Want to get your hands on my Obsidian templates, Custom CSS, and Mermaid Diagram code? 👉🏻️bryanjenkstech.ck.page/d4ec0713d5 00:00 Welcome 00:13 Intro 00:23 What we're talking about today 00:56 github.com/BryanJenksCommunity/FAQ/discussions 01:32 Context and background 01:40 ua-cam.com/channels/85D7ERwhke7wVqskV_DZUA.html 02:11 Why and How are links and tags different in Obsidian 02:52 The reason i use tags as indicators of status 03:14 tags are soft links 03:45 Graph view filtering based on status 04:51 Hard Links link files together 06:05 Commonly referenced tags getting promoted to MOC 07:27 Seeing the emerging structure of the vault 07:46 Avoiding front loaded heirarchical structuring 08:21 Dealing with a top level organization 09:43 Tag notes that exist but are not yet MOCs 11:37 Traversing the linked MOCs 12:19 Seeing your web of MOCs 14:24 bryanjenkstech.ck.page/d4ec0713d5 14:54 This practice is critical to managing a top level pool of notes 16:18 Define your structure as you go not front loaded 19:07 Wrapping up 20:01 Outro
Hi Bryan! Really useful approach for seeing what structure emerges through links. How do we acces the templates and all the obsidian goodies? I've subscribed to the newsletter but didn't receive them
@@learnfromany4064 depending on which newsletter sign up you may not have gotten them. send me a DM on discord and ill hook you up :) discord.gg/MxCVshN
I like the workflow process of watching your "uncreated node" tags to see where your interest is clustering, and then promoting that node to being a "topic" in your MOC. Especially as an alternative to forcing a top-down hierarchy. Thanks for sharing!
I love the rigor of your thought process, your generosity in providing it, and your compassion in underlining that each person’s path is unique. Thanks!
@@BryanJenks Bryan, this is old but if you see this it would help a lot. What if I use tags instead of links to files that don't exist, and then if a tag node becomes big how would I turn it into a MOC file? Guess there is no way to do that. I'm new to Obsidian and still can't feel comfortable with non-existant links. It just feels like I would want to click it expecting that file to have a MOC like content.
First time viewer... The distinction between your "Second Brain" and your Zettelkasten is spot-on. My primary vault is my "Universal Notebook" and my zettelkasten is a subset of that. Using Nick Milo's MOC approach for organic structure makes the whole thing possible.
most of my ZK is denoted with 4 status tags, everything else is MOC's or other notes like for school or my daily notes. #🌱️ seedling ideas #🌞️ incubating ideas #🌲️ evergreen notes #📥️ inputs
@@BryanJenks im looking for full list of what you mentioned in 4:00 . Can you list all of them, because they don't have name in video and i dont know in which video i can find them. Thanks
i've been watching obsidian videos and this is the first one where it finally clicked with me. Everyone's examples are turning books they read into content. I work in STEM and your examples with MOCs for an information data not just interpretation of content is perfect...Thank you!!
1:40 Nick Milo definitely popularized the term _MoC_ in the Obsidian Community. However, he said that he took the term from a book called "How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think" by Lion Kimbro. I've skimmed over it; it's a chaotic read with lots of interesting ideas.
after i filmed this video like 5 weeks ago i did see him post/talk about that, too late to edit that now lol but thanks for the link! I'll check that out
Hey Bryan, this is great! This "system" features the Zettelkasten-Principle that order and structure is a bottom-up-process and not a top-down-hierarchy. Very inspiring! Thanks!
I agree that having to "decide" which category an information falls when we have information which relate to multiple disciplines is a pain which suffocates the productivity. Thank you for this video. 😊
Advice for for next vídeo: write down every single word you want to say, then copy it into perplexity, say it to make it shorter and clearer, and then read the results. I have a headache because of your bad form of explanation. Too vague, too disordered.
Thank you for making this video. It really gave me another perspective as to how to create a space that I like best for the way I like to work. You are doing an amazing job! You got my support in patreon :D
One issue I have with the Moc approach is that it leads to nodes that don't need to be articles. For example, I do link the name of my partner in my diaries regularly. This has led to an article the only purpose of which is managing those references. There's no information I would want to put in there that I don't have readily available unless I suffer general amnesia. In other words: the only purpose of that node is to act as a tag. Now, in my graph view, It still stands out as a huge note that seems to scream "create an article here" at me, even though I don't want to because I'm not going to write a dossier about my partner just because I want to fill in a note file in Obsidian. The only solution here seems to be to actually work with tags - or is there another way to go about this?
What's really cool about this system is that you can use `aliases` to mask a tag's "note" under several different names using YAML frontmatter: --- aliases: ["cuisine", "sustenance"] --- # Food Now if you try to tag [[cuisine]] instead of [[food]], it'll catch it. Now, of course, tags are still imperfect, but you can help alleviate the fragmented "tag hell" with aliases.
Hey Bryan! Your pic in the thumbnail is literally me when I watch your obsidian tutorials haha... it's complex but you make it easily understandable! thanks ..Have a good day/night!
This was really interesting! As someone who is new to Zettelkasten, I would love to see your flow of how you capture something and then put it in your system.
Interesting use of 'tags' as status and empty pages as "#tags" as links, creating space for more refinement, etcr One thing that has always erred is the 'tagging'/'linking' where Byran Jenks doesn't equal Jenks Byran... ... so building the tags library - and where these are more often short phrases, there is a need to periodically check to ensure limited duplication via different phrasing, etc., so links between different content creators' works in their notes (who use different terminology)... ... what have you got there?
Thanks for sharing! What are the physics settings on your graph that lets these clusters emerge? My maps are still fairly uniformly messy, perhaps that's because I don't have large enough of node/network hubs yet?
At 11:17, #🗺 is prepended with the word Tags. How come it's not prepended with the word Status? It looksl ike the rules might be: - A "note" has one Status (a soft link, eg evergreen note), many Tags (which are hard links to related ideas), and no Links. - A "MOC" has one Tags (a soft link, which should always be #🗺), one Links (a hard links that go back up the tree), and no "Status". In this case, for a MOC, Tags is the same thing as Status on a note, and the Tags concept from a note just doesn't exist for a MOC, as the only hard link in the header goes up the tree. Does that sound right, or am I missing something here?
Great video on using tags and building up knowledge. Can you share your method for assigning the emoji tags to notes? Noticed you had a popup dropdown menu of your tags to select from. Is this a javascript dropdown menu that you select items based on each item having a hotkey?
i use an alfred workflow call emoji taco (macOS only app) on windows you can use META+. o open an emoji window and there's also an emoji plugin for obsidian as well
there are some distinct differences, such as a note connecting to multiple MOC's without duplication for one, how do i file one thing into 2 folders without duplication? there is no need for any folders or filing only linkages which is a massive reduction of work as there is no filing to do.
@@BryanJenks filing is not work. if you tag something a lot, make a note for it. delete the tags, put everything related in the note, done - you have a comprehensive manual for a topic. markdown is great dor structuring it. if a thing only comes up once, dont tag it. it will be easy to find. if a note connects to multiple mocs, in a way that suggests it is equally important to those multiple mocs, it is not specific or atomic enough. also, you can still link from one note to another, in another folder. this is why i say it is just folders with extra steps. creating a moc, typing all those links and making it pretty, when i can just use a folder and put everything in is a lot more work. just to have some pretty graph view - which has no use case except for looking pretty.
I don't see any valid reason why you're treating status names and MOC names differently. Just use hashtags for all of them, and treat all as tags. Once any particular MOC name becomes apparent with a lot of links on the map, then you could always create a MOC as a separate md file for that. You can even use #status/evergreen, etc.
true, but unlike Roam, tags and links are treated differently in obsidian. To leverage the links in obsidian so that i can simply create the note from the node that has many connections is much easier than to take everything #tagged with something and then connect them all to a note. one the note is created it already has links to everything that referenced it and then i can even rename it and the name will update everywhere. There's intention behind my workflow
I saw a good way for such tag-links in someone's channel. The author used so called "zero links". For example, I have a tag-link "obsidian" and I connect to the tag everything related to building my current setup in Obsidian. And the tag-link as zero link will look as "00 obsidian". And it allows creating zero links very fast. When I want to connect my new note to some topic I just write [[00 ]] and I see a list of my zero links without any other notes, coz it's filtered due to prefix "00" and it looks quite aesthetically. "00" is like a substitution for "#". Maybe someone will find it useful.
For those of you who don’t get the point of this video, come back to it after making about 30 notes using your own link and tag system. It makes so much sense.
I am neurodivergent, but not ADHD, and also a programmer like you. You guys all seem to be using the bottom up approach. I'm going to try top down. Wish me luck.
Interesting. Your "link tags" are backlinks. Instead of the typical Zettel links pointing down a branching trail. Hmm. OH! I see you then have a separate Links: section there. I will have to play with this.
Hi Bryan! Thank you for another great video! Very dense and thought provoking (these are my favorite videos :-)). I will be watching it multiple times for sure!
But what do you do after converting a tag to a moc link? Do you leave them in your Tags: section on your page or do you move all the links them from the tag section to the links section of every page?
hey bryan, nice content - keep going! 13:44 Why do you have to decide if you want to link learning to PKM or Interests ? What would be the drawback if you link it to both MOCs? It may destroys the look your "clean " ordered meta map. But imo the flexibility to don't decide whether it is more matching to MOC A or MOC B is one of the powers of MOCs.
i actually do link the MOCs to more than just it's parent now actually, had that epiphany myself recently :) just posted an image of it to the discord server a few minutes ago actually discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/709712341066842113/801184855391076353
hello there! thx for the explanation, really concise video. I noticed that you have Status/Tags/Links/References at the end of a note. You've covered status and tags, and I also saw that you use Links to link notes to MOC and MOCs between each other. Maybe I've lost it somewhere in the video, but could you comment on what is a "Reference" here in your notation, and how it differs from a "Link"?
You finally explained why I feel weird with my current workflow, I actually prefer using links over tags. Thank you so much. In the current version of Obsidian, we can put internal links in the front matter properties, I'm using this because I don't want to contaminate the file itself with some "Tags" field that does not belong to the content.
12:00 going back and forward then going to the graph and unchecking the tags/attachments. Holy shiiitt that was insane also this isnt complex at all, its actually common sense. the issue for me would be how to set it up and not OVERDO it or underdo it, perhaps even have enough info to even add to it. What Im thinking I could do only is keep it as my personal brain instead. Was planning for game development but I feel this is way more powerful to only do one thing. even then maybe thats the route to take to practice? idk ill think about it. LOVE it 100%, thank you so much in showing the potential of creating a library within Obsidian...
May I ask - what is the practical outcome of doing all of this categorisations, linking, seeing how your MOCs are connected, having 10s of statues etc? Is there actually anything we can get from it, except a geeky archive of notes? I'm not arguing, just curios because I tried to do all of this, and figured out that I keep asking myself a question "waht is the point of me spending time on this?", and couldn't find any practical answer.
There are many practical reasons, many of which I’ve mentioned in several videos. Search-ability, a writing aid with reference sources and linked ideas, keeping’s tabs on a large body of work and research, the list goes on
This is brilliant! Could you expand on what is your "ideas" MOC? My understanding is that you use your tags as a hierarchy system in defining the maturity of the note. Going from seedling to evergreen is clear, from tag to MOC as well. But how do you go from evergreen to tag?
Hey, my non existend Notelinks are not in other color. How i can solve it? (Newbie) I want by start with obsidian make a consist corner of workflow, so i no need to optimize much after
This was really interesting! Thanks for sharing your method of working. I have been so trapped in nested folders... I think this might be just the thing I need
I like this idea and intuitively was doing this already. Sort of. However I have run in to an issue with duplicate file names. The way I get around this is by still using folders but not relying on them. I don't really want to name a bunch of files python-whatever_the_name. How do you deal with duplicate file names without using folders?
Confused at 5:01 You just discussed using emojis as tags (which I still don't understand the efficiency of since there are no emojis on a keyboard)...but then you move on to links...but you're calling them tags? Are they tags or links?
It's very interesting to Bryan's process for creating these nodes. I was drawn to Obsidian because of how it used the Graph view, but several months in my graph view makes very little sense, and I have hundreds of tags that I'm not using in very useful way, so I'm very inspired to take up this method. A big problem I face now is how I would actually go about converting all of my note tags to links quickly and avoiding errors. I've previously done this manually for other things (like adding metadata) and it's taken a very long time.
in that case if you were changing a swathe of #psychology tags for books and wanted something like [[psychology]] then i would probably just used the `sed` command like utility to do a bulk replace. you could also do with by opening your vault in something like VSCode and doing a global text replacement
This was sooo helpful, thank you so much for sharing. I've been haphazardly journalling/linking in Obsidian for a year now and only learned about the Zettelkasten system just recently. It's really intimidating to get started but we're finally getting there :)
Wow.. just wow. Ive really been struggling with the topology of my notes, mostly being technical in nature (IT/security engineering) and this is absolutely the answer for me. I've struggled to find fellow users capturing similar topics here on YT, but you nailed it Bryan!
I like the theme you're using. Somehow reminds me of VS Code's Kimbie Dark. Is that Obsidian gruvbox? Anyways, I think I'll have to trim down on my tags because I use a lot. 😆
Great great video, thank you Bryan. I have to things to point out, if you let me. First, I've noticed your notes about C++, all of them starts with 'C++ ...' in their titiles. Don't you feel a little friction in having to be redundant like that ? Wouldn't be nice to have a 'C++' folder for that ? I mean not a structure of nested folders, but just one for each big topic, so you can avoid redundancy in note titles. Besides, each of these folders would have a 'moc' note which will relate all the notes in that folder. Sounds that like a good strategy for you ? Second, is there a really clear reason to have both 'tag' and 'moc' tags ? In my mind they seem to have the same purpose (relate or categorize notes), the only difference is having or not links to notes pointing to them. I mean, for example why in the graph view would I show only 'moc' and no 'tag' notes (or viceversa) ? I really appreciate your work and help on such interesting topics, thank you !!
Thanks, this is very helpful to me! I was initially confused by MOCs because they seemed to go against the grain of how Obsidian should be used but now, this serendipitous discovery of MOCs makes a lot more sense. Also (and this is unrelated) I think hierarchies (such as folder structures) are generally flawed which is why inheritance is so frowned upon in Object Oriented Programming.
Oooh! I feel so smart - I just started in Obsidian and came to this same strategy. Since I like a bit of hierarchy, I end up having a folder I call 'Concepts & Ideas' and will make a note about some concept that I'm working on, and then I'll backlink from source notes.
I have this video pinned and i have been watching it several times 🤣every day! But finally I think I managed to organize my mocs with backlinks. I am studying art theory and this is quite overwhelming at times. I really like your approach to Obsidian: thanks a lot from Lisbon!
14:30 I think having a handful of "real tags" like Moc/Evergreen/Work in Progress/Published/Etc it's a great alternative to folders. Now I get it. Thanks for the great content.
I'm finding my perspective of note-taking in Obsidian to be equal parts of A) fascination/excitement and B) frustration/confusion. Today, my frustration is winning out over my excitement and has been for several days. Take, for instance, the simple question: "Should I use tags or links?" Even after researching this question and spending at least three hours watching videos or engaging in Discord conversations...I'm no closer to a clear understanding. It seems to me that the they're two ways of doing the same thing...and using them both only makes it more difficult to know how to best retrieve information later. What am I missing?
the main difference is the "soft" and "hard" linking aspects of tags & links. ive talked about it at length in many of my comprehensive videos. Soft meaning many things can be connected regardless of context where as Hard link is directly linking one thing to another because they share context. it makes more sense when you approach #tags as indicators of status and use [[links]] as both a tag like [[Capitalism]] and as normal links [[Capitalism in the west and neoliberalism]].
I'm a user o Roam Research, but every day I open Obsidian to make some tests to see how to program works and follow all the updates and improvements. I'm in a given stage that I feel lost among all the content I have in Roam Research. I believe the way to manage all the information I have inside would be to print only the connections among topics - links and tags removing documents with data. For this purpose, they only polluted the graph. Roam doesn't offer this feature - it allows only to remove log days (BTW, this feature would be beneficial in Obsidian because if I move all the log days to another folder to disregard them using filters, all the content are ignored) Thank you very much for your explanation. Now I see a way to meet my needs.
hard links aka [[tags]] are just a click away from creating a new note. how do you manage that? I accidentally created many notes and messed up the system.and how to create red color in graph view for these [[tags]]?
That is freaking genius, but I still don't understand why the #s are only emojies The main advantage of this system is that it's much faster than the fleeting--literature-permanent process
70% practical demo and 30% philosophy that is really helping me to understand the difference between the zettelkasten method and digital knowledge management system vs nested file organization which is where I’ve lived my whole life and my brain and computer are a mess it’s as if I have no knowledge. Anyway, thank you for this, it has been immensely helpful for this noob. I think I’ll try your structure. Deep breath…let gooo of the folders…
the folders paradigm is the hardest change to move away from but once i did there's a lot of new flexibility to discover and explore, good luck on your journey! :)
It's been about a year since I started using Obsidian and I wasn't sold on this approach, but now I can see the benefits. I like using tags generally, but I dislike how Graph View doesn't show *only* tags, and I dislike how tags link to a search term. Status tags and that sort of thing ftw
I'm gonna start using Obsidian in the next future, so I'm watching videos here and there to gather different POVs. I've seen Nick Milo's videos and they were pretty good and clear, but this approach is life-changing. Thanks!!
Mind blown! I was just looking how people linked and back linked things together I never knew tags were that powerful to organize. That now makes me consider using my vault as my daily todo list.
this is actually the correct zk method. you are talking about index notes and keyword notes where index notes contain moc and keyword notes contain index notes.
I think I'll need to watch this at least two more times to catch everything. I might've got distracted by the local graph thing which I hadn't realised was a thing... super useful.
Hi Bryan, I'm just getting mad at the fact that you can have red nodes for uncreated links (your "tags") so you can identify easier your future topics on your graph, mines are grey. What did you do to have them red ? Where did I fucked up ? Even if someone else here know the answer, come and say hi ! Wish you a wonderful day, thanks for your high quality content (even if I'm fucking lost, not gonna lie).
It’s css in my theme, there are like 5 selectors for the graph with colors and I made the uncreated nodes red, you can grab my theme and look in the index at the top for the graph node colors to find it :)
Hello again ! Thanks for your answer, I downloaded the original theme "gruvbox" from Obsidian theme research, after downloading your all in one package from the description, not yours so I had the same theme but not everthing. Just had to copy/paste your personnal theme "Bryan Gruvbox" in the right file on the obsidian vault (Workspace_ => .obsidian => themes) and ... magic ! Hope this comment will also help people who will have the same concerns ! Thanks again for your quick answer ! 👌😊 Hope you will grow fast on youtube or everywhere else and have a wonderful experience as you help people to entertain a growth mindset.
I signed up to your newsletter as well as taking up your kind offer of the templates and css but its not clear how to achieve this as there has been no response. I also tried to reach via Discord but when I tried to enter birthdate (as a new user) the form would not accept any of the data. Any help would be genuinely appreciated.
So I need to create a hierarchy in order to have these MOCs? This sounds good if you have it all clear since the beginning of your notes, but how could you set it up once your full notes already exist or are too evolved?
hierarchy and prior planning not needed. Thats why this is the organic antithesis to nested folder hierarchies. you plan nothing, and the structure develops over time.
Want to get your hands on my Obsidian templates, Custom CSS, and Mermaid Diagram code? 👉🏻️bryanjenkstech.ck.page/d4ec0713d5
00:00 Welcome
00:13 Intro
00:23 What we're talking about today
00:56 github.com/BryanJenksCommunity/FAQ/discussions
01:32 Context and background
01:40 ua-cam.com/channels/85D7ERwhke7wVqskV_DZUA.html
02:11 Why and How are links and tags different in Obsidian
02:52 The reason i use tags as indicators of status
03:14 tags are soft links
03:45 Graph view filtering based on status
04:51 Hard Links link files together
06:05 Commonly referenced tags getting promoted to MOC
07:27 Seeing the emerging structure of the vault
07:46 Avoiding front loaded heirarchical structuring
08:21 Dealing with a top level organization
09:43 Tag notes that exist but are not yet MOCs
11:37 Traversing the linked MOCs
12:19 Seeing your web of MOCs
14:24 bryanjenkstech.ck.page/d4ec0713d5
14:54 This practice is critical to managing a top level pool of notes
16:18 Define your structure as you go not front loaded
19:07 Wrapping up
20:01 Outro
Hi Bryan! Really useful approach for seeing what structure emerges through links. How do we acces the templates and all the obsidian goodies? I've subscribed to the newsletter but didn't receive them
@@learnfromany4064 depending on which newsletter sign up you may not have gotten them. send me a DM on discord and ill hook you up :)
discord.gg/MxCVshN
The discord link doesn't work anymore.
@@e555t66 just tested, it still does
Excuse me bro i am using on my tablet, but i dont see this feature like yours at 3:58; a search bar # file is very useful
I like the workflow process of watching your "uncreated node" tags to see where your interest is clustering, and then promoting that node to being a "topic" in your MOC. Especially as an alternative to forcing a top-down hierarchy. Thanks for sharing!
Glad it was helpful!
I love the rigor of your thought process, your generosity in providing it, and your compassion in underlining that each person’s path is unique. Thanks!
You are so welcome!
@@BryanJenks Bryan, this is old but if you see this it would help a lot. What if I use tags instead of links to files that don't exist, and then if a tag node becomes big how would I turn it into a MOC file? Guess there is no way to do that. I'm new to Obsidian and still can't feel comfortable with non-existant links. It just feels like I would want to click it expecting that file to have a MOC like content.
First time viewer... The distinction between your "Second Brain" and your Zettelkasten is spot-on. My primary vault is my "Universal Notebook" and my zettelkasten is a subset of that. Using Nick Milo's MOC approach for organic structure makes the whole thing possible.
most of my ZK is denoted with 4 status tags, everything else is MOC's or other notes like for school or my daily notes.
#🌱️ seedling ideas
#🌞️ incubating ideas
#🌲️ evergreen notes
#📥️ inputs
@@BryanJenks im looking for full list of what you mentioned in 4:00 . Can you list all of them, because they don't have name in video and i dont know in which video i can find them.
Thanks
The whole moc thing seems like a really smart way to build up your note. Keep up the great work.
Thanks man :) its all a bit cerebral but its fun 🤣️
i've been watching obsidian videos and this is the first one where it finally clicked with me. Everyone's examples are turning books they read into content. I work in STEM and your examples with MOCs for an information data not just interpretation of content is perfect...Thank you!!
glad to help! you might also enjoy my dendron video :)
1:40 Nick Milo definitely popularized the term _MoC_ in the Obsidian Community.
However, he said that he took the term from a book called "How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think" by Lion Kimbro.
I've skimmed over it; it's a chaotic read with lots of interesting ideas.
Here's an online read of the book:
users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/html/doc001.html
after i filmed this video like 5 weeks ago i did see him post/talk about that, too late to edit that now lol but thanks for the link! I'll check that out
@@LinkEX Thanks for posting! I'll check this out!
it's also talked about in "how to take smart notes" by ahrens
@@hieu-zf6qq Yes, I've read that once; planning on going back through it again in the near future and extracting permanent notes.
Hey Bryan, this is great! This "system" features the Zettelkasten-Principle that order and structure is a bottom-up-process and not a top-down-hierarchy. Very inspiring! Thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
This is by far the most flexible system I have seen in Obsidian. It cuts down my anxiety in choosing the "perfect" system
Glad to hear!
I saw all your videos about obsidian and i can say that i've know everything about it now thanks from Egypt
Always more to learn, glad you find the videos helpful!
You have the best zettelkasten interpretation
well thank you 😅️
Bryan is my Obsidian guru.
😊️
I agree that having to "decide" which category an information falls when we have information which relate to multiple disciplines is a pain which suffocates the productivity. Thank you for this video. 😊
My pleasure!
Advice for for next vídeo: write down every single word you want to say, then copy it into perplexity, say it to make it shorter and clearer, and then read the results.
I have a headache because of your bad form of explanation. Too vague, too disordered.
Thank you for making this video. It really gave me another perspective as to how to create a space that I like best for the way I like to work. You are doing an amazing job!
You got my support in patreon :D
Glad it was helpful! and thank you so much for your patronage! WOW!
One issue I have with the Moc approach is that it leads to nodes that don't need to be articles. For example, I do link the name of my partner in my diaries regularly. This has led to an article the only purpose of which is managing those references. There's no information I would want to put in there that I don't have readily available unless I suffer general amnesia. In other words: the only purpose of that node is to act as a tag. Now, in my graph view, It still stands out as a huge note that seems to scream "create an article here" at me, even though I don't want to because I'm not going to write a dossier about my partner just because I want to fill in a note file in Obsidian.
The only solution here seems to be to actually work with tags - or is there another way to go about this?
tags yes, or also just graph filters
What's really cool about this system is that you can use `aliases` to mask a tag's "note" under several different names using YAML frontmatter:
---
aliases: ["cuisine", "sustenance"]
---
# Food
Now if you try to tag [[cuisine]] instead of [[food]], it'll catch it.
Now, of course, tags are still imperfect, but you can help alleviate the fragmented "tag hell" with aliases.
there are also nested tags as well :)
This system is so cool and feels like a great long-term investment. It terrifies me to not use folders but I think it's time to take the plunge.
at 3+ years it has been a long term investment for me haha
I’ve watched this twice now - really, really helpful video.
♥️
I think I’m on my 4th viewing. The concepts are great but my aging brain needs the repetition.
:)
Hey Bryan! Your pic in the thumbnail is literally me when I watch your obsidian tutorials haha... it's complex but you make it easily understandable! thanks ..Have a good day/night!
Glad i make it understandable :)
This was really interesting! As someone who is new to Zettelkasten, I would love to see your flow of how you capture something and then put it in your system.
i have several livestreams that are still public and several that are unlisted for patreon patrons only where i do just that :)
Interesting use of 'tags' as status and empty pages as "#tags" as links, creating space for more refinement, etcr
One thing that has always erred is the 'tagging'/'linking' where Byran Jenks doesn't equal Jenks Byran... ... so building the tags library - and where these are more often short phrases, there is a need to periodically check to ensure limited duplication via different phrasing, etc., so links between different content creators' works in their notes (who use different terminology)... ... what have you got there?
for people i follow a convntion of [[@first last]] and each person gets their own note, not a tag
Thanks for sharing! What are the physics settings on your graph that lets these clusters emerge? My maps are still fairly uniformly messy, perhaps that's because I don't have large enough of node/network hubs yet?
cant share images here, but if you ask on the FAQ repo i can drop an image :) github.com/BryanJenksCommunity/FAQ/discussions
At 11:17, #🗺 is prepended with the word Tags. How come it's not prepended with the word Status?
It looksl ike the rules might be:
- A "note" has one Status (a soft link, eg evergreen note), many Tags (which are hard links to related ideas), and no Links.
- A "MOC" has one Tags (a soft link, which should always be #🗺), one Links (a hard links that go back up the tree), and no "Status".
In this case, for a MOC, Tags is the same thing as Status on a note, and the Tags concept from a note just doesn't exist for a MOC, as the only hard link in the header goes up the tree.
Does that sound right, or am I missing something here?
this video is a bit dated, so the workflow has changed a bit since this
Great video on using tags and building up knowledge. Can you share your method for assigning the emoji tags to notes? Noticed you had a popup dropdown menu of your tags to select from. Is this a javascript dropdown menu that you select items based on each item having a hotkey?
i use an alfred workflow call emoji taco (macOS only app) on windows you can use META+. o open an emoji window and there's also an emoji plugin for obsidian as well
i find this idea so cool!! i instantly implemented this into my vault 💕
I'm so glad!
all sounds fine and dandy, but in the end, all the moc-stuff is also just a glorified, prettier folder structure
there are some distinct differences, such as a note connecting to multiple MOC's without duplication for one, how do i file one thing into 2 folders without duplication? there is no need for any folders or filing only linkages which is a massive reduction of work as there is no filing to do.
@@BryanJenks filing is not work. if you tag something a lot, make a note for it. delete the tags, put everything related in the note, done - you have a comprehensive manual for a topic. markdown is great dor structuring it. if a thing only comes up once, dont tag it. it will be easy to find. if a note connects to multiple mocs, in a way that suggests it is equally important to those multiple mocs, it is not specific or atomic enough. also, you can still link from one note to another, in another folder. this is why i say it is just folders with extra steps. creating a moc, typing all those links and making it pretty, when i can just use a folder and put everything in is a lot more work. just to have some pretty graph view - which has no use case except for looking pretty.
I LOVE IT!! Being new I didn't realize how I can use the graph to locate/visual my reference points. Game changer. Thank you!!
My pleasure :)
I don't see any valid reason why you're treating status names and MOC names differently. Just use hashtags for all of them, and treat all as tags. Once any particular MOC name becomes apparent with a lot of links on the map, then you could always create a MOC as a separate md file for that.
You can even use #status/evergreen, etc.
true, but unlike Roam, tags and links are treated differently in obsidian. To leverage the links in obsidian so that i can simply create the note from the node that has many connections is much easier than to take everything #tagged with something and then connect them all to a note. one the note is created it already has links to everything that referenced it and then i can even rename it and the name will update everywhere.
There's intention behind my workflow
I saw a good way for such tag-links in someone's channel. The author used so called "zero links". For example, I have a tag-link "obsidian" and I connect to the tag everything related to building my current setup in Obsidian. And the tag-link as zero link will look as "00 obsidian". And it allows creating zero links very fast. When I want to connect my new note to some topic I just write [[00 ]] and I see a list of my zero links without any other notes, coz it's filtered due to prefix "00" and it looks quite aesthetically. "00" is like a substitution for "#". Maybe someone will find it useful.
For those of you who don’t get the point of this video, come back to it after making about 30 notes using your own link and tag system. It makes so much sense.
💜️
I am neurodivergent, but not ADHD, and also a programmer like you. You guys all seem to be using the bottom up approach. I'm going to try top down. Wish me luck.
Interesting. Your "link tags" are backlinks. Instead of the typical Zettel links pointing down a branching trail. Hmm.
OH! I see you then have a separate Links: section there. I will have to play with this.
:)
Great video thank you, do you have an introduction video or work-along type of video to setup a solid obsidian workflow from scratch?
Not yet! but i'm cooking up something in that general area of things :)
Hi Bryan! Thank you for another great video! Very dense and thought provoking (these are my favorite videos :-)). I will be watching it multiple times for sure!
Glad you enjoyed it!
But what do you do after converting a tag to a moc link? Do you leave them in your Tags: section on your page or do you move all the links them from the tag section to the links section of every page?
Loved the video. What is the color scheme it’s so good 🙂?
Gruvbox :)
Love this approach. Very interesting. Thanks!
Im glad you enjoyed the video! thank you for being here! :)
Thanks that helps,
I was coming from notion , and was in delimma of how get some form of top down hierarchy.
:)
hey bryan, nice content - keep going!
13:44 Why do you have to decide if you want to link learning to PKM or Interests ? What would be the drawback if you link it to both MOCs? It may destroys the look your "clean " ordered meta map. But imo the flexibility to don't decide whether it is more matching to MOC A or MOC B is one of the powers of MOCs.
i actually do link the MOCs to more than just it's parent now actually, had that epiphany myself recently :) just posted an image of it to the discord server a few minutes ago actually
discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/709712341066842113/801184855391076353
wow, really a useful way of using the graph. Thanks Bryan,
Glad you like it!
Bryan, Can you share your ADHD article? seems interesting.
And, 03:32 nice looking graph. 👍
What article? and thanks!
@@BryanJenks Whatever you have opened at 02:27. The note.
@@RaveenKumar here it is! publish.obsidian.md/bryan-jenks/ADHD+hyperfocus+is+a+double+edged+sword+of+both+deep+work+and+avoidance
hello there! thx for the explanation, really concise video.
I noticed that you have Status/Tags/Links/References at the end of a note.
You've covered status and tags, and I also saw that you use Links to link notes to MOC and MOCs between each other.
Maybe I've lost it somewhere in the video, but could you comment on what is a "Reference" here in your notation, and how it differs from a "Link"?
reference and link are meant to be the same thing in this context
You finally explained why I feel weird with my current workflow, I actually prefer using links over tags. Thank you so much. In the current version of Obsidian, we can put internal links in the front matter properties, I'm using this because I don't want to contaminate the file itself with some "Tags" field that does not belong to the content.
Yas! After the links started working in the YAML I started doing that too for that very reason!
12:00 going back and forward then going to the graph and unchecking the tags/attachments. Holy shiiitt that was insane
also this isnt complex at all, its actually common sense.
the issue for me would be how to set it up and not OVERDO it or underdo it, perhaps even have enough info to even add to it.
What Im thinking I could do only is keep it as my personal brain instead.
Was planning for game development but I feel this is way more powerful to only do one thing.
even then maybe thats the route to take to practice? idk ill think about it.
LOVE it 100%, thank you so much in showing the potential of creating a library within Obsidian...
glad your enjoyed it :)
May I ask - what is the practical outcome of doing all of this categorisations, linking, seeing how your MOCs are connected, having 10s of statues etc?
Is there actually anything we can get from it, except a geeky archive of notes?
I'm not arguing, just curios because I tried to do all of this, and figured out that I keep asking myself a question "waht is the point of me spending time on this?", and couldn't find any practical answer.
There are many practical reasons, many of which I’ve mentioned in several videos. Search-ability, a writing aid with reference sources and linked ideas, keeping’s tabs on a large body of work and research, the list goes on
This is brilliant!
Could you expand on what is your "ideas" MOC?
My understanding is that you use your tags as a hierarchy system in defining the maturity of the note. Going from seedling to evergreen is clear, from tag to MOC as well. But how do you go from evergreen to tag?
evergreen to tag? i think you're confusing something in my system
One of the best videos in building a second brain in Obsidian - helped me to resolve most of the friction in my system
awesome to hear!
Thank you for this informative content!
Amazing dataview you have there Bryan :) whose apple is it? Adam's, Newton's, or Jobs's?
glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, you've made me rethink my current structure and it's potential future pitfalls. 🐄
Glad you found it helpful! 🐄️
Thank you! Incredibly helpful video. This has really helped me organize my vault.
im glad!
Hey, my non existend Notelinks are not in other color. How i can solve it? (Newbie)
I want by start with obsidian make a consist corner of workflow, so i no need to optimize much after
its CSS in my custom theme that colors them
This was really interesting! Thanks for sharing your method of working. I have been so trapped in nested folders... I think this might be just the thing I need
glad to help!
The bit when you filtered out the top level tags to create the tiny graph that represents the whole graph blew my mind
I love the high level network view too :)
I like this idea and intuitively was doing this already. Sort of. However I have run in to an issue with duplicate file names. The way I get around this is by still using folders but not relying on them. I don't really want to name a bunch of files python-whatever_the_name. How do you deal with duplicate file names without using folders?
The Dendron paradigm helped out a bit here with dot notation but now I’m still not super sure how to approach it
@@BryanJenks Thanks I will check on that. For now I am not all that against using folders. At least a few general ones.
Confused at 5:01 You just discussed using emojis as tags (which I still don't understand the efficiency of since there are no emojis on a keyboard)...but then you move on to links...but you're calling them tags? Are they tags or links?
many ways to insert an emoji easily, doesnt have to be a keyboard key
I had a VERY similar idea to that, but unfortunately it felt like too much management, and defeats the speed of Obsidian to me.
Different strokes for different folks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is the video I have been waiting for!!! Thanks Bryan :)
oh im so glad :D hope you enjoy it!
Thank you for letting us take a peek at your 2nd Brain 🙏🏼
my pleasure :)
It's very interesting to Bryan's process for creating these nodes. I was drawn to Obsidian because of how it used the Graph view, but several months in my graph view makes very little sense, and I have hundreds of tags that I'm not using in very useful way, so I'm very inspired to take up this method.
A big problem I face now is how I would actually go about converting all of my note tags to links quickly and avoiding errors. I've previously done this manually for other things (like adding metadata) and it's taken a very long time.
in that case if you were changing a swathe of #psychology tags for books and wanted something like [[psychology]] then i would probably just used the `sed` command like utility to do a bulk replace. you could also do with by opening your vault in something like VSCode and doing a global text replacement
How can i add such icons to my Tags? Didnt found it anywhere
How can i make them Colourful?
emoji's it can change based on what system you're using, mac, linux, or windows
Came for the tags vs links, can't focus because I needed to read all the ADHD stuff ^^
hahaha those notes are public too :)
This was sooo helpful, thank you so much for sharing. I've been haphazardly journalling/linking in Obsidian for a year now and only learned about the Zettelkasten system just recently. It's really intimidating to get started but we're finally getting there :)
glad you found it helpful :)
Wow.. just wow. Ive really been struggling with the topology of my notes, mostly being technical in nature (IT/security engineering) and this is absolutely the answer for me. I've struggled to find fellow users capturing similar topics here on YT, but you nailed it Bryan!
im glad you found it helpful :)
I can't see how to view a list of tags in the side panel like you have in this video? I can only interact with them in the graph view
you might not have the plugin active
Thank you Bryan! this video helps me a lot. I use obsidian for less than a month and find it marvelous as a note-taking app.
Glad it was helpful!
I like the theme you're using. Somehow reminds me of VS Code's Kimbie Dark. Is that Obsidian gruvbox? Anyways, I think I'll have to trim down on my tags because I use a lot. 😆
Yep! But with a lot of custom additions :)
@@BryanJenks Noticed that. Would be nice to see how you customized it to your liking. I might try gruvbox later on. I'm currently using Shiba Inu.
This helped so much man its a very relaxed and intuitive approach to it as compared to most other videos ive seen
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excelente video. Es muy útil conocer perspectivas de trabajo con la aplicación.
Glad you enjoyed it!
8:09 So jealous of folks that can run their setup without folders. I really need some structure for mine.
its a paradigm shift for sure
Great great video, thank you Bryan.
I have to things to point out, if you let me.
First, I've noticed your notes about C++, all of them starts with 'C++ ...' in their titiles.
Don't you feel a little friction in having to be redundant like that ?
Wouldn't be nice to have a 'C++' folder for that ?
I mean not a structure of nested folders, but just one for each big topic, so you can avoid redundancy in note titles.
Besides, each of these folders would have a 'moc' note which will relate all the notes in that folder.
Sounds that like a good strategy for you ?
Second, is there a really clear reason to have both 'tag' and 'moc' tags ?
In my mind they seem to have the same purpose (relate or categorize notes), the only difference is having or not links to notes pointing to them.
I mean, for example why in the graph view would I show only 'moc' and no 'tag' notes (or viceversa) ?
I really appreciate your work and help on such interesting topics, thank you !!
old video, workflow has had many changes since this video
Thanks, this is very helpful to me! I was initially confused by MOCs because they seemed to go against the grain of how Obsidian should be used but now, this serendipitous discovery of MOCs makes a lot more sense.
Also (and this is unrelated) I think hierarchies (such as folder structures) are generally flawed which is why inheritance is so frowned upon in Object Oriented Programming.
i still think that MOC's are the way to go, i use folders to some degree but they are few and far between and not really for my actual ZK at all
Oooh! I feel so smart - I just started in Obsidian and came to this same strategy. Since I like a bit of hierarchy, I end up having a folder I call 'Concepts & Ideas' and will make a note about some concept that I'm working on, and then I'll backlink from source notes.
nice!
Thank you for the video, I’m starting using obsidian, most probably I’ll use this approach, it’s great!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I have this video pinned and i have been watching it several times 🤣every day! But finally I think I managed to organize my mocs with backlinks. I am studying art theory and this is quite overwhelming at times. I really like your approach to Obsidian: thanks a lot from Lisbon!
Glad you found it helpful! :D
14:30 I think having a handful of "real tags" like Moc/Evergreen/Work in Progress/Published/Etc it's a great alternative to folders. Now I get it. Thanks for the great content.
my pleasure!
the answer to every thing I walked away from Obsidian for. Here's to a creative return, thank you.
My pleasure :)
I'm finding my perspective of note-taking in Obsidian to be equal parts of A) fascination/excitement and B) frustration/confusion. Today, my frustration is winning out over my excitement and has been for several days. Take, for instance, the simple question: "Should I use tags or links?" Even after researching this question and spending at least three hours watching videos or engaging in Discord conversations...I'm no closer to a clear understanding. It seems to me that the they're two ways of doing the same thing...and using them both only makes it more difficult to know how to best retrieve information later. What am I missing?
the main difference is the "soft" and "hard" linking aspects of tags & links. ive talked about it at length in many of my comprehensive videos. Soft meaning many things can be connected regardless of context where as Hard link is directly linking one thing to another because they share context.
it makes more sense when you approach #tags as indicators of status and use [[links]] as both a tag like [[Capitalism]] and as normal links [[Capitalism in the west and neoliberalism]].
@@BryanJenks Thanks Bryan. I appreciate the time you took to reply. Have a great week.
Is it a good idea to use obsidian for journaling?
Yes
I'm a user o Roam Research, but every day I open Obsidian to make some tests to see how to program works and follow all the updates and improvements.
I'm in a given stage that I feel lost among all the content I have in Roam Research.
I believe the way to manage all the information I have inside would be to print only the connections among topics - links and tags removing documents with data. For this purpose, they only polluted the graph.
Roam doesn't offer this feature - it allows only to remove log days (BTW, this feature would be beneficial in Obsidian because if I move all the log days to another folder to disregard them using filters, all the content are ignored)
Thank you very much for your explanation. Now I see a way to meet my needs.
Glad you found the video helpful! :)
How do you put the emoji icons in obsidian?
text snippet replacement via the alfred app on MacOS
hard links aka [[tags]] are just a click away from creating a new note. how do you manage that? I accidentally created many notes and messed up the system.and how to create red color in graph view for these [[tags]]?
this is the intentional design that i was aiming for
That is freaking genius, but I still don't understand why the #s are only emojies
The main advantage of this system is that it's much faster than the fleeting--literature-permanent process
emojis because im very visual
Looking at your graph :) You've created a new Solar System. Love it. Great content.
Thank you!
70% practical demo and 30% philosophy that is really helping me to understand the difference between the zettelkasten method and digital knowledge management system vs nested file organization which is where I’ve lived my whole life and my brain and computer are a mess it’s as if I have no knowledge. Anyway, thank you for this, it has been immensely helpful for this noob. I think I’ll try your structure. Deep breath…let gooo of the folders…
the folders paradigm is the hardest change to move away from but once i did there's a lot of new flexibility to discover and explore, good luck on your journey! :)
It's been about a year since I started using Obsidian and I wasn't sold on this approach, but now I can see the benefits. I like using tags generally, but I dislike how Graph View doesn't show *only* tags, and I dislike how tags link to a search term. Status tags and that sort of thing ftw
One of us, one of us, one of us
I'm gonna start using Obsidian in the next future, so I'm watching videos here and there to gather different POVs. I've seen Nick Milo's videos and they were pretty good and clear, but this approach is life-changing. Thanks!!
glad you enjoyed it!
Mind blown!
I was just looking how people linked and back linked things together I never knew tags were that powerful to organize.
That now makes me consider using my vault as my daily todo list.
:)
Another good vid too, thanks.
glad you enjoyed it!
this is actually the correct zk method. you are talking about index notes and keyword notes where index notes contain moc and keyword notes contain index notes.
:)
Thanks for showing us this part of your workflow. Sending hugs from Chile!
I think I'll need to watch this at least two more times to catch everything.
I might've got distracted by the local graph thing which I hadn't realised was a thing... super useful.
heh heh enjoy!
Thanks for sharing mate ! :)
My pleasure!
Hi Bryan,
I'm just getting mad at the fact that you can have red nodes for uncreated links (your "tags") so you can identify easier your future topics on your graph, mines are grey. What did you do to have them red ?
Where did I fucked up ? Even if someone else here know the answer, come and say hi !
Wish you a wonderful day, thanks for your high quality content (even if I'm fucking lost, not gonna lie).
It’s css in my theme, there are like 5 selectors for the graph with colors and I made the uncreated nodes red, you can grab my theme and look in the index at the top for the graph node colors to find it :)
Hello again !
Thanks for your answer, I downloaded the original theme "gruvbox" from Obsidian theme research, after downloading your all in one package from the description, not yours so I had the same theme but not everthing.
Just had to copy/paste your personnal theme "Bryan Gruvbox" in the right file on the obsidian vault (Workspace_ => .obsidian => themes) and ... magic !
Hope this comment will also help people who will have the same concerns !
Thanks again for your quick answer ! 👌😊
Hope you will grow fast on youtube or everywhere else and have a wonderful experience as you help people to entertain a growth mindset.
I signed up to your newsletter as well as taking up your kind offer of the templates and css but its not clear how to achieve this as there has been no response. I also tried to reach via Discord but when I tried to enter birthdate (as a new user) the form would not accept any of the data. Any help would be genuinely appreciated.
you're saying you didnt receive the templates or anything? email me and I'll get them to you.
as for discord I'm not sure that issue you're having :(
Thanks for these videos! I'ven been using your channel to polish my PKM system on Obsidian.
Great to hear!
how to change the uncreated node color, the default is soft-grey, but I prefer red as in the video.
That is done through custom CSS :)
So I need to create a hierarchy in order to have these MOCs? This sounds good if you have it all clear since the beginning of your notes, but how could you set it up once your full notes already exist or are too evolved?
hierarchy and prior planning not needed. Thats why this is the organic antithesis to nested folder hierarchies. you plan nothing, and the structure develops over time.
How do you make the graph of individial topic specifically?
graph filters, by tag is a good one or my connected notes to a particular topic