I tried to make Obsidian handle my To-Dos, actually got me to use plugins, ended up dropping that for Apple Reminders and text messaging myself. I have since decided when I use Obsidian, it will be for things I want to keep around permanently, or until the end of a long project.

For dummies like me, Cornell NTS is just Cornell Note Taking System, which seems to include but is not exactly the same thing as Cornell Notes.

I feel you on the reorganizing and cleanup—same reason I do all my transfer manually.

I also have ADHD.

When you first download Obsidian, they put you in the Obsidian Sandbox vault which is full of “how to use Obsidian” tutorials and is made for you to play around and experiment with. Read as much of it as you think is relevant to you. You can always go back to their tutorials to learn more when you need it. I find the official tutorials good enough to not need to look elsewhere for the basics on “how to use Obsidian”. It’s cool to read elsewhere for different ways to organize, but I know that I’ll end up suffering from organizational/decision paralysis so it’s better for me to just go and write. Organize later. Yes, not the best for “staying organized” but at least I’ll be writing important stuff down in an area I can use a search function on which is better than nothing at all.

Part of how I stay organized is that everything has a designated place and must always be put there when not in use. This extends to information. “Where did I put my tax returns?” “Well, you always write information of that nature down in Obsidian, use the search tool in Obsidian and search for ‘taxes’ to find the answer.”

My actual Obsidian files are not the prettiest or the most well organized, but I do manage to actually keep all information of a particular nature contained within. This helps a lot.

A few other ADHD tips:

When I put any of my physical belongings down and I don’t have a particular place they go in (so this happens less at home, but in the museum I visited for the first time and do not expect to be a regular at? I am definitely not going to have a designated spot for each item the way I do at home), they need to be physically near each other. This has cut down so much on umbrella loss for me.

Also, I am personally an Apple Reminders person. Every time I think of something that must be acted on at a particular date or time that I might forget, I put it in Reminders for that day and/or time, which is set up to send me notifications. For example, I sing in a choir and I usually do not take my music folder home after I finish rehearsal. If I decide I want to take the folder home, there is a good chance I’ll forget to do that, so I set a reminder to go off at 7:00PM, when rehearsal ends.

So how does Obsidian play into remembering information if I already use Apple Reminders? I use Obsidian for information I’ll probably forget that doesn’t have a particular date/time associated with it (like recipes I particularly liked that I don’t want to forget, or the difference between three musical terms that I always forget the difference between).

I have separate vaults.

• One for academic notes

• One that serves as a “miscellaneous personal stuff” vault that helps me remember stuff, but that nobody but me would find useful unless you were stalking me or were trying to buy a gift for me. It has a page dedicated to stuff I remembered and spent an hour+ trying to find again, so that I can find it more easily in the future; a page for rating stuff I bought at the grocery store so I remember which ones I liked and which I didn’t; a page with the locations of this or that important document like my taxes; a page with the knitting patterns I’m working on and where I last left off; a page with the exact hex codes for my favorite color… stuff like that.

• One for my creative projects: Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, notes for two games I want to make but may or may not actually bother to get off the ground…