Introduction

Welcome to Bramses’ Highly Opinionated Vault 2023! Thanks for checking it out.

What you’ll see in this repo is a highly opinionated, unapologetic way to use Obsidian. Note that this is not the only way to use Obsidian, nor is it the correct way. But it is a way that works well, especially once you understand the philosophies behind it.

Some of these techniques may be familiar to you, others may be novel due to the idiosyncracies about how my own mind works. I’ll do my best to explain all of my philosophies and lived experience in the creation of this vault. Some techniques, processes and plugins are built into the platform. Other techniques leverage powerful external softwares to greatly enhance the Obsidian experience. I’ll argue for those as they come as well as provide potential alternatives.

Bramses’ Highly Opinionated Vault 2023 is a fully working vault template that you’ll be able to run on your own by using the “Use this Template” button in the top right corner.

By following this guide and leveraging this template, I can promise that you’ll be able to evolve from possibly never having used Obsidian to being up to date with the way I think about using this phenomenal software. If you are a current Obsidian user, I promise you’ll come away with a few new tricks and theories to integrate into your own vault, or perhaps help you full pivot into this strategy. I hope you enjoy and have fun!!

*NB: This guide is really long, so don’t be afraid to use the Table of Contents feature in the top left corner of the README.

Motivation

I’ve been using Obsidian for well over a year and have developed many experiments, some of which succeeded and many others that have failed. I have tried to compile all the lessons from these experiences and create a vault that mirrors my up to date thinking on how Obsidian can be maximally utilized.

Bramses’ Highly Opinionated Vault 2023 (BHOV-2023) will tread the line of practicality and theory. Let’s dive in!

Philosophies

Before we get into anything practical we need to discuss the underlying philosophies powering this vault, or none of the implementations will make any sense. Most of these philosophies I’ve learned or adapted from great contemporary and erstwhile authors and thinkers — the following is a reflection of both my value structure as well as my take on the works of others.

Philosophies we’ll encounter along the way:

(nb: github and obsidian use different link styles for multiple word titles so if you are reading this in Obsidian press the (o) next to the names to jump to the heading, disregard if you are on Github)

• Deep Work (o) (Cal Newport)
• Time Block Planning (o) (Cal Newport)
• PARA (Tiago Forte)
• CODE (Tiago Forte)
• Progressive Summarization (o) (Tiago Forte)
• Zettelkasten (Niklas Luhmann)
• Digital Garden (o) (Andy Matuschack)
• An unexamined life is not worth living (o) (Socrates)
• Jamming (Music Production)
• AGILE (Software Development Project Management)
• Metcalfe’s Law (o) (Computer Sci