I keep two Obsidian vaults: one private and the other public. My private vault is essentially a [[Second Brain|Second Brain]], where I store everything from research notes and manuscripts to personal reflections and keepsakes. My [public vault](https://notes.muzikisto.com/) is a digital garden: notes I’ve chosen to share with anyone who might find them useful. ## Sorted by what notes do My folders sort notes by what they *do*, not by subject. A note about Beethoven might be a passing thought, a source, an idea I’m developing, or part of a paper, and each of those belongs somewhere different: - **An inbox** for quick, unsorted captures - **Ideas** written in my own words, linked to each other, and revised over the years - **Sources**: one note per book or article, connected to my [[Zotero]] library - **Projects**: papers, presentations and other work with an end - **Teaching and coursework** - **Time**: daily notes, and quotations worth keeping - **Reflection**: personal writing that isn’t meant to become anything else - **Maps**: index notes that gather related notes, and a few notes on how the vault itself works Subjects still matter, but links and index notes handle them, not folders. ## Habits that make it work - **Capture first, sort later.** Everything starts in the inbox. I decide later where a note belongs, or whether it belongs at all. - **Write to understand.** When I read, I turn what I’ve learned into notes in my own words, with citations, to be used in later writing. - **Daily notes.** I use Obsidian’s daily notes feature as a hub that includes links to random research notes and a daily reflection. - **Serendipity and curiosity.** One of the random notes linked in my daily note often catches my attention, and I revise it, ending up with a better understanding of the concept it records (see [[spaced repetition]]). - **Write papers where the notes are.** I draft in the vault and export to PDF or Word, with citations from [[Zotero]]. ## Where to start My biggest piece of advice is to not impose structure on your thinking too early. Rely more on linking notes than on trying to organize them, and let connections emerge from the associations between notes.