Welcome to my blog series, “Practically Paperless with Obsidian.” For an overview of this series, please see Episode 0: Series Overview.

As I go through the process of migrating from Evernote to Obsidian, I have moved all kinds of notes and documents into Obsidian. Some of these, like tax documents, for instance, raise the question: Is it safe to put sensitive data into Obsidian?

This is nothing new. When I was writing my Going Paperless posts using Evernote ten years ago, one of the most common questions I got was, “But don’t you worry about exposing your data?” The question came in different forms–what if Evernote is hacked? Don’t you worry that Evernote staff can read your notes and documents?–but the general idea was always the same. People were worried about others gaining access personal information and want to know if a tool is safe to use in this regard. I thought I would spend this Episode talking about how I think about data protection and describing some of the tools I use to protect my in the context of going practically paperless with Obsidian.

Layers of a security onion

When I think of protecting the notes I keep in Obsidian, I think in terms of layers of an onion, with each layer representing one method of protection that I am comfortable with. Each method alone is not perfect. Combined, however, they provide me with enough sense of security that I don’t lose any sleep over the matter. These layers remind me of those doors that Maxwell Smart passed through to get to and from his office each day.

In the case of the data I keep in Obsidian there are three layers of security working together to protect my data: physical access, digital access, and data encryption. I illustrate this as follows:

1. Physical access to Obsidian data

One of the big selling points of Obsidian is that data resides locally by default. My Obsidian notes are stored on the hard disk of my desktop or laptop computer. Let’s set aside cloud-syncing services and mobile devices for the moment–I’ll come back to it later, I promise. For now, my Obsidian vault sits in a folder on a hard disk on my Mac Mini, and that Mac Mini sits on shelf in my office.

If someone wants to access my Obsidian notes, they need access to my Mac Mini and that means they need access to my office. Access to my office requires access to my house. This is illustrated in the “physical access” layer in the image above. On the right side, the house represent physical access to my Obsidian data.

Now let’s pretend that instead of storing my notes in Obsidian, I followed Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelksaten model and all of my notes were on slips of paper stored in a slipbox that resided in my office where my Mac Mini currently sits. This is illustrated in the “physical access” layer in the image above. On the left side, the house represents physical access to my slip box.

So far physical access to my notes is identical in either case. A person needs to gain access to my office to get to either the Mac Mini or the slipbox. Physical security of my notes is the same in both cases. I make this point because I sometime hear arguments that people don’t want to store certain types of data in digital form. This is perfectly reasonable. Everyone needs to find their own comfort level. But from my viewpoint, physical security for locally stored data in Obsidian and the same data stored on paper in a slipbox is identical.

Physical security itself can include a number of layers. (1) We lock the door to our house. (2) We may lock the door to our office within our house¹. (3) We may have an alarm system installed to discourage an unauthorized breach.

I never lost sleep about data security when most of my files were on paper and stored in a filing cabinet in my office, long before Evernote or Obsidian. Given that the physical security is the same when storing my data locally in Obsidian, I don’t lose sleep over the physical security of my data their either.

2. Digital access to Obsidian data

Suppose, however, that someone managed to breach the physical security layer and was able to sit in front of my Mac Mini². The second layer of the onion–protecting digital access to my Obsidian data–kicks in.

To gain access to my notes in Obsidian, a person would first need to be able to sign into my Mac Mini using an account that has permissions to the vault. At its most basic level, that means a person needs a password to sign into the computer. Good password practices help here. For instance, I use a different password for everything. Gaining access to one password only gets a person access to one specific device or service. A password manager helps with this. I’ve also made it a practice to use long passwords as they are much harder to crack.

Suppose, however, for the sake of our exercise, that the person who managed to break into my house has figured out my unique and hard-to-guess password for my computer. What then? Just as physical access can have many elements to it (keys, alarms, etc.) so does digital access. In addition to a strong, unique password, I also make use of multi-factor authentication. A password alone isn’t enough to get into the computer. A second form of verification is required. There all kinds of multi-factor authentication: biometric, an authenticator tool, a text message to another device, or a separate device entirely like a YubiKey.

The likelihood of someone breaching my physical security, figuring out my password, and getting past the multi-factor authentication is so small that it really isn’t worth worrying about, at least in my view. Suppose, for instance, that my notes were stored on paper in a slipbox, as my illustration shows on the left side. In this case, the digital access layer of the security onion doesn’t exist. Here, then, is a side-by-side comparison of what someone has to do to gain access to my notes in Obsidian in case, and on paper (slipbox) in another:

It would actually be easier to gain access to my data if it were stored on paper in my office than in Obsidian with the vault stored locally on my computer.

3. Data encryption

Suppose our frustrated villain, able to get into my office, but unable to breach the digital security of my computer, decides to just take the computer with them, with the idea off gaining direct access to the data on the hard disk within, perhaps by mounting it on another device. At this point, the scenario is getting a bit preposterous, but let’s just go with it. This is where the data encryption layer comes into play.

The hard disks on my computers are all encrypted using FileVault, MacOSs native disk encryption software. FileVault uses 128-bit AES encryption with a 256-bit key. The data on the disk is encrypted at rest until proper authorization has been granted at which point the data is decrypted. “Proper authorization” in this case means the access required in part 2 above. Without a password and valid authentication from a separate authenticator, there is no practical way to decrypt the data. Our villain would have obtained a computer, but it would be useless to them unless they wiped the drive, in which case, they lose access to the data.

With these three layers of the onion working in conjunction. I feel perfectly safe storing my notes, even sensitive ones, in my local Obsidian vault. The risk of a breach is not impossible, but it is so unlikely that I don’t worry about it.

Syncing notes and cloud security

Ah, but what if I want to access my notes from multiple devices? Don’t I worry about someone gaining access to my data in the cloud? I don’t.

For Obsidian data to sync across multiple devices, some kind of syncing service must be used. I have experience with two of these services: iCloud and Obsidian Sync. When I began using Obsidian in January 2021, I used iCloud to sync data between my computer and my iPhone. In that scenario, the data lives on my hard disk (which is still encrypted) is synchronized through the iCloud service to iCloud servers, which in turn synced the data to my iPhone (where the data is also encrypted). Indeed the entire synchronization process is encrypted.

Eventually, I ran into sync issues that seemed to be entirely related to iCloud and I switched to Obsidian’s Sync service. This is a fast, reliable sync service that I setup once and then never had to mess with again. It just works.

There are two models to Obsidian Sync: end-to-end encryption and managed encryption. To ensure complete privacy, I use the end-to-end encryption model. In this model, the data (already encrypted on my hard disk thanks to FileVault) is encrypted when being sent to and from Obsidian’s sync service. It is encrypted at rest on Obsidian’s servers. Best of all, I am the only one who can access the data. The encryption uses a password and Obsidian developers do not have access to that password. The downside of this is that if I ever forget my password, I would not be able to access the vault in the Obsidian Sync service³.

The 3 layers of my security onion still apply even with data stored in Obsidian Sync. Someone would need physical access to the server where the data was stored. They would need digitial access to the data on the server, and they would need a password for decrypting that data. Those three layers of security are good enough for me.

But what about a mobile device?

Possibly the weakest link in this chain is my iPhone, and I say it is the weakest link only because it is the most likely place where someone can gain physical access. This doesn’t even have to be malicious. My phone could slip out of my pocket and I might not notice it is gone right away.

Even here, however, the other layers of the security onion kick in. If someone finds my phone, they need to gain digital access to my phone. And data on iPhones is encrypted so direct access to the solid state storage does no good. Moreover, security is set up on my phone so that after a certain number of failed attempts to sign into the phone, the phone will wipe its data, making it useless to anyone who was after the data. Also, I can wipe the data remotely, if I realize the phone is missing and the phone is turned on and able to access a cellular network.

Some additional protections

Protecting data is more than just preventing unauthorized access to the data. It is also making sure that I have access when I need it. Here are some additional ways that I protect my data (including my Obsidian vault).

1. VPN service

I use a VPN service to make sure my data is encrypted end-to-end, even when I am on 5G, cellular, or unfamiliar WiFi networks. This way, I don’t have to worry about someone snooping on networks that I have no control over. The VPN service ensures my data is encrypted end-to-end from the moment it leaves my device.

2. Data backups

My data is regularly backed up. There are local and cloud backups:

• I use TimeMachine to continually backup my data to an external disk on my home machines. This allows for quick local restores for times that I make a dumb mistake.
• All of our computers are also backed up to the cloud using CrashPlan’s Small Business backup plan. This service costs some money, but I look at it the same way I look at paying for insurance. The few times I’ve needed it, it has been there and restored all of my data quickly.

In each case, the backed-up data is encrypted and only I can decrypt it.

Finding a security sweet spot

It is one thing for me to list out all of the reasons why I don’t worry about unauthorized access to my Obsidian data. It is another for others to feel comfortable on their own setup. Some people will insist that the three layers I find reassuring are just not reassuring enough. Others will think it is overkill. That’s fine. Everyone needs to figure out their own security sweet spot. Below is a diagram I sketched out for a post on this subject I wrote just about 10 years ago. I’m reusing it here because I think it is as true now as it was then. Given the practical theme of these posts, I might change the “low reward” and “low risk” to “low practicality” and “highly practical”, but otherwise, it stands.

Find a sweet spot you are comfortable with. And remember, you always have the option of not storing something in Obsidian, or in digital form period.

Summary of Tools and Services

The table below summarizes some of the tools and service I make use of in each of the layers discussed about. I should point out that I’ve had these practices in place for a long time. They do more than just protect my Obsidian data. They protect all my data.

Coming attractions

I have covered a lot of ground in the first 23 episodes of this series. A lot of this ground was me exploring the basic principles and functions of Obsidian, and figuring out how to make practical use of them. Over the next several episodes, I’ll be exploring specific use cases — practical examples of how I use Obsidian on a day-to-day basis.

I also wanted to put out a call for suggestions on topics you’d like to see covered here. I can’t say I’ll be able to meet every demand: I tend to avoid writing about situations for which I have no need or for which I have no experience, but I’ll do my best.

Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you back here next weel.

Prev: Episode 22: Daily Notes Revisited: The Best of Both Worlds?
Next: Episode 24: Use Case: How I Capture Field Notes In Obsidian

Written on March 12 and 20, 2022.

During the years that I was Evernote’s paperless ambassador, one thing I learned was that organization was a very personal thing. This came as no surprise. Each person is unique, has unique requirements, and the result is a unique was of organizing their notes. What was a bit surprising at the time was how vocal people were about what method of organization was best. I’m not doing that here.

Recently I wrote about what I think of as “how-to versus how-I.” My migration from Evernote to Obsidian is an experiment. My use of plain text files for the bulk of my output is an experiment. Some things work, and I keep those things around. Other things don’t work and I toss them or try to find ways to improve them. So when I talk about how I organize my notes in Obsidian, I am talking about an experiment that I am working on that meets my own unique requirements. What works works for me, and may not work for anyone else. But I think it is good to have examples of what people are doing because there is always the possibility to learn something.

Lessons-Learned

Lessons from Evernote

Consider some lessons I took from how I organized my notes in Evernote:

1. The organization grew organically without much initial thought.
2. I considered notebooks topical and that all notes related to the topic should go into the notebook.
3. I thought of tags as themes: a mechanism that allowed me to span or collect topics together.

This resulted in an overly complicated set of notebooks, where it was sometimes difficult to find something because topically, I put it into one notebook when, thematically, I looked for it elsewhere.

Lessons from Obsidian

I have been using Obsidian for over a year now, and in that time, I’ve experimented quiet a bit. One thing that I have found, is that my notes fall into several general categories:

1. Attachments: PDFs, images files and other files stored in my vault that are generally not plain text. Example: a PDF of a W-2
2. Documents: Documents are attachments with context. They are wrappers for the attchments. That is, a note in which I transclude an attachment file, in order to provide additional meta-data and context to that file either through YAML frontmatter, note text, or links. Example: a note that transcludes a PDF of W-2 and also contains meta-data (tags, etc.) about the document, as well as any other remarks or links that I add. For more on how I think about document notes, see Episode 1.
3. Permanent notes: I am borrowing this term from Luhan’s Zettelkasten methodology. Permanent notes are notes about one thought that can stand on its own, written in my own words, with context added in the form of links and tags. Example: a note about how power differs in the Senate and executive branch, based on reading I have done.
4. Maps of Content: Notes that pull together links to other notes in a unified context that allows for easy access to relavant information. Example: a note about a specific vehicle, that links to other notes and documents related to the vehicle, and provides additional context in the form of a timeline or backlinks.
5. Writing: Notes that contain writing: stories, letters, blog posts drafts, essays, etc. Example: The note containing the draft of this blog post.

Looking through the notes in my vault, I can generally put each one into one of these buckets. There are some exceptions, of course, like templates or my daily notes file. But the vast majority fit into this framework.

As I was thinking about my requirements for organizaing my notes, I tried to keep all of these lessons in mind.

My Requirements

Since the basis of organization stems from one’s requirements, let me talk about the requirements I had in mind when I was organizing my notes in Obsidian. As I thought about how I might better organize my notes in Obsidian, two requirements began to emerge:

1. Optimize for finding things later as opposed to organizing them now. This is something I have emphasized in previous episodes. It takes time to maintain a taxonomy for notes. The important thing for me is not so much how the notes are organized, but how quickly I can find them when I need them.
2. Remember that I may not be the only one that needs to access these notes and plan accordingly. Kelly may need access to the notes and she needs to be able to find what she is looking for. We jokingly call this “succession planning” but in reality, if something happened to me, access to my notes, which contain all kinds of information that she would need, would be vital. Finding that information quickly would take some burden off her mind.

(Re)organizing My Vault

These two requirements led to some decisions that I made about how I’d structure my vault.

1. Attachements, documents and permanents notes can have a completely flat structure. I typically access these note in one of two ways: via an MOC note, or via a link on another note. It is rare for me to search for these notes directly. The allows for a flat structure.
2. Maps of content (MOCs) need to be very easy to find. Because they are topical and provide sturcture and context, they lend themselves to a more hierarchical structure. MOCs are also the most useful mechanism for Kelly to find what she is looking for.
3. Writing notes could go into their own folder and be organized in a relatively simple hierarchy, the way I might organize them on a file system.

I went about making these changes. It was not hard to do because Obsidian handles all of the linking and indexing behind the scenes as notes move around. I was tempted to have just four or five top level folders, so that my vault would look something like:

• attachments
• documents
• slipbox
• writing
• MOCs

But I decided for ease-of-use to keep to a flatter hierarchy and implement the taxonomy through a different mechanism. At the top level, therefore, my vault looks like this:

The vast majority of my note can be found in the attachments, document, and slipbox folders. I’d guess they contain 90%+ of all of my notes. The structure for MOCs is flat, too, but contains some structure to make it easy to find the MOC I’m looking for. Still, the MOCs make up a small fraction of all the notes, even though they link to many of them.

Some examples I used to test this structure

Example 1: Tax season – MOCs to the rescue

As I write this, I am preparing to send all of our tax information to our accountant for preparation and filing. An MOC for all tax-related documents makes this a simple exercise. As tax documents come in, I add the PDFs to my vault as attachments, create document notes for them to capture context and meta-data, and then add a reference to the document on the MOC note for taxes.

Here is what the “Tax Documents” MOC looks like (with some annotations in red):

In the Tax Documents section, there is a corresponding year for each year in the Tax Returns section and under each section is a list of all of the tax documents for that year, each of which in turn transcludes the PDF attachment as well as meta-data for the yearly summary table.

I’ve tried to make this a one-stop-shopping document for anything tax related. It is useful for more than just tax season. We recently refinanced our house (squeezing it in before the rates started to go up again) and needed to provide some tax documents as part of that process. This made it easy. If Kelly needs some tax information, she know to go to this note, and it will point her to everywhere else she needs to go.

When I go to sent the documents to our accountant, I’ve already got everything in one place. It’s just a matter of uploading the documents to their secure portal.

This MOC meets both by requirements: (1) optimizing for finding things later, and (2) making sure Kelly can find them too.

Example 2: Managing services – herding kittens

I miss the old days when you had your phone bill, you gas bill, and electric bill, and maybe a newspaper subscription to keep track of. Today, everything is a service: from streaming media to software to digital subscriptions, there are tons of services that need to be managed and coralled.

Within my MOC structure, I have folder called “Services” and within that folder is an MOC note for each and every service we subscribe to. Combining the usual utilities with subscriptions and software services, it is a long list. Each service is billed in its own way, on its own cycle. Each costs something different. It can be hard to stay on top of. I do it through MOCs using a simple set of guidelines:

1. Each service gets its own note.
2. Each note has a specific set of YAML frontmatter at the top to keep track of the basics. I’ll come back to this in a moment. Currently, it looks like this:

3. The note itself has two main sections: (1) Service info, which includes things like where the service is billed to, links to managing the account, how to cancel the service, etc. (2) Service notes: if I have to contact support, the notes related to the contact go in this section. The dates are links back to the daily note on the date of the contact. Here’s an example:

4. With a note for each service populated with the meta-data, I have a Service Summary MOC note. This note uses the Dataview to summarize all of our “active” services with links to the service note, and listing the monthly and annual costs, and the due date of each. This allows us to view, at-a-glance, all of the services we have, how much they are costing us, and when they are do. If we cancel a service, I mark it’s meta-data status as “canceled” and it drops off our active list. Here is a snippet from that summary note:

This model has worked very well for keeping up with all of our services. The summary note makes it easy to find anything we are looking for. The MOC note for each service contains everything we need to know about that service and its history. There only one place we need to go to look for the information so it is easy to find.

Example 3: Continuity planning – a step-by-step guide

Back when I was Evernote’s paperless ambassador, one of the more popular pieces I wrote was one I called 6 Steps for Life Continuity Planning in Evernote. In our house, we jokingly call this “succession planning” to take away some of the discomfort of thinking about this kind of thing. As part of my migration from Evernote, I’ve been working on using the features of Obsidian to improve upon how we document this continuity planning. An MOC I call “Succession Plan” plays a central role in this.

The Succession Plan MOC centralizes everything that Kelly or I would need if something happened to one of us. It is also written so that if something happened to both of us, the folks who would be responsible for our affairs would have a detailed roadmap.

The document is broken into two parts:

1. A step-by-step guide for everything that needs to happen, in a logical order, with links to all of the relevant documents, contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. It is all right there in one place. Go to that note and you have everything you need at your fingertips.
2. A kind of annotated index to my Obsidian vault, with links, so that if there is something that is needed that is not in the step-by-step section, there is a framework for locating it in the index section.

I try to keep this up-to-date, and it is still a work-in-progress, but there is enough there that it would be useful in the unlikely event of a water landing. Here is a high-level glance at the structure:

Once again, I’m focusing on finding things later when they are needed as opposed to a deep hierarchical structure to how the notes are organized.

Summary

Like any organizational structure, this is a work-in-progress. It evolves as I test things out, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and make adjustments. But this is the closest I’ve come to accomplishing an organization that doesn’t require me to constantly think about where I need to put something, and instead focus on linking to it in ways that will be easy to locate later on. It is an easy system to work with and so far, it is working well for me.

In next week’s post, I’ll talk about archiving notes.

Prev: Episode 17: Six Ways I Use Note Links
Next: Episode 19: Archiving Notes

Written on February 2-13 , 2022.

Welcome to my blog series, “Practically Paperless with Obsidian.” For an overview of this series, please see Episode 0: Series Overview.

At a high level, I had three main requirements when I was looking for a note-taking app. I wanted an app that:

1. Uses plain text files: first because they are accessible anywhere and require no special or proprietary software to access; and second because they are essentially future-proof.
2. Does not require a cloud service or SaaS to use. Such a service could be optional, for syncing notes between devices, for instance, but the core functionality of the app does not require this.
3. Has the ability to link between text files.

There are plenty of text editors in the world. Notepad on Windows and Vi/Vim in Unix environments, which have been around for decades, can read and edit text files. There are plenty of apps that are based on cloud services: Evernote is one example. Obsidian met all three of these requirements, but the one that really impressed me was its implementation of note-linking. So today, I’m going to focus on that and discuss six aspects of note linking that I find incredibly useful in Obsidian.

1. Creating links between notes

Anyone who has used Obsidian knows how easy it is to create a link to another note. You just tap the link key twice and begin typing the name of the note you want to link to. Once you have it, you hit enter, and your note is now linked. The ability to be able to link between notes is something I’d wanted in a text editor for a long time. Of course, it is possible to do this in a rudimentary way in other tools, like Evernote and OneNote, but neither tool uses plain text files locally on your computer, and neither links notes with the power that Obidian does. Two examples of that power that I find incredibly useful:

I can link and not worry about losing the connection. Obsidian handles any updates to links between notes behind the scenes. That is, if I have file A linked to file B and I move file B, the link between the notes remains in tact because Obsidian is keeping it up-to-date with any changes. The same is true if I rename the note.

I can link to any section within a note. In addition to being able to link to a note, I can link to any section within a note. I use this frequently in my daily notes file. Each top-level heading represents a single day, and if I want to link to a day in my daily notes file, I can do it using a link like this [[Daily#2022-01-28 Fri]]

2. Using note aliases

Another powerful feature of linking that I use is note aliases. A note alias is piece of YAML frontmatter that allows you to refer to a note by a different name. I use this for notes about people. I have, in my vault, notes related to family members which act as a place to see where I have mentioned them. For instance, suppose I have a note for James Bond. Anytime I refer to Bond in a note, I do so with a link to the note.

Now, because I want the list of people to appear alphabetically by last name, I name the people notes using the format “Last Name, First Name.” Bond’s note, therefore, is titled “Bond, James.”

Within the YAML frontmatter of the note, however, I have an alias setup that allows me to refer to the note as “James Bond” which looks better inside the text of a note.

The alias allows me to refer to a note either way: “Bond, James” or “James Bond” by automatically adding an alias to the note link when I insert it. Either alias points to the same note file underneath.

When I use the alias as a link, Obsidian automatically inserts the note alias into my note link so that it appears as “James Bond” in my note, even though it links to “Bond, James.”

I can think of all kinds of uses for note aliases, but this is a very practical one that I’ve been using quite a bit.

3. Linking to dates in daily notes

Last week I wrote about how I use my daily notes as an index to my life. In that post, I described how I use a single file for my daily notes rather than one-note-per-day the way the out-of-box behavior for daily notes is setup in Obsidian. One of the advantages of the one-note-per-day form of daily notes is that the title of the note is a date and the natural language date plug-in can create links based on a date, which is an easy way to link back to a daily noet for a given day.

It turns out, however, that this is easy to do using a single file for daily notes, and I’ve been doing this more and more. If I have a note that refers to a date, I’ll create the date in a link and the link will link back to the section of my daily notes file for the day in question. For example:

I’m writing this on January 28, 2022. I draft all of these posts in Obsidian so by using a note link for the date in this link, I am connecting back to my daily notes file as a backlink to that file. The date link itself looks like this: [[Daily#2022-01-28 Fri]]. If I now go look at my daily notes, I’ll see the backlink to this draft because I’ve linked to the section of my daily notes file containing the date in question:

I can do this for dates (sections) that already exist in my daily notes file, or I can do it for a future date. Once that future date appears in my daily notes file, the backlink to the referenced note will appear as well.

One feature I’d like to see added to Obsidian related to backlinks is the ability to indicate which section of the note file the link appears in. In addition to showing the note from which the backlink comes, it would show the path to the section in the note. So if the reference took place in a section of the document under an H1 head called “Posts” and an H2 heading called “Series”, the backlink would indicate the document name followed by something like “Posts > Series.” That would be a useful improvement.

4. The Power of Backlinks

Backlinks provide additional context for a note I am looking at. I’ve come to rely on backlinks quite a bit. As I demonstrated in the previous section, a backlink is a link to the current note from another note. By referencing other notes using links, I can easily get a summary of activity, for instance on a particular note, or see how that notes relates to other notes, ideas, or thoughts.

For instance, I recently had to change the battery in the car fob for our car. I’ve done this before and had instructions written for it. Not long after that, I had to replace the battery in Kelly’s fob. Looking at the instruction note with the backlinks, I can see references to changing the battery in my daily notes file:

If I click on the backlinks, I can see the exact date on which I replaced these batteries. When I replace them again, I’ll know how long they last. This is also an example of where I think it would be useful for a backlink should also indicate the section of the note the link appears in. If this feature were available, I could see the dates directly in the backlink because I use dates as a section header in my daily notes file.

5. Placeholder links

Sometimes, when writing notes, I find it convenient to add placeholder links while I am typing, and come back to them later to fill them in. Obsidian makes this easy. I can just create a note link as I would for any other note, and move on. Clicking on the link will create the note, but I don’t have to create it first and then link to it later. This has advantages because I may not want to lose a train-of-thought. It helps me to organize thoughts at a high-level , creating a pseudo-structure. I tend to use placeholder links in two scenarios:

1. When writing thoughts on something I’ve read, and trying to see how that fits in with other things I’ve read or thought about.
2. When referring to future dates. Linking to a future date means the link will work once that date section appears in my daily notes file.

I can see these placeholder links the graph view. They are the dimmer dots. This provides an easy way to see all these “to-be-created” notes at a high level:

![[Pasted image 20220201174346.png]]

6. Auto-link title plug-in for external links

My notes frequently link outside of my vault–that is, to web links to other sites. One plug-in that has saved me a ton of time for these external sites is the “Auto-link title” plug-in. I can grab a link from my browser and when I paste the link into Obsidian, it automatically goes out to the site, extracts the title of the page, and creates an Obsidian link that includes the title so that it renders cleaner in my notes

For instance, if I paste in a link to the list of books I’ve read since 1996, the plug-in will grab the title of that page and convert it to a nicely formatted link in my note:

In next week’s post, I’ll talk about how I organize my notes in Obsidian (so far). See you back here then!

Prev: Episode 16, Finding Notes Quickly
Next: Episode 18: How I Organize My Notes in Obsidian

Written on January 28-February 1, 2022.