Hey everyone! Hope you are doing well.
Before I start, I wanted to quickly mention I will be uploading every Saturday instead of Wednesday! :)
Since my last post covering my Obsidian workflow, my system has changed quite a bit. I have implemented more plugins, built personalized features, and I've rediscovered the crucial reliance of a life dashboard for my productivity.
Funny enough, the path that led to this initial forgetting wasn't exactly unreasonable, and it's led me back to square one with my productivity system!
To start, how did I realize I needed a dashboard again? How did I forget? Going back in time to my previous Spring semester, Notion was my all-in-one tool. I was managing tasks, projects, and assignments with ease, keeping tabs on my mental health, physical health, and more.
It was seamless and powerful, and I was virtually stress-free. With all of these focuses, a dashboard was pretty much mandatory so I could easily keep track of everything going on.
However, with the start of my summer break, I had transitioned into a system based on Todoist and Obsidian. Since my summer priorities were only YouTube, my server, and my day job, this system, although more scattered and less coherent, was fairly fitting. It didn't hinder my productivity because because had less to manage and focus on.
After adjusting for a few months, I believed this system was ready for my return to school. I was very wrong.
With my return to university - since I hadn't considered the smaller things I had to balance - my load of responsibilities and priorities returned, and I felt overwhelmed and blindsided.
As a result, I had to take a step back and reevaluate what I was doing wrong. I started working on minimizing redundant tools and creating a simplified system.
Given some time, I tinkered more with my tools, and after taking my own advice, I have redesigned my Obsidian system entirely.
New Plugins and Workflow
Before I start, here is a brief rundown of the key plugins I currently utilize:
Minimal - CSS theme that makes Obsidian more minimalist
Minimal theme settings - plugin that enables altering the CSS of the minimal theme
Style settings - additional features for changing how Obsidian looks
Calendar - daily note calendar
Dataview - powerful database plugin for querying and displaying notes
Tasks - Obsidian task manager
Quickadd - simple plugin for scripting
Buttons - create buttons that execute Obsidian scripts
Templater - a more powerful templating plugin
I'm not going to get into the super fine details about my system in this article, because the plugins, features, and methods I used to build this system would require a long a video to cover everything.
Instead, I wanted to briefly cover my workflow with this new system.
Daily Note
Every day starts with my daily note. Here, I keep track of my morning, daily, and nightly routine, specify today's goals, and reflect on my progress towards my long-term goals.
Compared to my previous post, this hasn't changed very much. However, the main difference is I can observe today's tasks using the tasks plugin, which makes it easier to specify my daily goals. I am also using templater to format my title instead of the built-in Obsidian feature.
Work Harder
After starting my morning, I move to my newest addition - the Work Harder Dashboard. Here, I observe the deadlines for every kind of project or assignment I am working on and have an overview of all tasks relevant today.
This addition has completely redefined my workflow in Obsidian. It's almost identical to what I had in Notion.
Professional Projects
At the very top of the page is my professional projects database. Previously, I managed my Substack and YouTube projects with Obsidian Kanban, which worked great until I needed to implement it into a dashboard.
Thus, I had taken my Kanban status labels, placed them into the YAML front matter of each page, and then query that data with dataview. The database on my Work Harder dashboard simply finds projects that are not published or inboxed, and displays those with the relevant front matter for each file.
Side Projects
Below that are my side projects. These are the hobbyist projects that I'd like to complete anytime. The dataview queries here are pretty much identical to my professional project queries, with the exception of a button. Because this table queries pages within a folder, instead of manually creating a new note, dragging it into a folder, and changing the front matter, I can automate this with a button.
Simply creating a quickadd script and assigning it to this button, I can save myself a ton of time!
Assignments
Lastly, I track my assignments with dataview. The process is identical to that of my side projects, except this time I rely heavily on the countdown field. This was a very simple line I could add to my dataview query:
deadline - date(today) as "Countdown"
It works great, but needs some extra massaging to show "0 days" instead of a blank field, and "1 day" instead of "1 days."
Just little things.
Tasks
The last on this page is my task manager.
To start, my inboxed tasks consists of a single page that I can append random ideas into with ease. Using, again, quickadd and a button, I have virtually zero resistance when dumping ideas for later. When the tasks plugin reads from my inbox page, it queries for the lack of a due date. This symbolizes tasks that have yet to be processed.
For my organized tasks, these appear in my "Today" view. These are all of the tasks read in my vault that match the query for "due on or before today." I have them sorted by priority and due date, but have hidden both for visual clarity.
I do have a page for viewing tasks throughout the week, and while it's still a bit unfinished, it's done what I need pretty well.
Side Panels
The final main features of this system are my side panels.
In my case, I utilize the left panel for vault navigation. On the top is my vault file explorer, and below that is a pinned "navigation" page with links to my most crucial dashboards.
On the right side is my calendar, used to reference dates and easily navigate my daily notes. Below that is a pane to search tags or phrases within notes, along with an outline view on a separate tab. On the very bottom is my local graph, where I can see the explicit relations for any active note.
Future Roadmap
With all that I have working currently, I do have some other features I would love to soon implement:
Timely review dashboards
Meal tracker
Financial tracker
Self-hosting my vault again
Conclusion
With that comes the conclusion of this system rundown! It's been a fantastic journey rediscovering my reliance for a dashboard and monitoring everything at once again.
When creating this article, I also played around with my previous Notion dashboard and realized that - with all of its benefits I had mentioned - My Obsidian system is significantly faster. This shouldn't be a huge surprise, but I am eager to see my increases in efficiency as I use this more.
I hope you can garner some inspiration of the way this works and apply it to your own personalized systems! I will be producing a video getting deeper into this system in the future, so stay tuned for that!
If you have any questions about this system, do feel free to reach out!
Twitter: @renbook_
Email: renbook.info@gmail.com
Thanks for reading. :)