ibrathesheriff ~ $ cat /notes/getting-started-with-obsidian.md

Getting Started With Obsidian

published: February 9, 2025
tags: note-taking | learning | markdown |
reading time: 4 minutes

by @ibrathesheriff ibrathesheriff x/twitter icon

This note summarises key points from videos and readings on setting up a system on Obsidian.

Why do I want to start using Obsidian?

It all started with Notion in 2022…

While working on RINAIBRA I was learning from different channels as an entrepreneur:

  • entrepreneurship meetings
  • incubator workshops
  • mentor sessions
  • Y Combinator
  • books

It got challenging to keep track of all the learnings on Goodnotes on my iPad, or on paper in my journals. I needed a better system so I did some research and kept being directed to Notion so I decided to pick it up.

It was free to get started and offered so many configurations meaning I could setup:

  • notes
  • task management
  • connections between related content

I stopped using Notion after I left RINAIBRA but I miss a system to organise my note-taking as I now have a million markdown files spread across my computer and a million more notes on Google Keep.

It’s 2025, so I’m keen to try something different rather than setup Notion again so I’m going with Obsidian this time.

Obsidian: The King of Learning Tools (FULL GUIDE + SETUP) by Odysseas

Odysseas discusses why to use Obsidian and then walks us through his note organisation system.

Avoiding Toxic Perfectionism

Obsidian like Notion is a complex tool wiht various themes and plugins so setting up a system that works for your situation can be complex. There’s just so much to play around with so don’t let this overwhelm you so waste a lot of your time.

By the end of the day, trying to configure the perfect Obsidian shouldn’t get in the way of writing notes.

Why use Obsidian?

Based on Odysseas’s takeaways from reading How to take smart notes by Sönke Ahrens (the Zettelkasten system):

  • Great for learning.
    • Keeps it slow. To obtain more from reading you will have to slow down.
    • Instant feedback.
    • Freedom to connect.
  • Stores and mixes ideas.
    • One place to store all your notes.
    • As all the notes are in one place links between different notes can be made.
    • Support for links and tags.
  • Faster, easier writing.
    • Easy to search through your notes.
    • Personal writing assistant

Getting started

  1. Download from the Obsidian from Obsidian download page.
  2. Install and run Obsidian on your computer.
  3. What is a vault? The highest’s level of organisation in the system. It is the folder that will contain all your notes.
    • This folder can be backed up on a cloud service like Google Drive.
  4. Create folders for:
    • 1 - Rough Notes. Incomplete notes that are a work in progress.
    • 2 - Source Materials. Notes on learnings from books, videos, blog posts etc.
    • 3 - Tags. Odysseas uses empty notes to represent tags and using [[]] to then add the tag in the note file.
    • 4 - Indexes. A index to make it easier to view notes of a particular tag.
    • 5 - Template
    • 6- Main Notes. Also sometimes called in Atomic Notes or Zettelkasten. All main notes go in one folder!
  5. The navigate to Settings > Files and links > Default location for new notes and set it to “In the folder specified below”. Then from the next section Folder to create new notes in select the “6 - Main Notes” folder.
  6. Then under the Appearance section of the Settings configure any template that you would like.
  7. From the Hotkeys section of the Settings search for “template” and add “Ctrl + T” to make it easy to create a template.
    • It may conflict with the Hotkey for a tab for search for “tab” and remove “Ctrl + T” to leave it blank.
  8. Then navigate to the Core plugins section and ensure “Templates” and “Backlinks” is toggled on.
    • You add “Community plugins” if you would like but keep it simple, adding too many plugins can overcomplicate the system.
  9. Create a template for “Main Notes” - timestamp: 22:30-24:03.
  10. Create a new note - timestamp: 24:03-24:58. Use “Ctrl + O”. Then once it’s open you can use “Ctrl + T” to apply a template to the note.
    • Odysseas then discusses how to write a note and comments on avoiding passive learning.
    • Keep notes short - below 500 words. Try have it fit on one page.
    • Tackle one idea at a time in a note. You can break things over multiple notes and link them together.
    • Format notes so that they are easy to read.
  11. Tagging
    • Avoid vague tags i.e. too broad.
    • Avoid specific tags - otherwise you may never use it again.
    • Tags should serve you and you alone. Don’t worry about popular tagging systems that others would understand.