I stopped using Obsidian for notes and made it something I opened every morning

I use Obsidian as most people do. All my notes, random thoughts, half-drafts, and pieces of research are kept in one place in my vault. And while I love Markdown-based recording system and flexibility of local checkoutI realized that I don’t actually open Obsidian very often unless I want to save some text. My notes were technically there, but the app itself had become more of an archive than something I actively used every day.

For a tool that gives you so much to work with, it seemed like a bit of a waste – the Obsidian has more potential than acting as a storage unit. I just needed a more stable system that could support my notes long-term and make me want to open the app. Here’s what I did Use more obsidianand it didn’t involve much other than taking advantage of Obsidian’s formatting options, linking and folder hierarchies…

Record Cemetery

When your warehouse becomes a warehouse

At some point, Obsidian became what I can only describe as a record graveyard. I have hundreds of notes just sitting there because I didn’t want to delete them even though I wasn’t actively using them. So I was in a situation where my bowl kept growing, but I wasn’t doing anything with it other than hunting for random records. The structure of my stash reflected this – there was no structure, just a massive list of scattered notes.

The thing is, I don’t want to get rid of my stack of records or start from scratch because there are still some gems in there that I’ve kept for a long time. But keeping them as they were wouldn’t motivate me to use them. So it was just a matter of creating a system that was easier to navigate.

Creating a dashboard in Obsidian

Central hub with easy access to everything I needed

Now you can get super creative and create an aesthetic tableau with a a bunch of plugins and snippets, but I only used two plugins, a CSS snippet, and the formatting options Obsidian gave me. This provides a minimalistic and easy-to-navigate space where I’m not bombarded with visuals and buttons and don’t have to worry about maintaining structure all the time.

Before creating my dashboard, I took the painstaking step of first organizing my notes into folders and subfolders – all of which happen in the left pane. This is because I can easily access them by topic or subtopic and drag them into the dashboard. Next, I created a blank page where the dashboard lives, and I recommend naming it “home”, “taskbar” or something similar.

So that my dashboard doesn’t look completely dead, I used the Banners plugin to add an image at the top with a pop of color. You can customize this however you want; there will be a community plugin for almost any style you have in mind. Then it’s time to start filling out the dashboard…

Obsidian allows you to collapse Markdown headers, and this mechanism is basically the basis of my dashboard organization. I’ve created a main title for all the most relevant topics I have notes on Obsidian with sub-headings below them. All of these headers are collapsible, meaning I can hide/show content when required. And under each heading, I simply drag the relevant notes directly from the notepad, which automatically links to that page.

These headers are the basis for my new dashboard and would work perfectly if I stopped there, but I also wanted vertical line dividers for a little more structure. For this you can use snippets, which are all over the Obsidian forums and subreddits, and there are plugins that do some of the heavy lifting for you – I use the Horizontal Blocks plugin to create vertical lines by stacking blocks of text horizontally.

Why this setup works

And it brings me back

Obsidian isn’t focused on dashboards like other recording software like Notion. This means that you usually go straight into the app with a bunch of tabs open to a bunch of random notes. For a scatter brain like me, it’s like a repellent. I needed more structure, which meant creating my own dashboard, but also finding a way to keep it simple so I wouldn’t spend more time managing it than my actual notes.

Obsidian now pops up my dashboard every time, because I could never just set the page and forget about it. And everything I’m currently working on is linked under the appropriate heading. Plus, my notes are now really organized into relevant folders, which makes it easier to populate my dashboard when I bring new content to Obsidian.

Making obsidian usable again

Creating a dashboard in Obsidian is such a simple but underrated productivity booster. You don’t need to involve a million plugins or super aesthetic visuals; all you need is a structure that makes sense for your brain to work with. This setup makes me want to keep it now Use Obsidian as a note taking program designed fornot just a record store.

OS

Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, Android

Individual price

It is normally free; $4 per month for Obsidian Sync