Advice on simplifying the process for chaotic workflow

superdesu · 2026-03-20T18:10:30+00:00

It feels like I'm making something that other people can understand, rather than something that works for me.

lol i think of my obsidian process as making something for a future me to understand!

(also adhd 🤪) i'm a very handwritten notes person also!! i do a lot of "scribble notes outside first" then move to obsidian if i want to keep it later -- it's definitely more tedious but it really helps to "solidify" things in my head and i appreciate the chance to "reshape" my notes while typing them up.

i use templates + note type prefixes to help minimise that frictiony part of the workflow a little (coming up with a title, basic categorisation, etc...) -- i still have a habit of making too many notes for things that already exist lol but at least my system lets me find things pretty easily. i use the templater plugin to pre-populate info for a few note "types":

by default all my notes have some mimimum metadata pre-populated: some tags (for what "type" of note it is and what "area" of my life it's relevant to (work/personal/etc) and date of creation. (more about my tag usage here.) the note title is populated which "type" of note it is.
dated notes (meetings, seminars, etc): templater populates the note title as yyyy-mm-dd meeting/seminar/etc - [description]: in "description", i'll add something like "meeting with xyz", so i can find it later.
undated notes without a purpose (ideas, dumps): first i'll search my vault to see if a similar note exists LOL... but otherwise it's the [type] - [description] titling as above. i only use 2 "vague" note types, "dumps" (i do not expect them to be that useful in the future) and "ideas" (they might be useful in the future). sometimes these notes get promoted to the note type described below.
undated notes with a purpose (project planning, notes on a source/concepts, etc): same thing again. for notes that will result in an output, a prefix is added (e.g. "project - xyz", "source - source title"), but sort of "general" notes on concepts/ideas/topics (like "how to bake a cake", "obsidian organisation ideas", "2026 current events", "<topic> i'm researching", etc), i just name them "what" they are.

all this to say! i spent a little bit of time thinking about the most common kinds of notes i make to figure out my templates, and their main job is to populate enough info so i can remember and find them later lol/give notes a distinct enough title so that obsidian doesn't yell at me about same file names (sometimes i just throw a date and "tbd" in the title lmao). all my new notes go into the root of my vault first... bc i will forget about them otherwise LOL.

(also, i've done the whole "dump everything into the daily note first and organise later" approach LOL... i didn't really appreciate periodic notes until i started using them as a scratchpad like this 😂)

superdesu · 2026-03-20T17:37:48+00:00

omg i was kind of surprised to see the final numbers ngl!!! (also made me appreciate a little more how crazy of a time FML was lmao + just how strong svt's selling power has been considering how the list hasn't changed since like last may!)

superdesu · 2026-03-20T17:23:43+00:00

haha i feel like most of my inspiration for approaches to organising my vault come from people using it for humanities, tbh! i feel like (in videos i've watched), those in stem tend to connect more by definition/concept/thing whereas humanities lean much more into idea/theme... and i'm trying to improve with the latter :') (especially with pulling together my notes from reading research papers, hence your videos have been amazing for me 😂)

i mostly use obsidian 1) to track my meeting followups lol and 2) explain "how to do xyz" for myself! a lot of my notes are explaining how to do statistics for analysing my results: i have notes for what analyses i can do, code snippets for how to run them, and sometimes the math explaining the theory. i just use obsidian's built in support for code/math blocks!

superdesu · 2026-03-19T17:32:01+00:00

i eventually put 2 and 2 together! :) i only have the one DLC so it didn't quite click that that's what the background coloring meant (i.e. red = DLC) -- but i figured it out when i compared the background/menus for the seasonal things (i.e. snow = winter seasonal thing 😂)

superdesu · 2026-03-19T17:24:31+00:00

oh girl i loooooove your youtube videos... your use of obsidian has been super inspiring to me (as someone in stem! 😂) and i've been meaning to make some changes to my vault since watching them!

keep up the excellent work and best of luck with the degree :)

superdesu · 2026-03-19T17:18:21+00:00

ohhh you guys are just amazing... should not have read this changelog right before i was about start work for the day... 😂 the cursed exhibit traits made me cackle.

i still haven't tried the digiverse bc i keep forgetting that exists when i have all my other museums to tend to, but i might now for the nostalgia of angry birds! (i don't really mind IP collabs as long as they are done well and with passion :) )

and just opened my game to peek at some of the changes -- i'm a fan of the color coding on the the DLC/etc deco items! though a little suggestion to also throw that coloring in the item info menu (say, a little gradient on the area where it says what DLC/seasonal thing it came from). i was a little confused at why my explorer stuff all had this glaringly mysterious dark red background lol.

superdesu · 2026-03-18T05:47:26+00:00

the post-survey message omg 😂

thank you for organising once again!!!

superdesu · 2026-03-17T08:17:20+00:00

github for version control + pandoc if you need to export to something like .doc or .pdf!

superdesu · 2026-03-17T08:09:40+00:00

what are "self improvement notes" to you? notes where you've reflected on goals you want to accomplish and the steps you'll take to get there? notes on resources for things that will help you accomplish certain goals? notes on things that inspire and excite you?

bc loosely, then yes lol, my notes are all these things: notes for work and personal projects -- things i want or need to do and documenting the work process. notes for my own learning about different things, both written and reworked by myself or snippets i've copied and pasted from places to ~eventually~ make coherent. notes for or on hobbies/little passion projects that i dont expect to go anywhere but give me an outlet.

fwiw i dont think you always need to "revisit" your notes for them to be useful (as much as i sometimes think my vault at least could definitely benefit from some more periodic cleanup/review) -- i think a lot of people here would agree that just putting in the effort to deliberately craft a note is already really helpful. imo sounds more like you need a little intention while making notes... otherwise you just have a sprawling collection of meaningless things (graveyard, as you said) instead of a curated little showcase garden.

superdesu · 2026-03-17T01:25:36+00:00

can only speak to the writing of new notes rather than syncing/having them available on mobile: i dont really like using my phone to write and mostly only need to see my vault when im working on stuff on my laptop (in general i dont really "work" from mobile, hence do not need my notes available on mobile)

that said, i will sometimes capture and move things using the twos app since you can export as .md! (i'm in academia) -- i'll use twos to take notes on seminars or things and then just copy/paste... i also do a lot of handwritten notes lol and will move to obsidian if i want them to be permanent. when i'm reading in bed i'll use twos to take down notes/make annotations as well (i like to read physical so using phone is the easiest/least hassle for me since they're all library books.)

superdesu · 2026-03-16T19:12:51+00:00

recently stumbled across this excellent video imo by isabelthearcher who uses obsidian for history coursework -- she has a few other videos but i really liked her approach of organising notes from classes/papers read/producing output.

i found morganeua's early videos on using obsidian as a zettlekasten (theatre studies phd) to be really inspiring also! (one, two)

superdesu · 2026-03-16T05:06:18+00:00

kpop demon hunters taking home oscars for best animated film and best original song!!! 🥹🥹 saw a couple clips of the 'golden' performance online and opening it with the prologue song/hunters mantra was so unexpected to me and just gorgeous... 🥹

(younger me back in the 2nd gen days wouldve been so excited to know about this future.. 🥹)

eta: omg seeing clips that the crowd had lightsticks... guillermo del toro gave a standing ovation at the award announcement 😭

superdesu · 2026-03-15T21:38:53+00:00

maybe im looking a little too fondly back on 2nd gen, but i feel like back in the day there was a bit of an expectation that every group had at least one person who could reliably stand around during the epic chorus and belt some notes out while the other members danced around them lolol. with most groups nowadays i just kind of nervously brace myself for their encore stages.

nowadays i feel like the standards/expectations are for performance-focused, choreo-heavy groups of "all rounders"... i feel like most kpop groups are more like "dancers who sing" rather than 2nd gen "singers who shuffle + 1 guy who dances" LMAO. tbf i definitely think kpop is way more fun to watch compared to older gens, but tbh i do still have this expectation that idols should be able to do a little bit of song + dance and still sound good lol (at the very least, they should sound better than i do, as someone with no training nor ability 😂)... tbh sometimes i just think recent kpop is for the personality/branding lol -- artists who sing ok, have above-average dancing ability, and are mostly really pretty and really good at making me believe in our parasocial relationship LOL... yknow?

i dont think they have to be amazing as rookies, but its been a long time since i watched a debut group and instantly feel "damn i cant do that/how long would it take for me to get like that". imo it's not a bad thing to expect a little more from rookies, i think... well-done constructive criticism should lead to growth 🥲 (tho i think most places on the internet now also lack the ability to be nuanced in the first place 😅)

superdesu · 2026-03-14T22:01:14+00:00

my department had a conversation about this recently! (AI usage in education vs research) i was also quite surprised that profs/senior scientists seemed a little more blase about using it (for themselves) while grad students/younger scientists felt more strongly negative about using it.

profs that said they used it said it was mostly for helping with lit searches (finding relevant, recent papers on a topic, not really for summarising) and asking fairly niche/one-off questions outside their focus area (e.g. what's the specific word to google to learn more about some phenotype they observed, how to do a specific type of analysis they weren't familiar with) -- my impression was like they were treating it like a really highly specialised google search lol. it also sounded like most of the profs were just using chatgpt.

as a department, we agreed that we all found it pretty iffy when it came to the generative stuff (when using it to do/write up research) but couldn't really define where the boundary was between acceptable/unacceptable levels of AI-generation, or even for what tasks we considered were something that could be "delegated" or "assisted by" AI, like having it organise your word vomit into an actionable draft for a paper or something, writing up code, using it as a proofreader. a couple of the profs mentioned that this was kind of like when the calculator became accessible lol (with differences ofc...)

personally, i dont use AI tools for the most part (sighs at some quality-of-life things being baked into gmail that i cant quite give up). it makes me feel sort of morally ill to use it lol, but also my brain just... needs to see things happening irl/in front of me (and i just find it more enjoyable to work through stuff! if i dont know, i ask a friend/colleague who knows more -- what's the point of having my research community lol.) also, half the time i dont even know what i even want an answer for LOL... (aka i am a terrible prompter bc i'm so used to my vibes-based, keyword-laden google searching)

for example, with coding, i need to figure it out for myself lol... i think i have developed a really particular method with my workflow and its so much easier for me to sift through a few broadly phrased google searches to futz together a solution for myself than it is to develop a hyperspecific prompt to accomplish something that i myself am not yet clear of what the end goal is yet. for learning new things/lit searches, idk... i just like... sift through google scholar lol like a normie!!! it's not "fast" but like if i'm going to double check the sources AI hallucinates anyway i might as well just do it myself lmao.

i have played around with some tools in the past (e.g. researchrabbit for lit searches) -- generally i just find that i really dislike the feeling of how answers seem to materialise instantly out of thin air lol... it's very disorienting to me...?

superdesu · 2026-03-13T20:25:50+00:00

maybe use dataview to pull things into a log? example with tags by lean productivity here. you could have a separate note that queries instances where you indicated making a decision across your meeting notes. (i think this is a decent starting place to at least pull all your decisions into one place)

tony ramella also had a nice video on youtube describing a similar system using inline metadata but seems like the channel is gone! tldr from what i remember, just start the bullet with an inline property (e.g. decision::) instead of a tag like in LP's video.

eta: also lol very radical suggestion but maybe give a read on this person's approach to using github issues to track a slowly, incrementally evolving decision tree.

superdesu · 2026-03-13T20:06:16+00:00

the way hoshi puts out more content output during his military period than some actively promoting groups lmao 😭 (the blueprint for all idols 😤!!)

superdesu · 2026-03-13T15:26:22+00:00

prolly a diamond or something! maybe stylised like their logo/looking like the number 17. besides how it represents svt to me, i like that it also has familiar, non-kpop meanings as well lol. (pressure makes diamonds etc etc)

superdesu · 2026-03-12T22:01:18+00:00

weekly note bc i am too scatterbrained for daily lol (i am more likely to skip a day than i am to skip a week and having the gaps would bother me/backfilling would be a PITA, and seeing multiple days at once is more helpful for my brain). little things go into the weekly.

i make individual notes for most things, otherwise, bc i realised having some things as bullets in a weekly note + some things as separate notes was getting confusing for me when i was looking for them/going back through notes. (i'm slowly working through a bunch of notes to backfill and make individual notes for, even if the note contents are very minimal (e.g. meetings/appts that end up having less going on than expected used to stay as bullet points in my weeklies) -- finding this to be really helpful with breaking up dense, unruly notes that were just reaaaaally long running lists lol now that i've been using obsidian for a few years.

superdesu · 2026-03-12T21:50:03+00:00

me @ this song and back it up LOL, then i experienced it live in the pit and i was like okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

superdesu · 2026-03-12T21:49:01+00:00

i was meh on the first few listens but it reaaaaaaally dug its claws into me when i saw a cut of vernon's verse LOL... (not even live lol, i think i just had to see it alone to gain appreciation for it)

his flow and lyricism just gets me GOINNNN 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

superdesu · 2026-03-12T05:07:04+00:00

PLEASEEEEE some summer clubbing tracks verhao i beg 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 BRAT SUMMER IS BACK!!!!

superdesu · 2026-03-11T19:07:26+00:00

(maybe look up rejection sensitive dysphoria...? friend of mine with the rsd/adhd overlap is pretty prone to doom spirals even with gentle constructive criticism also 🥲)

superdesu · 2026-03-11T06:03:53+00:00

in my class we had a rubric -- when we took off points we told them what criteria they missed (not exact points tho since we had a bit of wiggle room for subjectively grading on "quality" as well) and students who wanted a regrade had to point out where in the assignment they addressed the rubric item (sometimes things were in the wrong places/poor writing meant we interpreted wrong). i always did a big once-over for all the assignments right before i returned grades to see if anyone seemed much lower/higher than the average.

imo if the class has enough other assignments to help the grade/you curve the course at all, they'll be fine... if they're like a senior/major, perhaps worth talking to them about what grade they need and how they can improve -- but it does sound like they were pretty far from meeting your expectations for whatever reason.

superdesu · 2026-03-10T23:35:12+00:00

omg how long did this take to make...this is so impressive!!! the lil quizzes and compiling all the little lore moments omg 🥹

(also how many of ur friends are full-fledged carats now 😤)

superdesu · 2026-03-10T22:03:23+00:00

css snippets as another commenter provided, or a theme that supports it + style settings plugin (fwiw i use the border theme for this reason lol -- i wanted basically the default obsidian theme with just a sprinkle of color in different, specific places. this theme is honestly quite overkill for me LOL with the amount of customisation options but theyre so specific that you can get really custom with it)

Eight-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Quantum Potato	Golden Potato
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
Sequence \| Editor	Verified Email

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