My Time Management Setup in Obsidian

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some of them multiple times. Oh, and I bought an apartment and moved to a new country and started
learning that language. So like most people, I've got
a lot going on, in this video. I'm gonna show you how I've got things set up so that I can keep track of everything that I'm
doing and want to be doing not so you can copy exactly what I'm doing but just so you can get some ideas for things that maybe
will work for you as well. In general, I like to categorize my setup

into the things that are for the future for the present and for the past. And I start with the future first because that's the essence of planning. Like you're looking ahead
and trying to set intentions. So for me, that consists of goals, weekly, monthly,
quarterly, and yearly goals. In addition to my core principles but actually start with
the core principles. So in core principles,
I define as a one-off although it's still a living document

all the principles that
really matter most to me. And for each principle I describe what it is and what it looks like when I'm practicing
it and not practicing it. I have less than 10 of these. These are things that
I've identified over time and I'm still like merging some
and adding new ones as I go. In software testing, we have
something called a requirement and that usually comes from
the business and it's the idea of what it is that
we're supposed to build. It's the specifications for
the code that we want to deliver, but the requirements
come at different levels.

You might have one overarching
kind of requirement that says, you know, build this site, but underneath that site there might
be, you know, the homepage. And under the homepage
it might be, you know get the graphic design underway. So there are different
levels of requirements but there's also a best
practice called requirements traceability, and that is
the practice of making sure that lower level requirements all trace up to the highest one. That's just a tech way of
saying that when you work

on something, you need to be
making sure that it is still in line with your overall direction. And that's kind of what I like to do here. So with the core principles, I embed that into the yearly template. I'm gonna show you all
of this in a second. And then the yearly into the quarterly. Quarterly into monthly. Monthly into weekly, and then
weekly into the daily note. So let me show you how
that works in practice. I'm gonna be showing you
this on my Patreon vault.

So all of the templates are there but they're gonna be blank. So first, let's start
with a yearly review. It's kind of a propos because
it's January right now. So this is the yearly review and you'll see that I used
the periodic notes plugin and I have some sections here. Now I just put a whole bunch of OKRs. OKRs stands for objectives key result. It's just a framework that we use at work so I find it handy to use it as well. And it just means that
when you set an objective you have to make sure to
attach key results to it.

So I've got my fake objectives here and this is actually pulling
in the objectives from 2022. Now if I scroll down here, then
I have, you know, objectives for this year, and then I
just have a template here for adding the yearly OKR. So then I'd select that and then I'd say something
like 2023 objective here. And what that does is it creates a page

and then opens up that page
according to a certain template. So then we would have the key result here. And here I would link to some of the core
values or core principles. So I had my core principles and then maybe I'll say principle one of course this would actually be the name. And then initiative would
be here after the year I would do the quarterly note. And that one has a link to my core principles and
also the yearly objectives.

I didn't have a quarterly review in this dummy one last quarter but it would be here, has reflections maybe an objective might be
to start learning Portuguese. So then on a monthly basis I would then open this monthly note. It also takes a template
that I've already defined and you'll see it's pulling in those yearly OKRs from this year the one that we just
filled out hovering over. It shows what we typed out. And then there's also
a review for last month

and I have other reflections
and I'm using call outs to kind of prompt
some reflection here. Let's just say find a Portuguese teacher. So that's an initiative for this month. Then I would go to the weekly note and the weekly note has a
little bit more of a checklist. The checklist involves things
that I like to do every week so mainly chores and stuff but it's just very nice to
have a checklist to follow. That way I don't have to worry

if I've forgotten to do something. So it's things like getting to inbox zero on my email and also
processing some of my tasks. And then in the monthly
initiatives, that's pulling in the initiatives that I
typed into the monthly review. This is requirements tracing. I would have last week's goals here too. And then this is this week's goals. So I'm just typing tryout teacher one on ITalki just as a goal,
a dummy goal for the week.

So that's how I use periodic
notes on different time levels. I'm not gonna go too much more into detail about how I set
up those templates for that. You can check out this
video, but I'm gonna move on and show you how it fits
in to the rest of it. So the goals are all
forward thinking, and then the present is mainly centered
around the daily note. The daily note for me is the source of truth and the cornerstone
of really all of my notes. Everything that I do on that day is linked

to that daily note
implicitly or explicitly whenever I go to a daily note I see everything that
I've done on that day. So for example, if I were
going to open up a daily note this is the template for it. I see my weekly goal. I have tryout teacher one on ITalki. I don't have any tasks due today. That never happens in real life. I've got Log which is where I'll spend most of my time. I also have a process, this
query, it doesn't have anything

in this demo vault, but usually this comes up with all of the
things that I've imported that still have a certain tag on it that means it's not yet processed. I have a random note that I might want to, you know, process. I have a daily review and
then an end of day checklist. But most of the time I
spend it here in the Log. So as I go through the day my Log section might
look something like this. And at the moment I just
have everything as bullets. I don't really worry about writing complete
sentences or anything like that.

It's just kind of freeform
and just phrases here. And then maybe if I have some
free time, or maybe at the end of the day I'll go over
all of these bullet points and then kind of try to
categorize what they are mainly do I need to still process it or is it something that can
be crossed off my mental list? I found out that there is like a hidden feature
of the minimal theme. Okay, it's not hidden, but I found out way after I started using that theme

and I'm really happy to be able to show it to you now because it is awesome. Minimal is made by Kepano who is also on the
Obsidian developer team. And he's done some really
cool stuff with this theme. So for example, if I want
to say that this is a task then I can make it into a checkbox. This is your standard to do or task and you can also click on
it and make it completed. Let's say that this secret project is
taking a while, we started it

but it's not done yet. Now, if we did a completed sign here then that wouldn't really be appropriate and neither would just a
space or an uncompleted one. So instead with the minimal
theme, you can put this dash you'll see that it has this
partially completed symbol which is so great because
at least you know, I don't like leaving something unticked if I actually have done some work for it. And then what if we want
to cancel this then instead

of just having a normal task
like that, we could go in and put a dash through it and
then it just does a strike through through the entire line. Okay, this next one is John wanted to talk to me about the next release. All right, and let's say that
that needs to be scheduled in my calendar, going to need to set up time with John before
we can talk, right? So I'm going to put this
directly into my calendar send him an invite. But in my daily note, I
also want to reflect that.

So the way that I do that
is I put this left arrow and when it gets rendered, it has like a little calendar symbol to reflect that it's already been
scheduled elsewhere. And this thing, dungeon
23 challenge is a thing. Okay? Now is that something that
I need to do something about in this case? Yes, because I decided that I wanna participate in
the Dungeon 23 Challenge. I could put it as a task but really it's not just a single thing. I really would want to
have a page about it.

And in that case, I would
make this its own page. So then I'd have a link like this. So then I'd have a page for it. And then when I come back here I don't want to take that off. I wanna say that it's not really done yet. It's not a task that's done or not done but I have moved it elsewhere. And then I put a right arrow and it has a little visual
indicator that tells me that it's somewhere else

on my notes and it's
already linked to there. Now for this Ellie's recital this would be a scheduling one again. So that goes in the calendar. I would put this in my calendar as well
because really important tasks I also plan out as if they were events. So at the end of the day I am going to have something
that looks like this and I can tell at a glance that
everything's been processed and nothing else needs to be actioned. And then I can move on to,
you know, my end of day stuff.

So what it looks like is that my daily note has these
different visual indicators and depending on what it is I might process them a different way. So these three are tasks. If the task has not been
completed, I'll put it to Reclaim. Usually a lot of people just
like to have normal task lists. That doesn't really work for me. I don't know if it's in a list somewhere it's just out of sight, out of mind. And I always look at my calendar, things

on my calendar get done, so
I put tasks in my calendar but I use something called Reclaim to make that process a little easier so that if a task gets extended or
maybe I complete it faster then everything gets
automatically moved around without me having to
decide where to move them. And I use Reclaim for that. So just check out this video if you want the details
on how that all works. Still, some of the tasks
I don't put in Reclaim these are usually the less important ones.

So I have some that I
would put in next actions some in waiting, and then some in maybe. So I would go back here
and let's say, you know work on that secret project,
do something like Next action. And then I would put that
in as a normal checkbox. In the checklist plugin,
I have all my tasks and they are separated by the
task, the tag that I used.

So for example, in the to do Next action I've got work on that
secret project, looks like I had a few other things
in here and I could tick that off and that gets
ticked off there as well. But more likely than not this was probably not that important. So on my calendar, I sometimes schedule in things for like, you
know, at my computer just small little tasks
that each take like two minutes to do or something. I'm not gonna schedule two minutes in but I might lump them all in

and I go here and then go through
all of those in one chunk. Now for the tasks that are done that I've completed that day, I either put them in the habit tracker if they are habits or in
the achievement section. So that usually goes just here. And I would put my achievements here and that way if I ever want
to see like for reviews for performance reviews
at work or something or just to find out how well I've done I will sometimes look at
the achievement sections

of the previous days to get
an idea of how my week went. And then as for the habit tracker I'm gonna show you what
this looks like for me. I found a Free Habit Tracker template. Actually there were like 43
of them and I chose this one. They're from someone named Saturday Gift. I'm going to put a link in the description so you can go over there
and download it yourself. But this is what it looks like. So the black parts are
what came in the template. And then I just wrote that down.

And the way that I did
it is by using my iPad. This is just the Obsidian
mobile app on my iPad. I think there's just
something about doing it on the iPad with the Apple
pencil, it's pretty responsive. So you know, then I might
like put another X in there if I did it that day. And my idea is that by doing
it throughout the month I'm gonna have like a nice
very visual indication of whether or not I've
done some of these habits.

Now I'm sure some of
you're wondering, but what about Habit Tracker or
Dataview or a bunch of other different plugins that
you can use for this purpose? Yes, there is. There are many ways that
you can just mark something up in your front matter and then the plugin is going to take all of those and then
display them in some way. I've even experimented with
putting those in in the past. The problem is that
really without exception those aren't gonna be future proof. Those are Obsidian only. Dataview is Obsidian only.

And I just wanted something
that I'd still be able to take with me if I left Obsidian or if I just decided to use a new tool. So the cool thing with Excalidraw
is I can just right click and then save this as a PNG to my vault and then that's a PNG forever, basically. Like I can do whatever I want with that whether or not I'm using
Obsidian or Excalidraw. So I also like the fact that I can use my Apple
pencil to just write on this habit tracker.

That just reminds me of
when I used to do this with paper notebooks and I don't know I'm gonna give it a go. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future but I'm kind of enjoying it so far. So that's Habit Tracker and achievements cancel, just canceled. I don't do anything with
those, but when I move it I usually move things to projects or Kanban or their own notes. Like for example, this Dungeon 23 thing I put it as its own note, but
I might actually move that

to something like a Project Folder. And that way it's an indication that there are going
to be other tasks here. So depending on the project I might have just a single project file with lots of different
tasks that I just tick off. That's just the simplest and it's for like really easy projects
or very linear projects. Then there are other projects like when you talk about content like creating content in
general, it's an ongoing thing.

It's not, it doesn't really
have a start and an end. And in that case I tend to
prefer more of a Kanban approach. Recently I've been moving away from the Kanban plugin and
moving to another plugin by a friend of mine, Marcus
Olson, named Obsidian Projects. I did this video with him on that. Kanban lets you move tasks by dragging and dropping them from
one column to another. So there's still some
projects I use that for. And then for everything else,
I just use Obsidian project because it's just a nicer interface

and it has like table
schedule and thumbnail. Now this is a demo one,
but imagine having all of these videos or whatever blog posts have the cover photo shown. It's just a nice gallery
way of seeing things. And then when I schedule something I do put them in a calendar. So Reclaim actually works
with Google Calendar so that's really cool. I only have to have one calendar. It syncs both my personal one

and my work one keeps it
all in the same calendar and I just would love to move
to something else, honestly haven't found anything that's
as good as Google Calendar. Then I also have this year ahead note. Now this is not really
supposed to be a calendar. This is more like a way to look over the next few months
without really being particular about the dates or anything like that. So let me show you this in light mode.

So it's a little easier to see. So again, this is a demo one
because I didn't wanna show you like the birthdays of everybody
in my life or anything. But how I would do it would be I'd put like small font size and then, you know like code one and then I'd
say, 01, Anna's birthday. Or maybe I'd say 13 trip to Paris. So then I have like an indication of what's happening in the next month.

And I have these cute little
icons that mean something to me, but probably nothing to you. But it's tied to what's
happening in that month. This isn't really something that I worry about keeping completely updated. This is more like my year at a glance and seeing what's coming up and what do I need to prepare for. And I've gone over the present stuff like how I handle things as they come up. And the only other part is the reviews or looking back into the past. So I said future, present,
past, but actually the future

and the past are referring
to the same notes. And that's because the
first instance, their goals and then in the next
instance they're a review of whether or not I met those goals. So these are all the same notes. Weekly, monthly, quarterly
and yearly periodic notes and then also the core principles. So this is just a way of
saying like, did it go well? Did it not go well? And that will usually
coincide with the goals for the next period in time as well. So that's my process for
how I get stuff done.

I am not saying this is the best process or the most optimal or
that you should do this too because I've just cherry picked from methodologies the
parts that made sense to me cobbled them together. And this is what I
ended up with over time. And I encourage you to do the same thing with anything that I show you
or talk about on this channel. If you'd like to know more
about the periodic Notes plugin I go way more into detail
about how to set that up and what exactly
that does in this video.

So check that out. Thank you for watching. Feliz Natal