I loved your shortcut to use Telescope to search in your second brain directory! I'll definitely be implementing that in my own :D. Also the idea of having commands especially for a review session is cool - I don't think I've seen anything like that before!
yeah after finding his bin files of on and og i was like how cool it is that he automated his notes structure and could easliy transfer his notes according to the tags
if someone held a gun to my head and told me to explain what exactly was happening in this video, I would be dead. Cool concepts tho, seems like a cool productivity boost!
Yeah, he's going way too fast for this video to be of use to anyone. Just a convoluted mess and "look how complex my workflow that nobody else can understand is".
oh man, I've been looking for exactly this! I've been using emacs org-mode in terminal mode and "kind of " faking like it's working with nvim but being able to interface with obsidian in neovim?! That's amazing. Looks like I'll be wasting hours on an overhaul!
@@ZazenCodes I am on android, using termux I setup a cronjob to pull to the phone every 5 minutes, and then use lazygit to push/pull changes, super seamless and quick!
That’s wicked. I use lazygit as well and I love it. I feel like icloud might be causing me some latency issues with file searching- but I can’t tell. I might try this
@@ZazenCodes Question for you, when I use the template for note with the date/tags/hubs/urls, and hit save, it auto formats to "it/aliases/tags" - did you have this issue?
Thank you for your great work!! I happened to find out that the markdown text preview in your finder are quite amazing, wondering how you setup for that preview. Thank you very much!
Very interesting and smooth workflow! Did you use Obsidian to create the diagram at 4:28? If so, that'd be awesome. How do you handle "visual notes" within your workflow?
This is quite amazing, what happens if you need to add more than one tag into the same note? How is it then organized when you run the script? Same note copied in multiple folders?
Thanks. No I dont support that. I just pick the best tag and try to make sure there is no overlap. I use the hubs like tags in that sense -where I can add multiple per note
This is one of the most valuable videos on obsidian nvim. I was wondering wondering what happens with your script when I add two tags. Lets say I want to create a tag with 'meeting-minutes" and also another one for "customer-a". Would it move the one of these folders as it can't be moved to both. How would you structure this? I was maybe thinking about using just the customer-a tag and then use dataview to make a list for all 'meeting-minutes' files.
Thanks! So - the script only supports one tag per file and categorizes into a folder with that name. I use “hubs” to attach multiple labels to files. So you could add the customer id as a hub like I use them. You could also add a new frontmatter field that is customer id and then put the value as the customer id value. That would work nicely with dataview. What you definitely dont want to do is duplicate files
Awesome setup bro! While watching your video basically made my own. Main feature/difference of mine is: my script automatically calls OpenAI API to summarize a note to create a title and classifies it to one of the projects I am working on and adds is as a tag. Wanted to ask your opinion, do you think it's better to organize inbox every time on your own or to automatically put notes to corresponding folders based on tags from OpenAI? I like the simplicity/speed of handling it by OpenAI, but on the other hand there is sense in doing it by hand. Other thing I often use notes for is my todo lists for the day. Wonder if you ever did it and what's your wisdom/workflow 😅
Todo list- often plain text file or handwritten note on my desk. Anything over 1 day in some project management tool. For your notes, doing it manually might be nice as way to review the notes (like my review workflow) but the actual work of putting them into the folders would be nice to automate. Super cool you recruited the LLM into this process for yourself
@@ZazenCodes I might be weird folk which forgets what I was doing like 5 minutes ago but I need daily todo list. Right now I'm solving it with one text file in my notes folder with a list and bullets.vim. I wounder is there a better way to do todos with something like a queue like structure and some hotkeys. But anyways, thanks for the reply and the video, great content!
@@makkusu3866 bunch of ideas for this: you might like to look into the quick note plugin for obsidian (maybe you'll want to use it / custom create something similar for yourself - perhaps using a command like echo to append todo items). Also, I like to use daily notes (in a "_daily" directory) for daily to-do lists and reflections, which might be something to look into if you haven't already. This has the added benefit of being able to add tasks to future-date notes and tracking the things you do every day (if you're into that). Also, in the obsidian app, you can set it to automatically create a daily note from a template and open it when you open the app. This would probably a bit more complicated to implement in vim/neovim but I think doable using autocmd?
@@v0id_d3m0n Great advise, thank you. Tried org mode plugin for neovim, I don't think its any better than just todo file so gonna look into daily notes
This is exactly the configuration I've been looking for, thank you! One question, just out of curiosity: why do you bother putting the date in the filenames? That data is already duplicated in both the Obsidian metadata and the actual metadata of the file itself. Have you found some specific benefit to adding it in the filename as well, or is it just a habit?
Nice one sir. Thanks for sharing. Personally I find the `oo` inside nvim more useful, not sure why you need to remove it :D i.e if you're already inside vim and wants to copy a snippets, why not 1. do `oo` to search, open and yank, (or open on vim split, instead of tmux) 3. switch back to previous buffer and paste
So for me I just found I wasn’t using it. Since I really like the tmux workflow of popping open a new pane, then I’m already out of vim to start with. But if it’s helpful for you then I’m happy to have shared it!
One question - what happens when you want to have more than one tag on a file? Your automation will then create copies of the same file for multiple tags?
Awesome content! I just ordered my own moonlander after watching your videos about it. I checked if you had an affiliate link to buy it that way, but it doesn't seem like ZSA has a system for that. I will try to implement this in my workflow, but there are soo many commands in vim already that it'll be quite a while before i will feel comfortable using them.
I was waiting for this video all week. You have a good workflow. I would also highly encourage you to attend some of Nick Milos workshops. It will take your note making to the next level :)
Hey, I love this setup - thanks for making this video, you've definitely gained a sub! I've tried to emulate your setup but one thing that is not working for me is that when I create a new note with the 'on' command I am not able to autocomplete on hubs or reference any other files. Logically I thought if I bash the oo in neovim then it would put me in the right root path and I would able to find the references, sadly this doesn't work (telescope does, however). If I exit neovim then reopen it and go back to the note then completions/ references work again. Very strange - don't suppose you've run into this have you? If so, did you find a fix?
I’ve run into this as well. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. I bet it’s a bug with the neovim obsidian library. You could consider submitting an issue on GitHub for the project, and maybe someone would have a solution. One thing I had to do recently was remove images in my notes from git- this helped speed up my telescope search, which was timing out attempting to search over binary data in images, and purging those from the git repo helped, and since then I think the issue you described has also been a bit better for me . However this might not be related
I'm still looking into obsidian and I'm sorry but the only thing I got from this is - use a text file and a good file system, nothing on why obsidian should be part of my note taking process. You read your notes in vim, you reference your notes in vim, you review your notes in vim, you basically only used obsidian as a markdown reader - at least in the context of this video. I know this video is about you showing your note taking workflow and not an advertisement for obsidian but I watched your video as reference on actual use cases with obsidian and so far, I don't think I would be using obsidian yet. The actual workflow seems good though and gave me some ideas for my own personal workflow.
I noticed you have 2 organisational methods, "knowledge hubs" and "tags". I am very new to ZettelKasten (literally learnt the word from this video) and how to use it and my understanding is that you do not create categories from the "top-down" but create tags and links and see how and where your notes congregate and link up to each other naturally (from the "bottom-up"). Could you elaborate on why you organise in this way? I do DevOps in my work, so I am imagining having a broader "DevOps" category and then smaller categories for "Kubernetes", "Istio", "CI/CD", "Jenkins", etc. and then there can be smaller subdivisions within these categories, for example resource monitoring and allocation, and of course tags for "facts", "code-snip", "troubleshooting", "useful commands", etc. Are there any resources you'd recommend for devising good tags + categories?
I think finding what works for you will be a bit of a journey- I would suggest starting simple with as little hierarchical organization as possible. The thing I decided on was folders for the type of note- book note, code snippet, cheat sheet, fact (random note), etc.. and use “hub links” (tags in obsidian)for the topic- like machine learning, python, Linux, etc..
the "physical" part its kinda secundary (by that i mean how do you organize your folders and documents on your pc) its more important what info do you put into your notes, (like tags and links to other documents) and the program does the rest for you based on your tags and links
The main issue with using folders as categories tends to be that you get dilemmas of which folder to put it in. The emphasis on links is especially important in obsidian because of the app's graph feature, which visualises links between notes. A lot of people also use tags to signify the "stage" of a note (from seedling to fully-grown). Honestly I think the best way to get info on this is seeing other people's examples (by UA-cam searching "obsidian linking system" or "tag system" or "organisation system" or "tags vs links" etc.
I use them for fundamentally different things. Tags are very versatile and I can use them to mark topics. Hubs I think of as folders. Its a forced hierarchy, which is generally against the idea of zettelkasten. However I find a light organization touch helpful.
@@ZazenCodes I understand that makes sense, but im thinking ahead if I ever want to look up a snippet in golang for example, how would you search for that specific snippet ?
I'm looking for note taking system that alternative my notion and I saw your video. That so insprite me, but my could you share more about the your file management, what it is, how it work, pls. Thank you so much
Glad you liked it! I use both obsidian and notion right now. Notion syncs more reliably across all my devices and I can access it from the web if I want. But I don’t use it for code. I’m not sure what you mean by file management. I just leave the files at they are after running my workflow. They sync to iCloud and I can also commit them to git
@@ZazenCodes I mean I would like to know your file sturcture. What mean of each folder ? Ex: what folder assets do ? what folder notes/facts do ? Thank you so much for reply me.
What I do is categorize my notes based on the types like book, video, code snippet, etc.. and if it doesn’t fit then my generic topic is “fact”. I don’t feel comfortable tossing my book notes right in with all these random little fact notes because a book note for me is much more valuable. So that’s why I created a separate folder for it. Another good example is my cheat-sheet folder where I put stuff I can reference later such as a vim commands cheat sheet for example
I have been stuck for days on trying to make this work :((( for some reason when I open my obsidian vault in vim, it doesn't recognize any of my markdowns or my tags or anything, I don't get any autocompletion at all. Did anyone face this issue too??
So that you can create your own documentation and reference specific actions/functions/commands instead of relying on Google and wasting time clicking through ads, popups and the time you waste searching for what you know you need
one of the most underrated video of youtube.
gr8 way to stay organized... def a life hack
I loved your shortcut to use Telescope to search in your second brain directory! I'll definitely be implementing that in my own :D. Also the idea of having commands especially for a review session is cool - I don't think I've seen anything like that before!
yeah after finding his bin files of on and og i was like how cool it is that he automated his notes structure and could easliy transfer his notes according to the tags
I enjoy your system and will "steal" these code snippets for my personal needs! God bless you and your family
Thank you!
if someone held a gun to my head and told me to explain what exactly was happening in this video, I would be dead.
Cool concepts tho, seems like a cool productivity boost!
Yeah, he's going way too fast for this video to be of use to anyone. Just a convoluted mess and "look how complex my workflow that nobody else can understand is".
This is actually awesome, I'm gonna try replicating something like this really neat and functional
Nice, I’m glad I inspired you
Some great idaes shown. You could use tmux to pop a float that prompts you to enter a new name if you dont provide one as cli argument.
oh man, I've been looking for exactly this! I've been using emacs org-mode in terminal mode and "kind of " faking like it's working with nvim but being able to interface with obsidian in neovim?! That's amazing. Looks like I'll be wasting hours on an overhaul!
lol. I hope you enjoy it. The obsidian nvim plugin is what makes this possible, it’s great
yep. sometimes zettelkasten feels like endless overhauls😅
Thank you for making this video. We, nvim users, gotta go fast, and aint no way we're not using Obsidian. Life's too short to *not* go *FAST*.
Really solid video man, I just started using obsidian and nvim with a git integration for syncing to my phone/computer and it's super comfy
Thankya. So you use git to sync? Are you on android?
@@ZazenCodes I am on android, using termux I setup a cronjob to pull to the phone every 5 minutes, and then use lazygit to push/pull changes, super seamless and quick!
That’s wicked. I use lazygit as well and I love it. I feel like icloud might be causing me some latency issues with file searching- but I can’t tell. I might try this
@@ZazenCodes Question for you, when I use the template for note with the date/tags/hubs/urls, and hit save, it auto formats to "it/aliases/tags" - did you have this issue?
It was the frontmatter setting, fixed it!
A really helpful video. Kudos!
Thank you for your great work!! I happened to find out that the markdown text preview in your finder are quite amazing, wondering how you setup for that preview. Thank you very much!
Very interesting and smooth workflow! Did you use Obsidian to create the diagram at 4:28? If so, that'd be awesome. How do you handle "visual notes" within your workflow?
Thanks! I just used some online tool. The obsidian mind map feature is incredible though
This is so cool. Love both tmux and vim, but haven't delved into Obsidian just yet. Though, not very knowleable in scripting/programming 😅
Are you going to try it out?
You dont need to program to use obsidian, its a glorified notepad, and i dont mean that in a bad way, its a great program, Its very easy to use.
i am diagnosed brain dead at 0:30
I feel like a thief for having acces to such information. Thank you.
Like Robin Hood, I hope
This is quite amazing, what happens if you need to add more than one tag into the same note? How is it then organized when you run the script? Same note copied in multiple folders?
Thanks. No I dont support that. I just pick the best tag and try to make sure there is no overlap. I use the hubs like tags in that sense -where I can add multiple per note
impressive setup, very nice. lets see paul allen's
This is one of the most valuable videos on obsidian nvim. I was wondering wondering what happens with your script when I add two tags. Lets say I want to create a tag with 'meeting-minutes" and also another one for "customer-a". Would it move the one of these folders as it can't be moved to both. How would you structure this? I was maybe thinking about using just the customer-a tag and then use dataview to make a list for all 'meeting-minutes' files.
Thanks! So - the script only supports one tag per file and categorizes into a folder with that name. I use “hubs” to attach multiple labels to files. So you could add the customer id as a hub like I use them. You could also add a new frontmatter field that is customer id and then put the value as the customer id value. That would work nicely with dataview. What you definitely dont want to do is duplicate files
Awesome setup bro! While watching your video basically made my own. Main feature/difference of mine is: my script automatically calls OpenAI API to summarize a note to create a title and classifies it to one of the projects I am working on and adds is as a tag. Wanted to ask your opinion, do you think it's better to organize inbox every time on your own or to automatically put notes to corresponding folders based on tags from OpenAI? I like the simplicity/speed of handling it by OpenAI, but on the other hand there is sense in doing it by hand.
Other thing I often use notes for is my todo lists for the day. Wonder if you ever did it and what's your wisdom/workflow 😅
Todo list- often plain text file or handwritten note on my desk. Anything over 1 day in some project management tool.
For your notes, doing it manually might be nice as way to review the notes (like my review workflow) but the actual work of putting them into the folders would be nice to automate.
Super cool you recruited the LLM into this process for yourself
@@ZazenCodes I might be weird folk which forgets what I was doing like 5 minutes ago but I need daily todo list. Right now I'm solving it with one text file in my notes folder with a list and bullets.vim. I wounder is there a better way to do todos with something like a queue like structure and some hotkeys.
But anyways, thanks for the reply and the video, great content!
@@makkusu3866 bunch of ideas for this:
you might like to look into the quick note plugin for obsidian (maybe you'll want to use it / custom create something similar for yourself - perhaps using a command like echo to append todo items). Also, I like to use daily notes (in a "_daily" directory) for daily to-do lists and reflections, which might be something to look into if you haven't already. This has the added benefit of being able to add tasks to future-date notes and tracking the things you do every day (if you're into that). Also, in the obsidian app, you can set it to automatically create a daily note from a template and open it when you open the app. This would probably a bit more complicated to implement in vim/neovim but I think doable using autocmd?
@@v0id_d3m0n Great advise, thank you. Tried org mode plugin for neovim, I don't think its any better than just todo file so gonna look into daily notes
This is exactly the configuration I've been looking for, thank you! One question, just out of curiosity: why do you bother putting the date in the filenames? That data is already duplicated in both the Obsidian metadata and the actual metadata of the file itself. Have you found some specific benefit to adding it in the filename as well, or is it just a habit?
Glad you like it. The date is in the name so I can sort the files
Nice one sir. Thanks for sharing.
Personally I find the `oo` inside nvim more useful, not sure why you need to remove it :D
i.e if you're already inside vim and wants to copy a snippets,
why not
1. do `oo` to search, open and yank, (or open on vim split, instead of tmux)
3. switch back to previous buffer and paste
So for me I just found I wasn’t using it. Since I really like the tmux workflow of popping open a new pane, then I’m already out of vim to start with. But if it’s helpful for you then I’m happy to have shared it!
One question - what happens when you want to have more than one tag on a file? Your automation will then create copies of the same file for multiple tags?
The system doesn’t support that use pattern. Duplicate notes don’t make sense, to me anyway
Awesome content! I just ordered my own moonlander after watching your videos about it. I checked if you had an affiliate link to buy it that way, but it doesn't seem like ZSA has a system for that. I will try to implement this in my workflow, but there are soo many commands in vim already that it'll be quite a while before i will feel comfortable using them.
Thank you! This was such a wonderful comment to read. I hope you enjoy your keyboard
I was waiting for this video all week. You have a good workflow. I would also highly encourage you to attend some of Nick Milos workshops. It will take your note making to the next level :)
I'm so happy to hear that! Thank you. Looks like Nick has as lot of content on youtube I can check out for now
Hey, I love this setup - thanks for making this video, you've definitely gained a sub! I've tried to emulate your setup but one thing that is not working for me is that when I create a new note with the 'on' command I am not able to autocomplete on hubs or reference any other files. Logically I thought if I bash the oo in neovim then it would put me in the right root path and I would able to find the references, sadly this doesn't work (telescope does, however). If I exit neovim then reopen it and go back to the note then completions/ references work again. Very strange - don't suppose you've run into this have you? If so, did you find a fix?
I’ve run into this as well. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. I bet it’s a bug with the neovim obsidian library. You could consider submitting an issue on GitHub for the project, and maybe someone would have a solution.
One thing I had to do recently was remove images in my notes from git- this helped speed up my telescope search, which was timing out attempting to search over binary data in images, and purging those from the git repo helped, and since then I think the issue you described has also been a bit better for me . However this might not be related
To be clear, I only removed the image files themselves from the git repo, but they are still on my file system (and backed up to cloud- I use icloud)
you have not added your obsidian templates could you please do it ?
Epic
I'm still looking into obsidian and I'm sorry but the only thing I got from this is - use a text file and a good file system, nothing on why obsidian should be part of my note taking process.
You read your notes in vim, you reference your notes in vim, you review your notes in vim, you basically only used obsidian as a markdown reader - at least in the context of this video.
I know this video is about you showing your note taking workflow and not an advertisement for obsidian but I watched your video as reference on actual use cases with obsidian and so far, I don't think I would be using obsidian yet.
The actual workflow seems good though and gave me some ideas for my own personal workflow.
Thanks for sharing. You said you teach full stack? What is your stack?
Python, docker, bigquery, Postgres, gcp.. I’ve got videos on this and other stuff
@@ZazenCodes Cool. Never heard of bigquery or gcp before. You definitely earned a sub from me, and I'll check out your other videos on your stack.
Very cool, I have a few automations that can be tied together with this inspiration. cheers and subscribed ;)
Glad to hear it. Thanks!
I noticed you have 2 organisational methods, "knowledge hubs" and "tags".
I am very new to ZettelKasten (literally learnt the word from this video) and how to use it and my understanding is that you do not create categories from the "top-down" but create tags and links and see how and where your notes congregate and link up to each other naturally (from the "bottom-up").
Could you elaborate on why you organise in this way?
I do DevOps in my work, so I am imagining having a broader "DevOps" category and then smaller categories for "Kubernetes", "Istio", "CI/CD", "Jenkins", etc. and then there can be smaller subdivisions within these categories, for example resource monitoring and allocation, and of course tags for "facts", "code-snip", "troubleshooting", "useful commands", etc.
Are there any resources you'd recommend for devising good tags + categories?
I think finding what works for you will be a bit of a journey- I would suggest starting simple with as little hierarchical organization as possible. The thing I decided on was folders for the type of note- book note, code snippet, cheat sheet, fact (random note), etc.. and use “hub links” (tags in obsidian)for the topic- like machine learning, python, Linux, etc..
In short- I think you’re on point with the bottom-up idea
the "physical" part its kinda secundary (by that i mean how do you organize your folders and documents on your pc) its more important what info do you put into your notes, (like tags and links to other documents) and the program does the rest for you based on your tags and links
The main issue with using folders as categories tends to be that you get dilemmas of which folder to put it in.
The emphasis on links is especially important in obsidian because of the app's graph feature, which visualises links between notes.
A lot of people also use tags to signify the "stage" of a note (from seedling to fully-grown). Honestly I think the best way to get info on this is seeing other people's examples (by UA-cam searching "obsidian linking system" or "tag system" or "organisation system" or "tags vs links" etc.
you rock!
this is dope, i'm lifting
lift it!
it has been lifted
Quick question, wouldn't be easier to use tags instead of having to make files for hubs? What is the benifits of using hubs
I use them for fundamentally different things. Tags are very versatile and I can use them to mark topics. Hubs I think of as folders. Its a forced hierarchy, which is generally against the idea of zettelkasten. However I find a light organization touch helpful.
@@ZazenCodes I understand that makes sense, but im thinking ahead if I ever want to look up a snippet in golang for example, how would you search for that specific snippet ?
@@ZazenCodes But don't you create your folders based off your tags? Doesn't that make hubs redundant?
really cool, thanks!
For some Reason "leader + of" doenst work for me unfortunately. Error message is: couldn"t find file in path. :-(
I'm looking for note taking system that alternative my notion and I saw your video. That so insprite me, but my could you share more about the your file management, what it is, how it work, pls. Thank you so much
Glad you liked it! I use both obsidian and notion right now. Notion syncs more reliably across all my devices and I can access it from the web if I want. But I don’t use it for code.
I’m not sure what you mean by file management. I just leave the files at they are after running my workflow. They sync to iCloud and I can also commit them to git
@@ZazenCodes I mean I would like to know your file sturcture. What mean of each folder ? Ex: what folder assets do ? what folder notes/facts do ? Thank you so much for reply me.
What I do is categorize my notes based on the types like book, video, code snippet, etc.. and if it doesn’t fit then my generic topic is “fact”. I don’t feel comfortable tossing my book notes right in with all these random little fact notes because a book note for me is much more valuable. So that’s why I created a separate folder for it. Another good example is my cheat-sheet folder where I put stuff I can reference later such as a vim commands cheat sheet for example
can note have more than one tag ?
quality content, good job 👍 subscribed 🔔
😊
How did you get the colored folders?
Color themes and icons- check out my neovim config in my dotfiles repo on github. I also have a video on my setup
Brother can you please make a video on cpp
Hey man could i get your default template? any github repo?
github.com/agalea91/ZazenCodes-obsidian/blob/main/templates/note.md
Thats the link, if UA-cam lets you click it
I have been stuck for days on trying to make this work :((( for some reason when I open my obsidian vault in vim, it doesn't recognize any of my markdowns or my tags or anything, I don't get any autocompletion at all. Did anyone face this issue too??
Yeah I struggled with this. Make sure you define your vault path in your lua config for obsidian nvim plugin
7:01 ThePrimeagen mentioned
Legend
Why would you save code snippets into your note taking? This feels like a glorified code copy machine?
So that you can create your own documentation and reference specific actions/functions/commands instead of relying on Google and wasting time clicking through ads, popups and the time you waste searching for what you know you need
keyboard noise annoying af
lol not a fan of mechanical keyboards i see lol
OMG, so much typing when a single web-grabber hotkey activation would do :)))
What can I say- I like to type 😊