A few weeks ago I realized the current structure of my vault was not enabling me to move the needle and allow me to focus on the important things.
I was using PARA, or attempting to. I had a hard time deciding if something was an Area or a Resource and subcategory. Many of my notes fit into a few areas of my life. I could not keep up with the blocks of files that needed to be archived and my inbox was growing. The methodology sounded good and might work for some, but it did not work for me.
I opened up Mind Node to map out my ideas and see if I could make sense of my notes. This revealed a couple of plugins I wanted to build into the new system:
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Breadcrumbs will allow me to group notes from online classes, and create threads with project notes. With atomic notes, I can use the Compass of Zettelkasten 1
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Metadata Menu plugin will allow me to identify types of files in my vault and create custom properties for some of the classes. Metadata Menu also has a custom icon for each class, allowing me to quickly and visually see project files and reference notes in lists and folders.
While working on the mind map Nick Milo released Ideaverse for Obsidian. At first glance, it seemed like a condensed version of his A.C.E.S.S. Framework The Ideaverse for Obsidian uses a system called ACE (Atlas, Calendar, and Efforts). The format can be implemented via folders or tags, like P.A.R.A., you can use the structure across all of your tools if you wish.
I recently created the structure and moved most of my notes to the archive folder. I then moved active project notes to Effort/On and created some Dataview queries and a few map pages. The first few days of using this system has helped me know what needs to be done and what can wait until I have time to work on it.
Footnotes
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North - Where does this idea come from? West - What is similar to this idea?East - What is the opposite of this idea? South - Where does it link to next? ↩