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Reducing note folders

The last few weeks I moved away from categorizing my notes in folders, increasing my note taking productivity.
(12-05-2024)

I practice minimal notetaking, less is more. This change proved yet again this approach works for me.

Previous folder workflow¶

I used to store daily notes in a daily folder, and categorize notes in folders.
I manually move New notes to their category folder.

example:

đź“‚programming
    🗒️Python tips.md
đź“‚note taking
    🗒️Obsidian tips.md
đź“‚daily
    🗒️2024-05-11.md
    🗒️2024-05-12.md

This looks nice and organised, and makes it easy to find the notes I want.

The issue¶

The fastest way of writing new notes is to write wikilink to non-existing notes.
Then click the link in Obsidian to create the note, and instantly start writing the new note.
But this new note is created in the same folder as my current note, inheriting the current category. So if I write a new note for a different category, I have to move it.

Moving every note to a folder takes time and brain power to decide which category they should go in.
Sometimes notes didn’t fit in a category and I wasted time trying to figure out where to put them, leading to decision fatigue

I knew of the single folder solution when I started taking notes, and started to see the benefits over time. Now I bit the bullet.

Maintain organisation¶

The more notes I write, the harder it is to organize them. So removing folders seems like a terrible idea?!

How I tend to use my notes is:

  • I vaguely know I wrote a note about a subject, so search for the subject in note names.
  • if I can’t find it, I search for a related note.

So as long as my notes are well linked to their subjects, I don’t need folders.

example: Instead of having all Python notes in a Python folder, all Python notes should be linked to a Python note.

And folders can be replaced with overview notes that link to all notes in the folder (AKA related to the subject.)

Next steps¶

I haven’t moved everything yet to 1 folder, instead I make all new notes in 1 folder.
Currently the old folders act as some kind of link between all notes inside of it.

  • I need to make central pages to take over this role before I move out the notes.

PS: In my new setup, new notes can be moved to a public or private folder with the click of a button.

personal knowledge management