How to Use Obsidian as a Zettelkasten: The Ultimate Tutorial

Creating your first note (Zettel)

The value of your Zettelkasten resides in your notes.

So, let’s create your first note together.

To create a new file within your fresh new vault, go to file > new note.

This creates a new note within your vaul.t

At the top, you can specify the name of your note.

Some Zettelkasten purists like to use unique identifiers or use complicated prefixes. I’m against that.

I like to summarize the idea the note contains in the title:

Now, in the editor, start typing the content of your note.

Keep in mind that Obsidian uses the markdown syntax to format your writing faster. If you want to master the basics of Markdown in 7 minutes check out my Obsidian 80/20 course.

Obsidian will store this newly created note directly within your vault.

You don’t need to save anything. Obsidian does this automatically for you.

🎉 Congrats on creating your first note!

Creating your first link in Obsidian

The purpose of a Zettelkasten is to connect ideas.

Your notes are nothing else than a bunch of ideas that simply wait to be combined. This is why the notes are called atomic. Because in the Zettelkasten, you break down the different ideas into their most essential parts.

The goal is to find related notes that you can link together. This is how new knowledge is created. Creative ideas are nothing else than idea combinations.

Creating notes also helps you to better understand the information you consume.

At first, you may be confused looking at the connections between notes. But this will rapidly vanish the more additional notes you add to your Zettelkasten.

So let’s put this concept into practice within Obsidian.

When creating a note, simply type two brackets:

[[

Follow those 2 brackets by entering the name of the note you want to link to.

Let’s assume that I’m working on a note related to productivity. So creating a link to my Productivity note makes total sense.

I can simply type:

[[Productivity]]

Obsidian will recognize this as a link to the note called “Productivity”.

In oder to have an effective Zettelkasten workflow you need to connect every note to another one. The goal is to not have orphan notes (i.e: notes without links)

Obsidian Zettelkasten folder structure

Obsidian allows you to create folders.

So a legitimate question to ask is what folder structure should you use?

There are many people who would recommend using Tiago Forte’s PARA or any other kind of folder structure. And let me tell you straight off the bat: I’m against all that.

Not because it may (or may not) work. Simply because it takes too much time to manage. (At least, in my experience.)

Remember that our goal of setting up a Zettelkasten in Obsidian is to spark new insights, clarify our thinking and double down on our best ideas.

So we want to spend as little time as possible in managing the structure.

As a creative person you’re an idea-maker, not an idea-manager!

When it comes to the Zettelkasten folder structure, don’t create a new folder.

I recommend starting with a FLAT structure. A flat structure implies that you start with no folder at all. This is how you truly replicate Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. Remember that the word “Zettelkasten” is composed of two words: Zettel (notes) and Kasten (box). All notes were contained in one giant box. This box is nothing else than your Obsidian vault.

You can always add folders later on in the process. But to start out, make things simple. Organizing your notes in Obsidian does not have to be complicated.

Start with a FLAT structure. Ditch folders.

Zettelkasten templates for Obsidian?

Some people use templates in Obsidian to kickstart their notes: may it be for taking booknotes or journaling.

There’s no right or wrong way. And it’s not an immutable science but more to get inspired.

You can check out Reddit or the Obsidian Forum to see what others are doing. But beware of frying your brain with overcomplicated productivity wizardry.

Again, I’m not a fan of overcomplicated templates.

Always remember that we want to work in the system, not on the system.

Luhmann’s original Zettelkasten worked because it was easy to maintain. Not because it was complicated. You should take this holistic approach, too.

Don’t get blinded and bogged down by 1 hour and 46 seconds complicated workflow walkthroughs.

The book How to Take Smart Notes introduces several types of notes to include in your digital Zettelkasten.

Let’s take a closer look at them.

How to Take Fleeting Notes in Obsidian

A fleeting note is a note you capture on the fly.

It can be an idea, a thought, or a valuable quote. You want to capture ideas quickly as soon as they arise so that you make sure to not lose them.

Obsidian is not very good at capturing ideas quickly. (There are some workaround but they’re far beyond this beginner guide. Remember, I want to keep things simple so that you can have a functioning workflow by the end of this guide.)

This is why, I would encourage you to use a dedicated note-taking capturing tool.

You can’t go wrong using Evernote as a capture tool because its versatile. It works on every device and has a lot of integrations.

But you could also use Drafts, Bear, or Apple Notes if you’re on Apple. (Sorry, no big Android/Windows recommendations here except Evernote. Many people also use Microsoft One Note. Simply check what works for you!)

In this step, you simply copy and paste an idea verbatim into your inbox.

Now, you have a collection of fleeting notes that need to be processed.

The next step is to transform those fleeting notes into permanent notes.

How to Take Permanent Notes in Obsidian

Now that you have a bunch of fleeting notes, it’s time to add them to your Zettelkasten in Obsidian.

It’s time to create permanent notes.

The word permanent is here for a reason. Think of those notes as permanent residents of your Zettelkasten. 
Technically speaking, Creating a permanent note is nothing else than described earlier in this guide when it came to “creating your first note.” You simply create a new note in Obsidian with the content of your fleeting note.

However, to create a great permanent note, the goal is to rewrite everything in your own words (also called the Feynman technique.)

Here’s an example:

How to Take Literature Notes in Obsidian

One of the best sources of knowledge is books.

This is why I love taking literature notes in Obsidian.

So instead of leaving my highlights slowly dying on Amazon’s cloud, I now distill my reads inside Obsidian and turn every idea I take from the book into a stand-alone note (i.e: permanent note)

The workflow I follow is quite simple:

1- Reading and highlighting (you don’t need a tutorial for that)

2- Importing your highlights into Obsidian.

3- Distilling the information (rewriting/linking)

Here’s my detailed video workflow: