Notes as Nouns
With language, we use nouns to represent things, objects, or entities in our notes, such as:
- concept: core idea or topic
- person: profile of an individual
- event: describes a specific occurrence like a meeting
- place: information about a location
These are all notes, but their structure and attributes are different because they represent various types of objects in our life.
Note types
In a linked-note system like Obsidian, we generally classify major categories of notes with different terminology to distinguish their role within the PKM system.
Within my Obsidian vault, I have various kinds of notes. When I think about ACE Organization based on knowledge, time, and action, what kinds of note belong in each space? They are all notes, but what makes them different?
+ (Add inbox)
- draft: New draft notes
- voice: Captured voice dictation ("freetalking")
- source: Information from other sources like articles, books, papers, websites, videos, podcasts, courses, links, or AI prompts
- focus: Note clusters being actively developed for publishing
Atlas (Knowledge)
- idea: An interesting spark to explore with my thoughts, knowledge, and insights (these are all connected "dots" in my Ideaverse)
- map: notes with a Map of Content that organize a set of related notes with structure, context, and navigation
- view: Dataview queries that produce lists or tables with selection, filtering, and sorting for specific folders and metadata properties, fields, or tags.
- collection: Special views of similar notes in a specific group: movies, series, books, meetings, people, organizations, quotes, questions, prompts, statements, things
Calendar (Time)
- periodic notes: Chronological notes for different time horizons: day, week, month, quarter, or year
- journal: Recorded thoughts and reflections with freewriting in paragraphs and/or lists
- log: Timestamped list items with information about events or experiences, like meals, exercise, habit tracking or health metrics
- plan: notes about current and future intentions, actions, and events
- review: notes that review past events and experiences with reflections, learning, and gratitude
Efforts (Action)
- app: Information about an application like Obsidian, Actions for Obsidian, Shortcuts, or Hookmark
- effort: An ongoing area of life or topics of specific interest
- project: A specific effort with a defined outcome and completion date
- output: Creative works for sharing
x (Extra)
- template: Reusable note content or snippets
- image: Embedded note attachments for icons, banners, screenshots, graphs, or other images
- visual: Visual files like Obsidian canvases, Excalidraw drawings, mind maps, etc.
- document: Embedded or linked PDF documents included as note attachments