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