Seven kinds of note: set up your vault in twenty minutes

One note, one idea

The reason a folder of documents stops working is that each document holds ten things, and nobody can find the one they need. Here every note holds one idea, and every note is one kind of thing. That is what makes it possible for a person, or later an AI, to find the answer and see where it came from.

The seven kinds

Your map from lesson 3 already uses most of them:

• Seedling: a rough note caught fast, not yet tidied. Everything starts here.
• Idea: one of your ideas that is not a decision yet.
• Decision: one call you make again and again, with the rule, where the line sits, the exceptions, why, and who may decide without asking you.
• Process: one recurring piece of work, written only where it forks, with a link to the decision at each fork.
• Client: one client and what is different about them.
• Project: one piece of active work.
• Person: one team member, what they own, and what they may decide.

Twenty minutes to set it up

The starter vault from lesson 2 has all seven ready, with their fields filled in. Open Start Here.md inside it and follow the timings:

1. Minutes 0 to 3: install Obsidian (free), unzip the vault, and open the folder as a vault.
2. Minutes 3 to 6: open the Question Log inside it, or keep using your spreadsheet.
3. Minutes 6 to 10: point new notes at the inbox and give yourself one key that creates a seedling.
4. Minutes 10 to 13: capture three seedlings. Do not organise anything.
5. Minutes 13 to 18: your first tidy-up. For each seedling: keep or delete, give it a kind, fill what you know, add one link.
6. Minutes 18 to 20: open the Garden views and look at the empty fields. They are your to-do list.

Fifteen minutes a morning keeps it true

Capture and tidying are two different jobs. You capture all day without organising anything, because you know you will see it again tomorrow morning. Then fifteen minutes with a timer: sort what came in, give it a kind, fill the fields. We call that the garden. Miss a morning and garden the next day; do not try to catch up all at once.

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