Similar to my advice about why you should choose Obsidian over other notes apps, I wanted to give some insight into developing your own system of working in this software. This is because for a long time I was confused and ineffective when it came to creating an environment that allowed me to work with impact. I kept trying complicated new methods, new plugins, new file structures, all inspired by wanting to copy other people’s workflows. This article is for anyone who feels that they haven’t quite been getting on with their productivity — it will explain the importance of developing your own system for work. It will then give some of my best advice for how to do this.
Why develop your own productivity system?
It comes down to it making you more effective at producing the work that you need to. Whatever you use Obsidian for, whether it’s PKM, project management, research or something else, I’ll guarantee that there isn’t a single other Obsidian user out there that will share the exact same use case. This begs the question — why should you copy other people’s setups for your own work then? Developing a setup within Obsidian that is personal to you will help your productivity by using bespoke workflows that are tailored exactly to the work that you want to produce. Nobody else knows exactly how this work should be, so you are the only person for the job when it comes to deciding how you should run things.
Does this mean you should avoid vault inspiration and teaching altogether? Not at all, but considering this reason, I advise that you take all setup inspiration with a pinch of salt. I understand that being able to produce a fully-fledged work environment in Obsidian might be difficult for someone who is just starting to use the software and I believe that the tutorials available online are the best way to get up and running quickly. I would advise you to take things slowly though, integrating new ideas for more effective work into your vault slowly as you gain more confidence. I will go into further detail about this minimalist approach later in the article.
How to develop your own Obsidian system
Again, this links back to you creating something that is conducive to doing work characterised by your use case. You must think about what you want to get from working in your system — what your goals are and what you must output to achieve these goals. Because of this I can’t be more than vague about the actual steps you should take and plugins you should research. Having said this, you are going to learn more and become more capable from the experience of having researched and experimented for yourself, rather than having the solution handed to you on a plate.
If you want your Obsidian to serve multiple different use cases then you should prioritise the one that’s going to provide you with the most value if you optimise it correctly. For me, I put the most intention into creating an effective system that juggled writing my own content and learning university content. Other different uses that aren’t as important should be disregarded for now, until your system suitably supports creating work related to your most important functions.
Taking inspiration from other systems
You can take inspiration from others’ systems so long as you don’t blindly copy what they’re doing without consideration as to how it’s going to impact your own productivity. There are brilliant vault walkthroughs across the internet and I have a lot of respect for the creators that put in effort to share their wisdom with everyone. The best way to take values from these is to perhaps cherry-pick one or two ideas from the entire system — perhaps a plugin or keyboard shortcut. There should be no doubt that what you are integrating is going to benefit your work output.
The best people to gain inspiration from are the ones that share a similar use case to you. I emphasise similar here, because I have made it clear that nobody shares the exact use case you have. Despite this, those with similar use cases are likely going to have more to share that is relevant to your own priorities. If you want to explore in more detail, you can split your system into different use cases and investigate inspirations based on each separate component of the system. Before doing this though, make sure that you have a base system worked out that enables you to work on the most important things that need to be produced.
Follow Digital Minimalism
It’s sensible to keep your system as minimal as possible, because in my own experience, I’ve found that sometimes you overestimate the importance of a new feature that you want to add (recency bias perhaps?). It takes barely any tinkering with Obsidian out of the box before you can use it as a satisfactory markdown file editor that conforms to a file structure that you’ve established. If you wanted to be really extreme, you could argue that anything added on top of this is superficial and has the potential to clog the system down.
The principles of digital minimalism don’t suggest that you should avoid extending your system, but they do say that you should approach every introduction with the intent to incorporate it only if the incorporation provides undoubtable benefit. Be ruthlessly strict — in my experience I only begin to use regularly perhaps 40-50% of the tools that I try out, and I have a very high standard for changes to my system as it is. You should really aim for as much simplicity as possible. For example, it’s not important whether your folders have unique icons or not, but it might improve you life if you make some templates for notes that you end up writing again and again. Over a long period of time, your system will evolve and improve as you take on more complexity and nuances in different uses in your work.
Conclusion
I wrote this article to clear up my stance on using others’ systems for inspiration when it comes to building your own system. This article acts as a sort of disclaimer in a way, because I’m planning on releasing further articles that go into more detail about my workflows in Obsidian, from folder structure and organisation to workflow for writing articles and notes. If you do end up reading these pieces in the future, bear in mind that my use case is different to yours — only take ideas from me if you think they’ll improve your own use of Obsidian, and please don’t just copy — it doesn’t help that much!