After using it for years, [[Obsidian]] has become my go-to tool for note-taking, organization, and all sorts of works related to information collection, organization, linking and discovery. The system I use to organize locally all of this is gathered in this note. On the other hand, an important subset of these notes are publicly available as [[Digital Garden|my Digital Garden]] in [garden.diego.codes](https://garden.diego.codes). # General Organization I make extensive use of the frontmatter attributes, that I then use to navigate the vault using the [[Obsidian]] application and can be fed to other plugins like [[Obsidian Bases Plugin|Bases]]. ## Entities The most relevant attributes are, no doubt, the [[Obsidian Entity|Obsidian entities]]. This top-level taxonomy defines what is the note, and serves for a first filter when searching and processing notes. In the linked note for the [[Obsidian Entity|entities]], it is possible to find a list of all of them. Each note contains a description of what to expect from each entity. # Use Cases ## Zettelkasten Originally, I started using [[Obsidian]] as a personal-wiki, storing notes about different things I was learning about. Most of these notes are [[Concept|concepts]] and [[Practice|practices]], and later I discovered the [[Idea|idea]] approach to add some sort of [[Evergreen Notes|evergreen notes]]. These notes are easy enough since the information is mostly plain text. They are organized mostly via links, and they sit at the root level. ## Reference Work When I discovered I could sync [[Readwise]] with [[Obsidian]], I started developing the Reference folder, that contains [[Article|articles]], [[Book|books]], [[Film|films]], etc. These notes were thought as central hubs for interesting excerpts, highlights, etc. I usually don't include notes in them and try to preserve the original content they refer to. These entities have more strict requirements regarding frontmatter attributes, since I tend to navigate them using [[Obsidian Bases Plugin|Bases]]. ## Personal Atlas I have a [[Using Obsidian as a Personal Atlas|personal atlas]] inside the [[Digital Garden]]: a place to store places that I have been to, or that I plan to, or that I want to. It is a substitute for [[Google Maps]], [[Apple Maps]], and all these kind of tools that are great for navigation but poor for archival. I solve that need using [[Obsidian]] and the Map view for [[Obsidian Bases Plugin|Bases]], and the [[Obsidian Web Clipper|Obsidian web clipper]] for data collection. This part is hidden from the public notes because it's hard to navigate without a map, and it is not compatible with [[Obsidian Publish]] (yet). ## Journaling I try to journal daily. To do so, I use the [[Daily Notes Plugin|daily notes plugin]] to generate [[Journal Entry|journal entries]] to gather my thoughts. Each note also link to today's [[Check-in|check-ins]]: atomic interactions with one or more entities that are also gathered in the Vault. For obvious reasons, these notes are also hidden from the public notes. ## Task In early 2026 I started using [[Obsidian Tasks]] and [[TaskForge]] to manage my tasks. I have a dedicated note that explains in detail how I [[Managing tasks with Obsidian|manage tasks with Obsidian]]. Tasks are written and stored all over the place, so some of them can be, indeed, archived in the public website.