Here Is How I Use Tags 🏷️ And Links 🔗️ In Obsidian To Manage My Zettelkasten 📝️

links or tags in your zettlecaustin system which one should you use why what are the benefits drawbacks of either approach and how do i use them that's what we're going to cover today stay tuned [Music] welcome back everyone if you're new here my name is brian jenks and today i'm going to be talking about why i use links as my tags and tags are basically just indicators of status for my obsidian vault why do i do that what are the benefits what are the drawbacks it's a question i get asked a lot or that comes up very often in the obsidian forum and i'm going to cover today why i chose this approach and how it benefits me and where potential drawbacks might lie for you if you choose to use this so as i said i have this question asked of me a lot and i do have a frequently asked questions repo on github where people can just file issues basically ask me questions and then people can either help out or i can just answer them and anyone can just refer to all the my prior answered questions and have a one-stop shop for that type of stuff now i've answered the question here about what the benefits and drawbacks are of using tags versus links and why i choose to use links as my quote unquote tags and basically my unique approach for this that i think i was the first one to start doing this i'm not sure it doesn't really matter but this is the approach i chose to use and i'm going to show you and tell you why so a little bit of context and background there is an individual in the obsidian forums who now also has a youtube channel an obsidian course named nick milo who i believe is one who developed the term mock or map of content and i really like that approach and i have already implemented this in my system and i really think it's a really great approach for managing a digital gardens that'll cost an evergreen note forest whatever and because of that way that system works i have sort of adapted my vault to use tags differently to support mocks and the usage of mocks and effectively using them now why and how are the usage of tags and links different in this respect with obsidian so in obsidian when i first started the system tags didn't even display on the graph so it was already a benefit in that regard but now it's it's not really it's neither here nor there but i do like the separation because tags display with a different color or at least you can set them to display with a different color on the graph now when i use tags you can see that i have this one here for a tree i talked about my comprehensive workflow video that the tree and the emoji tags are basically indicators of status so the reason why i use links as status instead of like actually linking related things like neurology flow state mental health or whatever like the productivity whatever the tags might be however you typically might use you know hashtags i use emojis and status for this because the tags do not link files to each other basically they are soft links so if i link a lot of things to this tree tag here then that means that there's basically no filter it's all the things that are tagged with that tree emoji or in this case as an evergreen note i can use this and find all of my evergreen notes that's really cool and i could say hey if i want to open up my graph my graph view and i want to only see the tags for the evergreen evergreen notes then i can easily find all of my evergreen notes that i have in my vault that's a really quick way of filtering based on status now that's useful but really what i really like is it's able to help me filter down on say hey all of my notes that are currently in a status of their brand new seedlings or they're in the incubator which means i need to follow up flesh them out connect them to other nodes in the vault then that's easy for me to just go back and click on that and then see a list of all those items now i could just use text of saying uh open up that that text is like unread or in progress and i could do that but this is the approach i prefer now i mentioned it already but tags are a soft link so my evergreen note tag little tree here connects to a large variety of notes across different contexts so this one is like you know about adhd but i could have a note way over there about c plus programming completely unrelated to any of this material and it's also an evergreen note so in that respect the soft link is just like a giant umbrella over all things of a given status in this respect but hard links are what actually link files together for that serendipitous discovery in a settle costume and the reason why i use links instead of tags as my tag you know it gets confusing but basically the way the tag system in here is just status to me but links are both links between files but also links to what i treat as tags so for instance if i actually take this note into preview you can see that some of these are grayed out basically this means that these files don't exist on the graph you can see there are different color nodes red nodes that is because these files do not exist in the vault yet they are referenced i'm referencing a node named flow state but the note does not exist if i hover over it you see does not is not created yet does not exist why do i do this so over time as i have a large swath of notes in my vault if i over time reference something very often and link it quote unquote link tag it with a specific tag like this one you can see this is a big red node right here what is that that's learning so i might see over time i'm linking to the quote unquote tag learning quite a lot maybe that's a very prominent topic in my vault if i talk about it a lot and i have a lot of notes linked to learning i might want to create that note and then promote it to a mock a map of content saying hey this is a topic i talk about a lot so now i'm not going to list out itemized every single note that's attached to this thing but i might identify prominent areas of subject matter around learning that i have like um oh here's a an interesting article i read and then here's one closed deletion space repetition i might link say okay learning space repetition and have that jumping off point to dive into my material but that point starts with the mock a map of content saying hey here is a subject and here's a lot of jumping off areas to just dive into material those different notes that are the material link to other notes and each other in that subject area and context and that is a great way of starting to traverse your graph traverse your vault and serendipitously discover notes you may have forgotten or connections that you did not immediately think of right off the bat this is a very really useful approach in an active space repetition practice because you're constantly reviewing notes in your vault and sometimes it's been a long time since you reviewed it so it's always brushing your mind and so as you look over this you can easily see which of these red nodes are waiting to be promoted to a status of mock so why this is really important and why this is critical to the way i run my vault here is over time i can see the emerging structure of my content my vault my notes my second brain i can over time see the emerging structure and what that means is that i'm not going to say these are the topics i speak about it's learning it's adhd it's programming those are not the topics that i say i need to list things these are the topics i talk about so any new note i create needs to fall within one of my predefined categories or else i don't know where it goes no in my file explorer here you see i don't have any folders beyond just like you know utility my daily journal goes there which is the daily notes pictures templates and then this is some stuff about like content creation medium articles and youtube videos but beyond that my actual notes are not set up in a structured folder hierarchy there is no hierarchy it's all just a top level pool of notes so how do you organize and deal with that well as your notes and your vault reach critical mass too many notes to really manage and easily find what you're looking for yes we have search yes we have tags depending on how you use them but as you reach critical mass you're going to start needing some level of structure not necessarily like nested folders to the nth degree where all of your notes must fall that sort of management of your vault becomes to the point where it's in uh too much of an encumbrance it's too much friction for you to create and get notes made and connected when you're constantly just trying to sort and file them in the correct location based on the taxonomy that you set for yourself so in my opinion that is not a great approach when you're trying to build a system like this so as a as you go about this and you tag these notes that don't exist so if i go back you know i'm tagging i might tag learning here or flow state or neurology whatever they don't exist yet but when i start to see that a lot of things are connected to them i might say that is a piece of material that is a topic a subject i really need to pay attention to promote to a mock and start connecting to my web of maps of content and what this can look like let me see if i can find one here um productivity i think is one so i might just make the note and not actually do anything with it yet but for instance like i can say okay i made the note it now exists but over time it might just be a tag note so i could say hey a lot of things are connecting to this like learning so let's actually uh go to the graph and say hey we're gonna find learning again it's very prominent and easy to find because i'm connecting to it a lot okay learning if i click this red node it will create that file so now we have the file learning and now if i open up the graph yes a lot of things are connected to this so what i might do is say hey this note exists now but it's it's still a tag note it's not like an actual map of content yet so i might give it a tag so now as a status indicator i can say hey i have a lot of things that are status indicators of tag notes and maps of content are the map tags here so if i click the tag notes you can see i have some things in here that are actually tagged as potential mocks over time and i might graduate them maybe i might wait a little bit longer but in the meantime now it exists either way it doesn't really matter so one thing you can do is use that system see the red nodes get larger over time promote them to a mock directly or just say hey that's getting pretty big i want to make sure i pay close attention to that over time tag it with a tag uh status indicator and now it's here when i can review these i can say yeah i'm ready to add these to to my mocks and so then i can say okay let's add it to the mocks like this and an example of some of these mocks are like let's see here i have one for let's do business so i can go to business and then here's a bunch of different you know jumping off points into my business mock i have a link back to the main index i have a bunch of other topics strategies different things about business that i might look at and this is how i use a mock um c plus plus is a very large fleshed out one for my class so i could easily link to different things and the reason why this is really great is you can see like i'm traversing uh those those mocks that way is that links between the mocks because they're all categorized as mocks they have this status indicator why is that important we'll get to that but now i can easily traverse backwards so it's like going forwards in the browser and then the back button c plus is a programming language programming programming is one of my interests interests interests is listed on my index as a jumping off point of mocks so these different mocks at different levels of granularity link to each other and because they're all tagged with that quote-unquote hashtag or my status indicator if i go to my graph and i want to filter let's remove everything here actually let's just leave it so you can see exactly how i do this so tag i'm going to do a map so a map and this is now searching for my maps of content that have the map tag the way tags are typically used so now i have a bunch of stuff here let's remove attachments let's remove tags what this lets me do is see a connected web of just my maps of content and this way i can easily see a giant macro view of my vault broken down so i can see all the topic and subject areas broken out i don't have to have these all linked in a specific you know nested bullet point level on a specific page or anything i could just tag them with that status indicator and now i can see them all connected to each other because they all have backlinks to their prior um their prior mocks so c plus connects to programming programming is an interest of mine and interest is one of the major topic areas or giant um meta categories of life my life interests programming c plus and over time as you see all these notes get added to your vault you promote different mocks up to mock status and you find a way where they fit in with their counterparts in here so necessarily i could say hey learning is a mock now i can list out all the critical large jumping off points within learning and i can say hmm where would the learning mock go so i could put it under interests my i am interested in learning or i could put it under personal knowledge management because you're managing your own personal knowledge probably by learning new things and i can identify easily where i might put this mock because i don't need to figure out where i'm going to file all of these notes in a bunch of folders they're attached to their mock and subsequently higher levels of mock map of content so this sounds like a lot it sounds really complex but when you actually put this into practice it's really not as difficult as it might appear or seem to be if you like the type of obsidian content and the things that i talk about um i do have a brand new newsletter a link to that is in the description and the pin comment below and i plan on sending out like updates on what i'm working on announcements of different things and if i ever make like a course around anything that's where i might be announcing it so if this interests you or you want to just see what i'm up to or have a direct line of communication with me beyond my discord server which i'll link to that is also in the description below then you can join this newsletter and let's chat so hopefully i'll see you there in my opinion using the maps of content and this strategy is critical to managing a vault of notes like this using a top-down structure or a bottom-up structure where you don't have a nested folder hierarchy you're not worried about classifying and filtering and sorting and filing all of your notes into different folders and subsets and managing those granularly it's just here's a vault here's a graph it's all connected how can i change some certain pieces of metadata to make sure i know where to find things or have a good starting place once those things are established and filed into your zettle costume vault and so as you review material you make new notes you have status indicators okay it's a seedling brand new idea it's got some content now i need to flesh it out okay it's ready to be connected to the main vault now it's an evergreen note there you go and then those connect to different categories adhd mental health productivity flow state whatever your tags are and then you can graduate those tags to tag notes to maps of content and they're filterable in this web of content you have here and it makes it easier to see a giant meta view of your vault and see how things can be broken down and structured and i think this this is critical when you're trying to manage a system that is just a giant pool and breaking it down and breaking it out so you can find out where your things are where you need to be this allows you to define your structure as you go instead of setting out right from the beginning to i need 15 levels of nested folders about every single uh nested layer of materials subject ideas and like you don't need to have a folder for religions and then two folders for eastern and western religions and then all a folder for each religion underneath those categories under those and then the time periods you don't need to do anything like that it's just i have a mock that mock is religion and then you could have different sub mock notes linking to those and you could traverse that in your local or full zettlecostan obsidian graph and this is an easier way of connecting your knowledge and your nodes of knowledge than just having a bunch of folders and trying to figure out where things need to be placed or hunting for something if you've lost it yes we have search and obsidian but i think that the cognitive load of having to manage all of that not only taxonomy but the filing and management of a nested fire nested folder hierarchy is it's just too much when you're trying to actually do something in this space where you're trying to build a webbed network of knowledge that is of course my opinion ultimately these systems are an extension of our own thoughts our own brains our own knowledge if you're going to be building a second brain settle constant digital garden whatever ultimately it's a highly personal endeavor and how you want to do that how you want to structure it is completely up to you this is how i approach things this works for me and i think it's a great approach it might not be right for you certain disciplines might have a better way of doing something that suits their discipline or their approach or their goal my goal is to have a second brain of all of my knowledge not just a traditional zeddle costume where it's only my ideas after reading literature notes i have programming notes in here i have certain pieces of information and pictures and things that i want in here for specific reasons but overall i have ways of getting to that like i could say programming right here is a list of all of my mocks and content and notes around programming that might not be a pure zettlecoston in essence like of just my unique ideas after reading literature but all those things might come from all the other areas but i could say hey this offshoot of interest programming and whatever that's that's that section i can traverse that road go there and be like okay i know i'm not going to be in my traditional zetto cost in space when i'm in these notes but it's my second brain my brain has more than just my own ideas my brain also has knowledge i've collected from other sources or factual knowledge like uh how vectors and arrays work in c e and c plus plus you know it's it's really just a matter of how do you want to approach this and how is that approach going to help you reduce friction and cognitive load to actually have a beneficial output and spend less time in configuration and more time in creation of knowledge and notes so hopefully you found this interesting and maybe even a little bit enlightening this is how i approach myself costing taxonomy and the taxonomy of notes of classifying them into different statuses into links into basically how i manage all of this content and still have a good organizational structure even if it's not a nested folder hierarchy so hopefully you found this interesting and before i go a quick note to the patrons who support this channel thank you for your support devin ed hyungjung leonardo brandon klaus paul john joel john and alberto thank you guys for supporting the channel through patreon and anybody else who supports the channel through buy me a coffee paypal or any other supportive methods and efforts thank you so much it makes it very worthwhile to know that people appreciate my work and if you want to support my work these are the ways that you can do it donations patreon and watching my videos so thank you everyone and i will catch you all in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Bryan Jenks

Views: 56,309

Keywords: bash, vim, software, code, coding, programming, rmarkdown, neovim, bryan jenks, macbook pro 16, macbook pro, catalina, tags in obsidian, obsidian app, obsidianmd, obsidian.md, links in obsidian, tags vs links in obsidian, what is the difference between tags and links in obsidian, should i use tags or links in obsidian, MOC, obsidian MOC, Obsidian zettelkasten workflow, How to take smart notes, links vs tags in obsidian, obsidian vault, obsidian tags vs links

Id: zIh1S7ra3aI

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020