I’m a graduate student studying mathematics. I recently started using Obsidian and… let’s just say I fell off the deep end with organization. It’s not terrible to use as a second brain, but file management and any kind of structural change hurts. I found JD about a week ago and I’m all in. I’m optimistic that this will help with organizing my files.
I like the idea of being able to find my notes quickly and without ambiguity, but more often than not, some note may be present in multiple categories (if there are any category theorists here, hit me up) and I’m not willing to give up the linking ability offered within the app. So far I’ve been able to handle this with YAML, metadata-menu, and templater plugins, and some very poorly written JS code for hotkey note generation.
Ideally, Obsidian is where I do all of my file name manipulation since it updates links within the app automatically. An index could be generated (and never actually touched) based on the file structure, but man oh man, not this rats nest. Also, the search feature is snappy. Plus the graph view. Highly recommend, but keep an eye out for the learning curve. Nicole van der Hoeven and Artem Kirsonav have excellent tutorials (and, now that I think about it, NvdH may have mentioned this in one of their videos).
Anyway, it looks no Zoom sessions have been held, but I’ll keep my eye out. Really looking forward to working with this community. Thanks folks!
Been plodding thru the workbook. I have decided to use a two “system” collection. The first, below, which I am actively shifting to now is informally called “Being a Professor” and is intended to capture all my teaching, research and service activities. After I finish this, I will flesh out a “Home and Personal” system, which is also intended to be the place where I put my renumerative consulting. I will post that later. But meanwhile, especially from the other academics (and JD), I welcome comments. I’ve decided to have my index in Obsidian, and to use the one note per item method. I will use Obsidian tags to denote file locations (physical, which cloud service, Devonthink, hard drives, etc.)
I am fully aware as I start to go thru my files and re-file them, that this taxonomy may evolve.
- 00-09 Meta - 10-19 General assets and admin information
I want to add a bit to the discussion here. I’m a Linux user and an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher in a high school in Beijing. I like to use markdown→HTML slideshows and LaTeX or SILE for printed materials. I have a web server running on my work laptop and I access slideshows in the classroom through the school’s wifi. But I digress .
Anyway, I came up with a system for creating documents at work. Let’s take a markdown/LaTeX syllabus for example. The git repository has its own JD ID. Each version of each syllabus has a git branch, a git tag for the final version, and a JD ID folder to which it’s installed.
The syllabus repository, build scripts, and content live in 21 Syllabi/21.01 Syllabus repo. When I finalize my 10th grade syllabus for Spring 2023, the branch gets a tag with the JD ID and a build script “installs” the final PDF into 21.02 Grade 10/Grade 10 AY2022T2.pdf. Each new semester’s syllabus goes in the same place with a similar name.
This works better for some things than others, though. When the output documents are few and infrequent, the ID folder won’t get hard to navigate for quite a while. I use this pattern for my résumé. Meanwhile, my folder for lesson materials is much busier, so it probably wouldn’t work as well for that. It isn’t perfect, but I hope it helps someone solve the bigger problem in some way.
As a university student, I’m finding it practical to have a second structure attached to my actual project specifically for classes:
SX.C.ID
S5.4.07 - ID 7 of class 4 in semester 5 (the S to denote semester and separate it from the main system)
I go into more detail here, but it could easily be expanded to fit more semesters and classes.
In the case of teaching, I’m wondering if it’d be more practical to organize by year without the overhead of tracking semester numbers:
24.F.01 could be the first thing of fall semester 2024, or even something longer like 2402.6.02 - ID 2 of class 6 of quarter 2 of 2024.
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