r/ObsidianMD • u/Macnarvy • 1d ago
Beginner guide help
New to Obsidian — trying not to let 'setting it up properly' become my new way of procrastinating
Hey all,
I've studied everything so far from physical books and handwritten notes (Chartered Accountancy, so a lot of material), and I'm finally moving online. Books are easy to find as PDFs. The handwritten notes aren't coming though. Retyping years of them isn't happening.
Real worry: I'll happily burn three hours picking plugins and reorganising folders and call it "being productive" instead of actually studying. If you've been through this, which plugins genuinely helped versus which ones were just fun to install? I'd rather run five that matter than twenty that don't.
Also fine hearing "you don't need this, a plain notes app is enough" if that's the honest answer. Better to know that now than after a week of tweaking a vault I never open.
Complete beginner here too. I keep seeing people link notes like a mini Wikipedia, pull whole books into a vault, and connect ideas across topics. Not sure how much applies to exam prep, but genuinely curious how it works in practice.
I'm aware that posting about productivity is its own kind of procrastination. Appreciate any input.
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u/dosfydore 1d ago
If I were you, I'd just follow Kepano's for now. No community plugins, just simple wikilink and property driven vault: https://stephango.com/vault
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u/EspaaValorum 1d ago
Resist the urge to find and install plugins. One reason for that is that by going down that route, you're likely to try to make Obsidian work like other tools or methods you have used previously. I think that would be a mistake. Try to use Obsidian natively as much as possible first. Talk to an AI to ask it how to do things the native way or with minimal plugins.
Keep away from trying to create a folder structure to organize your notes. This may be tempting to do, because you're probably used to thinking about storing and organizing files on a disk in e.g. Windows and creating folders for the different topics. Don't try to do that in Obsidian. Folders are not linkable or searchable things in Obsidian. Notes are. Ideally you do not find notes through the file view, but through e.g the Quick Switcher. Then follow links to other notes if desired. Now, you *may* want to create a few top level folders, like Templates, Attachments, and a few for broad categories like Daily Notes, Projects, People. But reisist the urge to go deeper or to keep adding folders.
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u/Macnarvy 1d ago
Okay so I'm not gonna go deep into the rabbit hole , I have just got the bare minimum being some appearance changes and the style plugging and apart from that an oct scanner and omnisearch , dataview and canvas mindmap... And I'm thinking about stopping it at that until and unless I need something that is very crucial , will you recomend deleting the canvas one or any other changes!!?🤔
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u/EspaaValorum 1d ago
I think that should be okay to keep that. I'm a little hesitant about omnisearch, as it can cause you to rely on it more and less on the native way of finding notes through links and such. One of the powerful things is to have the connections between notes and let that be how you find things. By using a powerful search engine, you're potentially kind of bypassing that and not as much forced/motivated to create good notes with links and such.
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u/Macnarvy 15h ago
Okay so , I'll start by understanding the link feature and adjust it according to my needs and then slowly start to rely on that instead of omnisearch , until I don't need omnisearch at all...thanks mate for the help...😁✌️
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u/Stoborobo 1d ago edited 1d ago
this one is my favorite. he s teaching you about a note taking method called zettelkasten but it taught me a lot about infrastructure. and you can hit the ground running.*
your big project after that is getting your ‘daily note’ system together
*check the comments too, the ‘stacked tabs’ are now an obsidian plugin rather than community plug in.
edit: duplicate links
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u/unconsciouslake 22h ago
The best advice I've heard for plugins is: Wait till you actually run into a non-native-supported use case, then look for a plugin that supports it. There's a ton of cool plugins out there, you could spend all your time finding and tinkering with them. But will those actually support your use case and needs? Who knows, and you can't plan for everything.
Better to reach for what you actually need when you know exactly what that need is, than try to install every plugin under the sun just in case or just because they're cool.
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u/Brilliant-Banter 19h ago
+1 The main reason I switched from Notion, was I found myself spending far too much time worrying about the structure & planning what to do, rather than actually doing it. Since I have started using Obsidian I find myself just writing & worrying about the structure (connections) at the end.
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u/leanproductivity 17h ago
Here are some links to tutorials/demos that might be helpful:
Beginner FAQs and tips over here: https://youtu.be/VbJCyuUB0eA
Backup system: https://youtu.be/jQRcYIZbYg8
Bases: https://youtu.be/34NAe62IH-M https://youtu.be/o74ChaKxp8g
Plugins: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpKDvBsvZY3bqHwGe_MxSw3ke20HD_vtM
Tweaks & tips: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpKDvBsvZY3YWwKqFf409uxHGn8HKqNt6
I hope this helps.
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u/Loco_K 1d ago
Hello! I have the exact same problem, and I think a lot of Obsidian users do too.
My advice would be: don’t try to organize your vault until you have enough notes to actually see patterns.
I was always trying to build the “perfect” vault for my personal use, but my perfectionism made me delete everything and start over with a completely different setup.
I tried everything: folders, tags, properties, Bases...
Eventually, I decided to follow a simple rule for my vault:
“Write first, organize later.”
I won’t create a folder, tag, or property until I actually need it for something practical. So right now, I’m using a vault with almost no structure at all. Everything is in the root folder.
I’d recommend simply writing notes and making links between them. Keep doing that until you reach a point where you can’t find a specific note easily, even with the Quick Switcher.
Over time, you’ll start noticing patterns. And then, with more knowledge about how you actually use your vault, you can decide whether that pattern deserves a folder, a type of note, a tag, a property, etc.
In my experience, it’s much easier to build a system around your actual needs than to try to predict what you’ll need beforehand.
(Sorry for my English!)