I’ve tried nearly every note-taking app that promised better organization or cleaner design. But after years of switching, I realized I wasn’t looking for another tool. I wanted ownership.

Many apps look elegant but come with quiet trade-offs: cloud lock-in, rigid structures, or the uneasy sense that your notes don’t truly belong to you. Ever tried exporting your entire OneNote library fully? Exactly.

What I wanted was freedom — notes I could read, move, and shape without anyone’s permission.

Obsidian offered exactly that.

It’s no longer a niche product. It’s a flexible, Markdown-based platform that lets you build your own workflow instead of adapting to someone else’s. Because notes are stored in Markdown, they remain readable in any editor, now or decades from now.

What makes Obsidian powerful is the way it connects information. Instead of forcing everything into folders, it uses Wikilinks ([[Linked Note]]) to connect ideas into a living web. It turns a pile of text into a map of thoughts, which feels much closer to how the mind actually works.

A video by Artem Kirsanov introduced me to this concept and continues to influence how I use Obsidian today. After more than two years, I’ve built a setup that balances structure with freedom. It helps me stay organized and creative without slipping into endless optimization.

This isn’t a technical guide. It’s a personal walkthrough of how I use Obsidian every day: how I plan and reflect, manage projects and readings, connect information, and preserve my notes with version control.

Here’s what the structure of my vault looks like:

📂 Obsidian Vault
├── 📁 .obsidian/                 # Plugin and workspace configuration
│
├── 📁 templates/ 
│   ├── weekly-note-template.md
│   └── page-template.md
│
├── 📁 journals/                  # Weekly notes
│   ├── 2025-W42.md
│   └── 2025-W43.md
│
├── 📁 pages/                     # Core notes and project notes
│   ├── Project Example – Vault Setup.md
│   └── Literature Review on Note-Taking Methods.md
│
├── 📁 readings/                  # Literature and reading notes (Zotero imports)
│   ├── Ahrens - How to Take Smart Notes.md
│   └── Kirsanov - Obsidian Workflows.md
│
├── 📁 assets/                    # Media and attachments (images, PDFs, etc.)
│   └── image.png

If you’re interested in exploring the setup itself, I’ve shared a template here: GitHub Repository – Obsidian Weekly Notes Setup

Planning, Projects, and Tasks

The foundation of my system is the weekly note. It serves as a compact dashboard for priorities, progress, and reflection.

Instead of creating daily entries, I keep one note for the entire week. This wider view keeps my vault lean and encourages reflection instead of routine. Each note is generated automatically with Templater, which adds the week number, date range, and navigation links. It includes sections for open, waiting, and completed tasks, along with a Dataview summary of recent note activity.

The weekly note blends the focus of a planner with the perspective of a journal. It keeps priorities visible without scattering them across dozens of daily logs. It also connects naturally to project notes.

Every major initiative—a paper, assignment, or research idea—gets its own project note. Each one acts as a hub that gathers everything related to that piece of work: tasks, references, resources, and progress logs.

I manage tasks with the Tasks plugin and surface them in both weekly and project dashboards using Dataview queries. Deadlines, progress, and priorities stay visible wherever I’m working, without duplication. Over time, these project notes become records of both progress and process—evidence of how ideas actually develop.

Together, the weekly and project layers provide balance. Weekly notes keep me focused; project notes give me perspective. Everything stays in plain text, and nothing gets lost.

Literature and Knowledge Management

For research and reading, I use Zotero as my reference manager. It’s a reliable way to collect, organize, and annotate papers and articles.

Using the Citations plugin, I connect my Obsidian vault directly to Zotero. Each reference can generate a dedicated note inside Obsidian, where I collect highlights, ideas, and reflections.

This connection bridges formal research with personal thought. Citations, notes, and commentary live side by side, making it easy to trace how ideas evolve across readings and projects.

Even outside academia, this approach helps me connect books, articles, and ideas without losing track of where they came from. What starts as static bibliographic data turns into a living, searchable network of knowledge.

Connecting Information

The Dataview plugin is what ties my vault together. It turns Markdown files into queryable data, so I can see patterns across notes and tasks.

With just a few lines of code, I can create dashboards that show open tasks by project, recently edited pages, or readings I’ve annotated this week. These small automations transform the vault from a pile of notes into a working knowledge base.

For example, my weekly note lists all open tasks grouped by project that are due in the coming week. I can also query every paper I’ve cited in a project to see where those works were published, which helps me target the right journals or conferences.

The result isn’t just organization. It’s insight—a clearer picture of how ideas and projects evolve over time. Dataview turns note-taking from passive storage into active discovery.

Preserving the System

All of this only matters if it lasts. To protect my notes and keep a record of their history, I use Git for version control.

The Obsidian Git plugin automatically commits and pushes changes to a private repository whenever I close Obsidian or at regular intervals. That creates a complete version history of every edit and gives me both a safety net and a timeline of how my vault evolves.

It’s a simple backup method that fits perfectly with Obsidian’s plain-text philosophy. My entire knowledge base—every word, link, and revision—stays local, open, and fully under my control.

Version control might sound excessive for note-taking, but it’s one of the easiest ways to ensure longevity. Even if every plugin disappeared tomorrow, my notes would still be readable and intact.

Closing Thoughts

What makes this system work isn’t Obsidian itself. It’s the structure behind it. The habits, folders, and connections could live anywhere — in Emacs, Logseq, Vim, or just plain text files.

The setup works because it’s simple. Notes link to other notes. Projects have a place. Tasks stay visible. Everything builds on plain files that don’t depend on one program to make sense. If Obsidian ever disappeared, the system would still hold up. I could move it somewhere else and keep going. That’s the real value for me: knowing my notes will last, no matter what tool I’m using.

Tools and plugins will come and go. The principles stay the same. Plain text, local files, and intentional structure give me the freedom to think without worrying about losing my work.

In the end, note-taking stylin’ isn’t about fancy plugins or optimization. It’s about flow — keeping things clear, connected, and easy to trust.