How I take notes

I’ve been using Obsidian as my primary note-taking environment for a few years now. This is an attempt to document what I actually do, partly for anyone curious, partly to force myself to be honest about what’s working.

The core idea

Every note is either a reference (something external I’m capturing) or a thought (something I’m developing). References link to thoughts. Thoughts link to each other. Over time the graph either reveals something or it doesn’t; both outcomes are informative.

I don’t worry much about the hierarchy of folders. The structure that matters is in the links.

What I actually track

• Papers and books, with highlights and my reaction
• Observations from clinic, anonymized and focused on the system rather than the patient
• Research ideas, half-formed and otherwise
• Meeting notes, mostly as a forcing function to listen better

What I’ve stopped doing

Keeping notes I never look at. For a while I was very diligent about capturing everything. Now I’m more selective. A note that I’ll never revisit is just noise: it creates the feeling of knowing something without the substance.

The test I use: would I want to find this in a search six months from now? If not, it probably doesn’t need to exist.

The honest part

The system breaks down regularly. There are weeks where I capture nothing, and weeks where I capture everything but connect nothing. I’ve stopped trying to maintain perfect hygiene and started treating the notes more like a garden: some parts are tended, some are overgrown, and that’s fine.

The goal isn’t a perfect system. It’s having a place to think.