Do you use your JD numbers as tags or links in Obsidian?

Sharing your setup
#1

I decided to export all my Craft notes into Obsidian to work out of it for a while and see if I can get Obsidian to stick. I have most of my Craft organized according to my JD system.

I am now slowly organizing the files in Obsidian and eventually will be going in and creating links for them. I set up folders for my JD categories in Obsidian. However, I’m not sure what’s the best way to set up my categories so I can link to them in my notes. In Craft, this is an easy thing to solve: you just say, create @10.04 and it’s linked across your notes. However, Obsidian allows both [[links]] and #tags.

I noticed that, if I do links in Obsidian, I can copy/paste into Craft and the links appear in Craft. That’s not the case with tags. However, I also like using Agenda for work meeting notes, and in Agenda, I can export whatever numbers I create as #tags, but not as [[links]].

I am aware that tags don’t create their own pages, unlike links. However, at this point, I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. As part of my export/import to Obsidian, I now have quite a bit of empty pages from my Craft links, so I might just take those out and start over.

In any event, I’m curious as to how do you link to your categories in Obsidian. Do you use tags? Links? Both? Neither? Something else entirely?

Thanks for your tips!

1 Like
#2

I rarely use tags and still find them not for me. I categorize notes by folders and use JD to make them easy to search. I just “tag” them with notes

#3

Thanks. I also use the folders but do use links (or potentially tags) when appropriate, as sometimes (especially in Craft), new items get saved elsewhere and the fastest way to find them is by the link. Obsidian is better equipped at saving new items within same folder, so they’re easier to find and move afterwards (one of the reasons I’m considering the switch from Craft). However, I still feel the need to include some type of linking/tagging system.

#4

For obsidian, I use a lot of Index and MoC (Maps of Content) style files. Check out “Linking Your Thinking” on youtube. Good tips on how to use stuff in there but here is how I will (eventually) set mine up (I add to the system on a as-needed basis usually to avoid tons of meaningless empty files/links I don’t need)

  • Essentially, you would create a “10-19 INDEX” file inside of the 10-19 folder. If you want you can put it in some centralized ID such as “00.00 MoC+Index” type folder, but personally I find it more logical to put the index files directly in the area they represent so that’s how I’ll explain it. Modify as needed for your preference.
    • Inside this file, you create headers for each Category within that area, a brief description of what that category is, and links to each Category Index file (likewise named/placed within the Categories the same way). MAJOR projects/frequently accessed things may be directly linked to from the Area Index, but the main function here is to navigate areas/categories.
    • For each Category Index, you likewise link to your various ID items. If you have a particularly large amount of items in an ID you can create an Index for that ID of course. The usage of headers to divide off specific ID codes within the index will help a lot to organize it.

(Hint: You should probably also add a main INDEX file that links to all the Area indexes)

  • Since everything within a specific AC.ID is already linked via the hierarchy of index files we don’t need to Tag individual IDs or categories. Instead, let’s use tags for similar items that technically belong in different IDs.
    • eg: Diet tracking, workout, skill-development, general education, etc… Obviously these all belong in different J.D numbers. Probably even different categories, maybe even different areas completely depending how your system is organized. Just toss the “#Self-Improvement” tag on all the related files and suddenly you have them all in one spot.
    • Don’t forget hierarchical tagging is a thing in Obsidian! You can create sub-tags for tighter organization of objects that don’t logically belong in the same part of your J.D system, but without getting literally everything under the sun that is loosely related to “Self-Improvement”.
#5

Switching to Logseq made me give up on J.D for my notes themselves. I’m building a new (simple AC.ID) index just for my files (which have lost a lot of importance over the last 5–10 years) and plan to leverage Logseq’s page and block properties to reference J.D numbers in my notes (only where applicable, probably in the form a custom property along the lines of johnny.decialmal:: 11.03 or something like that.)

A while back I had a go at J.D notes in NotePlan, though (which, in a way, might be more similar to Obsidian at least, as far as I know!, in the sense that links are links and tags are tags (which is not the case in Logseq)), see AC.ID for notes and files.