, so it makes sense to create a new tag for it. So maybe I'll create a new tag called cartels or criminal life.
Something not too vague, but not too specific. Another common problem I have is that sometimes I forget tags exist and I forget to use them where they should be used. Now, Now it's a real pain in the ass, but I found a workaround. What I do is I search for similar notes using the hyperlink function, and then I go into those notes and see what they have tagged.
And sometimes this reminds me of a tag that I forgot about, and I can just reuse it in my new notes. The final nugget of tag advice is to not put too many down. You can add 6, 7, 8, but at that point, it starts to get confusing and messy.
I aim to keep it below 4 and 5 most of the time, and you can't even go wrong with just one tag. Now we move to the bulk of the note itself. There's not much to say here. It's as simple as discussing an idea in order to better understand it yourself.
It's an outlet for reflection almost. Because I've already written a lot in the source material note, I tend to just copy-paste it sometimes. I then maybe expand upon it, edit the structure, improve upon it, and do all these things to make it as useful as possible for me.
Or I can start from scratch and use the source material notes as inspiration. Most people write less in the source materials and then use this step for the full write-up. So really, it depends on what you prefer.
I just like to write a lot because, as I said, it helps slow down the flow and helps me remember it better. The format of these notes is also your call. I love to write these notes as mini-essays, which I talk about in an earlier video, so do check that out.
But of course, if you feel like a single sentence is enough to capture the idea, go for it. You can use blunt, informative sentences. You can use a story to tell something.
You can use a personal experience to make light of what you read. Literally anything goes, because remember, these are your notes. and you can do whatever you please. I'm not going to be assessing them like a teacher and neither will anyone else. And speaking of mini essays, you're going to see some in my newsletter.
So do be sure to subscribe with the link in the description. It's totally free, of course. With that said, I do have two small tips that help me keep my notes focused and free from clutter. First, I recommend that you keep these notes quite short so that you avoid turning them into this full-blown article or essay. You want to use these notes as tools for learning or maybe to write up something.
You don't really want the note to be the large writing project itself. This defeats the whole purpose of the note. because it's no longer versatile, I recommend keeping them below 500 words. And as a rule of thumb, I try and write so that everything fits on the page without having to scroll down. It just keeps things focused and concise.
The second tip is so important and it's to keep each mini essay focused on a single idea. Again, you want your notes to be as clear and as flexible as possible. You want to be able to use them in all sorts of situations, whether that's writing something or maybe just to refresh your memory. If you create a complicated note that pulls together many different ideas. you end up with this messy jumble.
And because it's short, you don't really have the time to flesh them out. It may feel insightful, but you may just be diluting the message and making it hard to understand what the note is about. Now, connections are great, don't get me wrong.
It's great to mix and match ideas, but you should save this probably for a larger piece of writing, maybe a full-blown essay. There, you have the room to expand upon these ideas and to really flesh them out and give them the attention they deserve. If you want to expand on a note in Obsidian, simply make a new one and then write about the next idea there.
and maybe connect it back using a link. It's the same end result, but by doing so you've kept your notes clear and flexible. Also here's an underrated piece of advice. Format your notes so that they're easier to read. Trust me, your future self doesn't want to revisit these notes and be met with this big fat ugly block of text.
So try and include spaces between the lines at natural break points. This keeps it easy to read and it takes less mental energy. And that leads us to the final stage at last, referencing. At the bottom of the notes in the references section I create hyperlinks any notes that discuss similar ideas. I also like to link to the source material that the idea came from.
In this case it would be Confessions of a Cartel Hitman, the book in the source materials folder. Again this is easy to do, it's the same function as tagging. You press the square bracket button twice and then search for any notes that connect and then you just press enter. The same problem happens with tagging though, you might forget about notes and forget to tag them.
The easiest way to get around this is to look up keywords and because those keywords probably exist in the title of the notes. you might end up stumbling upon ones that are relevant. To be extra sure I'm not missing anything, I might even go to the tags of the note.
And at the bottom of the tag, you see all of the linked notes. And chances are something in there might be relevant enough to connect. And finally at the bottom, I link to the source material. This is just a handy way to know exactly where the idea came from. And if you ever want to revisit the source, you know where to find it.
Without tagging the source note, you might have to end up scouring the internet to find where it came from. And of course you don't want to be in that situation. I think that's everything. That's a long video, so thank you for watching.
And the thing is with these setups is you can't mention everything. I know for a fact that I've missed some points here, and I've missed some details, and there will be questions. So, of course, the comments are open, my email's open.
Feel free to shoot me anything that you don't understand. And I'll gladly explain it because this is hard and it might take a few days, few weeks, few months to get into the flow of things. But trust me, if you persevere through that, you will understand. You'll get a feel for how the app works and overall it will start to work for you.
So I really hope that I've covered everything well enough to get going. But again, feel free to ask questions. Feel free to check the comments for any answers you might have. And of course, thank you so much for watching.