What Nobody Tells You About Organizing Folders in Obsidian

the only way to organize your folders in obsidian is your way but I think I know the best way to get there because I've helped thousands of others get there too and it starts in a really unusual way

with no folders at all then we build from the bottom up earning structure every step of the way the reason this works is because it's based on what you need not what somebody else needs or

what somebody else told you online in a YouTube video like this exactly what folders you need no we're going to build your folders from the bottom up I have a series of different examples with a

bunch of different notes and we're going to look at how we might organize this and we're going to do it together and as we do you might say to yourself I don't even do that I don't even take daily

notes so guess what you won't need that type of folder so please allow this video to act as your guide I'm going to guide you through the process that hopefully will remove so much confusion

around folders which folders do you need which folders do you need today which folders might you need in the future and the one I like the best which folders do you just not need at all this video is

kind of long but it's long for a reason because we want to build up the experience of going from no notes at all to thousands of notes and the decisions

that you would need to make along the way when it comes to folders We have tons of examples it took a lot of time to set up if you go through in order we will build with you every step of the

way and you'll know exactly why we are doing what we're doing doing but if you're feeling antsy feel free to jump ahead to whatever section works best for you okay quick note before we dig in I

don't like wasting time thinking about folders when I could be thinking about linking my thinking and making amazing connections and relationships between ideas but that being said this video

it's about folders so if you don't want to spend time with folders this isn't the video for you but if you want to actually have a holistic and comprehensive understanding of how we want to approach folders this is the

place to be also I'm quite aware that there are a few people out there who think we don't need any folders at all hey that's fine for what you're doing but there are a lot of us that are doing things that actually do require folders

in unique ways and whether that's obvious or not so obvious that's part of our pursuit in today's video so without further Ado let's hop in okay we are in

what you can see on my screen is a cascading series of obsidian vaults we're going to go through each of these this is a guided process I'm really

happy to go through this with you it took a lot of setup because it's really hard to talk about all the different phases when it comes to taking and

making notes over time I've done the hard work and this was some hard work let's kind of hop into this together though and really zoom out how do we

start we have a need we have a need to hold on to a thought a memory an idea and we're worried we're worried we're going to lose that idea if if we don't

capture it in some way so we turn to paper and we capture ideas thoughts we jot them down and we turn to digital tools like obsidian to help us hold on

to these things let's keep in mind our minds Can Only Hold On To five items give or take at any given time that is woefully inadequate for all the needs

that we have in life so we need to be able to extend our minds onto paper and onto digital paper or an idea verse of your own notes so how does this normally

start let's start with the most basic we have just opened up the first Vault this is note system zero and zero is for how many notes I've added the only note in

here is the welcome note that obsidian ads for you so this is how a new Vault looks let's quickly say though we have to go to the grocery store we have to

pick up food I think this is something that most of us can relate to at some time in our lives or maybe three or four or or five times a day even we need to eat but we can't always remember when we

go to that place all the things we need to get so in note system 2 we create a grocery list we're going to take this thing with us and now we can reference

it when we're actually at the grocery store this is how it starts it starts so simple and then it gets so complex if we let it but there are ways to deal with the complexity and that's what we're

going to cover with how to add folders only when they're needed so here's another thing it's not just the grocery list I was also reading this book and I came across a cool concept I have to ask you have you ever done this have you

ever read a non-fiction book and thought whoo that can really impact my life that can change what I do for the better I want to remember that I want to hold on

to that and be able to recall it at the right time whenever I need it if so then we create a note so here's one I created a new note I gave it a long title a cool concept I heard while reading something

and in this case it's the concept antifragility A really interesting concept we're not going to spend time on it now but the point was I wanted to make sure I didn't forget this thing I wanted to have a way to remember it so I

captured that note as well now here's a question for you I have two notes should I start making 10 different folders that would be ridiculous right we'd have more folders than notes that makes no sense

at all so instead we're going to create more notes and that takes us to Vault number three note system 22 so now we have 22 notes you can see me scrolling

through them as we speak now it's getting to the point where we're feeling a little bit of tension a little bit of anxiety if we can find the right note at

the right time now this is just 22 notes but imagine it was 200 notes you would really feel that anxiety imagine it was 2,000 notes you would start to think well now it's going to take me even more time to find the thing I'm looking for

that's not a good feeling and instead I I think I might just go on YouTube or something just to avoid that my micro pain of trying to remember where I put the thing and that's where folders and

links and other things can help this video is all about folders though so this is the point where with these 22 notes let's look at them together we have things on Concepts journal entries

projects quotes simmering efforts notes from class daily notes and more now how might we organize these things I know what you're thinking Nick there's no

need for folders you only have 22 notes you are correct but let's pretend that this is going to expand this is just a tiny example but let's pretend we're dealing with 200 or 2,000 with that in

mind we are going to go through three different examples of how we might organize these 22 notes the first one is going to be our random attempts together

I hope you lean into this next Vault and really think how would I organize these 22 different notes so we'll do the random attempts then we'll look at two

of the most popular systems out there the par method and the ace framework so without further Ado let's go into the random attempts and I'm using a nice

colorful theme and if you're curious about this theme go ahead and click here open it in a new tab and then later go through that process to install this custom theme in your own obsidian I'm

calling it soft paper I really love it but now what it allows us to do is differentiate between the colorful

folders and those 22 notes below okay so first of all what about book highlights if you're watching this you're probably somebody who reads books every now and then and you might highlight or

underline or write something in the marginalia well in this case where do those type of book notes go we might call them Source notes or something and

here highlights from a book I was reading so let's go ahead and throw highlights from a book I was reading into Source notes but what about idea

and knowledge notes this is one of the trickiest places and I ask you to think how are you currently solving this some people have a folder called Atomic notes

and they put all these tiny notes into this folder that doesn't always work for me because I have notes they might be small and they're about an idea but I also have very long notes and they're

also just about an idea so Atomic note isn't quite accurate for my purposes then you have Evergreen notes this is a type of mature note with a lot of links in it we won't go into the details now

we have a folder for ideas one for knowledge one for thoughts and this weird sounding one called Umami which is that sort of hardto describe taste that's not quite bitter it's not quite

sour it's not quite salty it's not quite sweet what is it it's Umami well where can we put our ideas so let's look at some of these notes below important concept one let's look at this this is

about yin and yang where would you put y yin and yang we could look at it maybe the best spot for Yin and Yang would be Atomic notes so let's put it there and

what about this other one we have Upstream Downstream effects so that's sort of an idea I'll put it in ideas but isn't yin and yang an idea

maybe I should put that in ide but they're both sort of short notes so maybe I should put them both can you see what's happening here this is what happens when we try to folder IE idea

and knowledge notes there's no easy way to do it and this is the best example of where a folder title has to match the type of note it is and this is a

fantastic example no one talks about this but this is where you want to folder title to be as fuzzy as the type of stuff that it holds on to now if

we're dealing with projects we can have a folder title called projects if we're dealing with efforts that folder title is called efforts but when we're dealing with ideas and knowledge it's so fuzzy

and ambiguous it can fall under all sorts of categorizations I'm going to argue that you want a folder that is equally fuzzy and that's why Umami is

not so bad now later on once we get to the a framework you'll see what I personally use but that doesn't mean you have to use it all we're trying to do right now is identify the type of notes that we have below and where they might

go above now we're not going to organize all these notes right now we're going to do that once once we get into the par method and the ace framework but instead we're going to look at what's needed and

the next thing that you might need are notes on productivity these are efforts and projects that you might have so it looks like I have some notes on a

project that's due next month and I'll just throw those in efforts and projects that makes sense right and I could keep going I could find this project that's due next month I'll go ahead and throw

it in here as well so those are productivity based notes action oriented notes do you need that in what you're doing that's the question you might you

might not let's go to the next one what about study notes maybe you call them course notes maybe it's a folder called learning maybe it's a folder called training and that's where you could

think that's where I'll put world history 101 this course I'm taking for now let's just pretend it goes into course notes again as you study things as you are learning from different

online courses or um online individuals or articles or just people you encounter where do those notes go think about that do you have a spot for those notes okay

and then last what about time bound notes more and more these days in the digital age of linked notes individuals are finding the need to have a daily

note so if you have daily notes like we have a few daily notes Here well then it makes a lot of sense to put them in a folder called daily notes or maybe it's called calendar or Chron ology or

journal or something that's more time bound at this point you should be thinking those notes don't apply to me I don't take those types of notes well guess what you don't need that type of folder but if you say to yourself but

those notes do apply to me well guess what you need to figure out a folder that does work for that and that is easy to maintain and especially allows you to just close the sidebar and move on with

linking your thinking with writing with making connections and insights of your own okay now we get to transition to the next two vaults this is going to look at how the par method and the ace framework

can both organize these same exact 22 notes are you ready let's hop in oh hey and by the way if you don't just want to follow along with what I'm doing but you actually want to be Hands-On figuring

this out on your own I'm actually going to provide note system 22 and this note system 75 75 different notes all sorts of different varieties of notes and

allow you to use it as a Sandbox to see how might you organize that with your your own customized version of folders and throw in your own Notes too because you might be doing something a little bit different than the notes that are

already provided so if you'd like to download both note system 22 and note system 75 the link is in the description below good luck to you and if you do it if you actually organize email me send

me a screenshot of what you did I'm intensely curious so if you don't want to start from scratch we can look at the two most popular folder Frameworks out there which is the parame method and the ace framework what we've done so far is

we've started from scratch with zero added notes we went from two notes that we added to 22 notes and that's a pretty good number for us to start to think about how might we organize them with

folders especially when 22 becomes 2022 will we have a system that works for us so without further Ado let's jump into how we would organize this using

Thiago Forte's perah method so for those of you who don't know that stands for projects areas resources and archives so I've put a little number so they sort uh

properly now let's just go let's just go for it a cool concept I heard I'll put that in resources a list of Virtues I want to live by also resources a private

journal entry I'm going to hold off a project due next month let's put that into projects so you can see that they're starting to go into the proper folders um what else calculus

101 that could be resources areas or let me just go areas to keep us moving along you could argue that they would go into one of the other

ones daily notes I'm not quite sure let's go simmering effort an effort similar to project we can put it in projects grocery list I'm a little not

sure on that one initially let's go resources yeah a quote from Dolly llama resources highlights from a book I was

reading resources important Concepts um let's go resources let me collapse resources so we can see see the other ones notes I have for project due next month and it looks like I have a

few of those so let's go ahead and throw that into projects uh world history notes again we could argue with with where those would go so just for Speed

we'll put them in areas as well let me collapse areas okay so now we're left with a private journal and daily

notes and I'm not I I don't know where I would put these I would probably create a new folder called

calendar and throw anything time based in there um maybe the people who are watching this who use par please let me know how do you handle time based notes

daily notes like where do you put those in the parah method or do you end up adding another folder very curious just let me know in the comments below okay so that's what the par method looks like

the next one that we're going to go into is the ace framework and we'll see how it does solve for calendar and we'll see how it does with the other 22 notes so

without further Ado let's jump into Ace so Ace stands for Atlas calendar and efforts where we can organize through our three headspaces that we're most

often in one that's about thinking ideas and knowledge another one that's kind of about time based things and another that's about action-based things so

let's see how this framework does so a cool concept I heard while watching something well that sort of idea knowledge stuff goes into Atlas a list

of Virtues Atlas private journal entry calendar now we have a spot for that a project due next month efforts a quote from the dolly Lama Atlas simarine

effort efforts calculus so these sort of notes I would still throw into Atlas but you could make the argument that they're part of a an effort with an outcome like

past the semester's final test but for now let's just throw them into Atlas daily notes the great news about the daily notes we'll touch on at the very

end um grocery list yeah let's do Atlas highlights from book I was reading Atlas important Concepts

Atlas uh notes I have for the project that's due soon that's definitely efforts so now we see efforts is filling up world history we're also going to throw those into Atlas so we can see

that Atlas is a bit longer we can close that calendar okay efforts you can see is the same length as projects was calendar though now we

have a space for daily notes and what I like about Ace personally is that I don't need many folders I don't need to be thinking about folders but I know where everything goes and then I can go

ahead and collapse the sidebar so that's the beauty of Ace but again I'm not recommending Ace for you but I want you to think about about those three headspaces and how they apply for what

you're doing are you using your note system for ideas only maybe you only need the at list are you also taking daily notes well then you need a place

to put those daily notes and that might be all you need but if you're somebody who's also using your note system to manage your efforts your actions and your projects then you might want to spin up a folder like efforts and you

might notice that the ace framework has two other folders this is inbox we call it the ad folder where any new notes immediately go and we have the X that's the extra folder where any sort of

templates or images or PDFs or extras like that that are usually not normal notes that stuff can go into extras so there you go that is what the ace framework looks like how does that apply

for what you're trying to accomplish and you might notice though there's one more Vault to look like now there's not 22 notes there's 75 notes I'm just going to open it up and then give you something

that you can play with yourself so first let's check out this Vault so now that we're at 75 notes we have more types of notes not just the notes themselves but we have notes about notes

notice something else we also have a few images in here so how are you going to organize images when they come in that's another question you'll be able to answer on your own when you check out

what we've provided for you in the links below so we've covered a lot of ground so far now I want to show you what I personally do but before I do I want to show you how you can get started with one of these folder Frameworks which is

the Ace framework so we actually provide in the link below a completely free Vault called idea verse for obsidian this is the pro version of that Vault

but what you can see here is that we have the same Ace framework that we just talked about so this is completely free it's a Sandbox for you to play in to see

what works for you and in this particular sandbox there are around 500 notes and files for you to figure figure out what's going to work for you consider this a separate sandbox for you

to just move around and play in now I'm such a Believer let me just zoom in a little bit I'm such a believer in these three headspaces Atlas calendar and

efforts that that's exactly what I use across the board so if I open up my finder window you can see Atlas calendar and efforts let's close that and I want

to show you my personal and customized idea verse where I have I think over like 7,000 notes now but what you'll see is I flattened the structure of Atlas so

I have more folders and I'm encouraging absolutely nobody to do this but I like it and I made it my own I followed the advice of this video and I worked from

the bottom up over time over years and came to this formula for me this is going to be too much for 99% of the people on this call you need something

simple and you have to start from the bottom up but as you do you can see what makes you feel good what feels right so essentially what I did is I figured out

that all those knowledgy bits and idea bits and thought bits I can have as part of my Atlas and they really only fall under three different categories Dots

Dots is the great catch-all folder do you like Atomic notes do you like Evergreen notes all those notes go into dots I don't even have to think about what they are what they categorize under

it's just dots they're just little dots in the sky that I need to connect and when I connect them I'm linking my thinking that's where the magic happens now as you have a bunch of notes that's

content now we need a place for all those maps that map out the content we have in our systems so I have a folder on maps and then last there are works I like to think of these as Works in

progress these are things I'm working towards they're not really an idea note or a knowledge note and they're not really a map they're something with an intention of sharing ing so those are

the only three Atlas folders I need at the high level but I love to see them at a glance and know that they're always here just to toggle away and I can see

these folders something else I did sources used to be an atlas but I took it out to recognize that it is part of this incoming stuff so along with having an ad folder for all the new notes I'm

creating I also want a sources folder for all the new sources that I'm capturing and adding to my note system so that's at the top and then we get to calendar my calendar notes go here so if

I toggle calendar notes I'm going to be able to see all of my daily notes in Reverse chronological order so the newest are going to sort on top and boy do I love this and all the previous

years are just tucked away in a sub folder called years now something else that's really important to me is having those deeper Reflections like figuring

out where I am in life um it it's very easy to get lost so reflections planning end of year reviews all of that stuff I want to make sure that I can see those

notes those deeply personal and meaningful notes at any time so I can find more Direction in my life and to me there's no better name for something that helps you find direction than a

compass so here we have calendar compass and you can see I have a bunch of different notes in here next let's go to effort so these things that we want to do or actions we want to take projects

that we have I call these efforts and there are four levels of intensity efforts that are turned on efforts that are ongoing efforts that are simmering and efforts that are sleeping if you

want to learn more about efforts and how they beat projects when it comes to working with ideas go ahead and click on this video open it in a new tab in the meantime we're going to look at effort

notes so while efforts is only including all the efforts that I'm currently working on effort notes has all those random notes you know make sure to do this have you thought about this how it

could relate to that and how that could potentially be an important part of your effort so all the related effort notes I've actually pulled out into their own folder at the base level now you don't

have to do this if you want to use efforts you can simply tuck these effort notes inside of the efforts folder but this is my personal folder system and

last you can see X for extras so images uh notes about notes PDFs different prompts scripts all the templates and different vaults that I've added and

even further my most important notes a quick link to the note that has all my maps and a quick home note for me as well all there now let us zoom out and

look at all the different vaults that we covered can you believe where we started with no notes added and where we ended with this wacky Vault

of almost 7,000 notes and all sorts of colors and folders and all sorts of nonsense if I can say it as loudly as possible and for the people who comment

uh meanly about having too many folders don't copy me just because I'm doing it I built from the bottom up to get to

this point what you should do is start with no folders at all work from the bottom up and find your own way and if you want some help or if you at least want a little bit of a framework try out

the par method or try out the ace framework and that's going to get you half of the way there but then recognize the folders you are not using and make the system your own that's why the best

thing you can possibly do is start with no folders at all and then just work from the bottom up now again I don't like to spend time on folders but when I do I like to go all in but seriously

this is a good opportunity for you to really think about folders with a new lens with a fresh perspective to see how they work for you this video is about removing all the confusion around folder

all the unknowns so we can finally get to Clarity so you can be really confident with why you want to create a new folder or subfolder or 10 you'll know why you're doing that eliminate the

confusion increase the clarity now this video guide should get you to something that works for you but please keep in mind our needs are constantly changing we're constantly changing so your

folders can change here and there as you move on with life just be open to that this isn't set in stone it never is but hopefully again we've been able to remove confusion and replace it with Clarity and confidence when it comes to

how we want to approach folders and this version of me I'm not going anywhere this video is available to you and I encourage you to revisit it 3 months from now 6 months from now and use it as

a Cornerstone something that you're familiar with but now you're a new person and combine those two things and use that to evolve your folder needs as you evolve in life now something else

crucial that I must mention time spent organizing folders is time not spent on linking your thinking time not spent on making amazing connections between ideas

making relationships between domains and Fields that no one else has yet done or that no one else has put together in this unique formula or combination

that's where the magic is that's where the meaning comes from and that's how we create value for ourselves but also for others so even though this video is all about folders remember we need to close

that folder sidebar anyways to focus on the notes the words the ideas and the links so this is the only way to organize your folders in obsidian but

this isn't the way if it's not your way it has to be your way and I hope this video helped you get a little bit closer to finding your way hey and by the way if you're new here my name is Nick Milo and this is my channel linking your

thinking where we talk about the how and why of making meaningful notes if you haven't already it would mean a lot to me if you could go ahead and like the this video and even maybe subscribe if you're getting value out of it it goes a

long way to making this video discoverable to people like you and me who might just be one step behind or maybe just haven't found it yet and you can be the person that helps them find

this video and maybe finally solve the folder problem for themselves all you have to do is like and if you really like to you can even subscribe okay we need to close that left- hand side barar and move on from folders and this next

video is the exact way to make sure you do we're going to eliminate distractions in obsidian and get your best work done I'll see you there now