Most people approach note-taking backwards. They spend weeks on the “perfect” setup before writing a single useful note: trying all the plugins, fiddling with themes, designing folder taxonomies, debating Zettelkasten versus PARA.
Don’t do that.
The only goal that matters up front is getting content into the system. Writing notes beats curating a clean architecture every time. Notes can be refactored, linked, tagged, and reorganized later. Unwritten thoughts are gone.
Complexity has to earn its place through real use.
Obsidian, mostly default plugins
My setup lives in a dedicated repo (matt-docs): a Git-backed Obsidian vault of plain Markdown, plus a thin support/ directory of templates and scripts.
Obsidian’s main advantage is that the vault is just a folder of standard Markdown files on local disk. If Obsidian disappears tomorrow, every note is still readable and portable.
Resist turning it into an IDE with thirty community plugins. I stick to the core plugins:
- Daily Notes: the capture surface. Unpolished thoughts, meeting notes, and quick references land here without deciding where they belong.
- Templates: consistent starting points for concepts, projects, and specs.
- Backlinks & Outgoing Links: linking generously with
[[wikilinks]]lets connections emerge over time instead of forcing an up-front hierarchy. - Quick Switcher & Global Search: how I move between files.
- Tags: to be honest, I don’t really utilize tags, mostly I just use backlinks.
The one community plugin I rely on is Omnisearch, for fast fuzzy search across the vault. If a plugin doesn’t solve a friction point in your daily workflow, skip it.
Just start writing
Don’t let tooling become procrastination. Open a blank Markdown file, start a daily note, write down what you learned or what you’re trying to solve today. Let the structure follow. You can change everything else later.
Links & Reference
- Andy Matuschak’s evergreen notes - notes.andymatuschak.org: foundational thinking on atomic, concept-oriented notes.
- Spec Driven Design: driving software design with Markdown specs and structured workflows.