date created: 2025-09-30, 16:48:05 date modified: 2025-09-30, 22:07:26

README

This Obsidian vault template is intended for general use for someone who:

wants to keep track of and plan how they spend their time,
wants to collect, record, and connect their thoughts about other published works,
and wants to automate or digitize one or both of the above without getting too in the weeds.

This template should work as-is for most people looking for the above, and is designed around "sensible defaults" based my own and observation of others' usage of Obsidian.

Usage

Use periodic notes to plan goals or tasks, and record what you got up to or how you felt about that day, week, or month. Over time, this will create a neat timeline of actions / interests / ideas / people you spend time on as you make links in your periodic notes. This sort of structure is helpful both to evaluate your past and to scaffold your future, helping you stay aligned with your goals and principles.

For example, you might record some things you want to work on:

![[2025-09-30#Goals]]

or some reflections about last week:

![[2025-W39#Reflections]]

Structure

This vault template is organized into 7 root directories by default:

directory	purpose
[[#Bases]]	.base files that other notes call on
[[#Files]]	files such as images and PDFs that notes may link to
[[#Functions]]	.js functions used in templates
[[#Journal]]	periodic notes built with templates
[[#Notes]]	general purpose notes
[[#References]]	web clippings and Zotero imports
[[#Templates]]	Templater plugin templates to build other notes

Bases

There are 2 bases included by default:

[[Journal.base]], which drives the ## Lookback section of periodic notes. This helps remind you what you wrote about. [[Related.base]] lives in the sidebar, and helps you see if there are other connected ideas to what you're currently working on.

Files

This is where external, 'non-Obsidian' files live, such as lecture handouts, book covers, or other images.

Functions

This template has one function included, [[daily_quote.js]], which provides a random daily quote from TODO

Journal

The Journal contains periodic notes and is the backbone of the vault's linking structure. Just as important as our ideas are is how we interact with them over time.

Notes

This might normally be the root folder for some people, but I like [[#Notebook Navigator]] and this keeps things tidy.

References

Storage for web clippings from kepano's browser extension and literature imported via Zotero Integration. These files don't generally contain a lot of your own writing, but will be linked to, referenced, and cited in your own notes.

Templates

These are files for the Templater plugin to automatically generate periodic notes and Zotero imports.

Plugins

Core

Everything currently available, except:

Publish
Sync
Word count

Community

obsidian-git
templater-obsidian
obsidian-tasks-plugin
obsidian-style-settings
obsidian-minimal-settings
omnisearch
obsidian-importer
obsidian-linter
code-styler
open-vscode
notebook-navigator
obsidian-pandoc-reference-list
obsidian-pandoc
table-editor-obsidian
better-word-count
calendar
cm-editor-syntax-highlight-obsidian
obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
obsidian-footnotes
obsidian-heading-shifter
mehrmaid
nldates-obsidian
periodic-notes
obsidian-reading-time
obsidian-wikipedia
text-extractor
obsidian-zotero-desktop-connector
obsidian-rollover-daily-todos
multi-properties

Vault_template