Intro

Obsidian can become an extremely powerful personal journal. And while journaling (via the Daily Notes plugin) is a core functionality of Obsidian, newcomers might find it challenging to make the most of it.

In this guide, we’ll explore some of the most common Obsidian plugins for journaling, along with their configurations, to make daily note-taking more useful and delightful.

Tip Note to newcomers: Every item in this post is merely a suggestion based on my own and others' experiences. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and daily notes are very personal tools, so pick and choose the parts that work for you. There is no absolute right or wrong, only what’s right or wrong for you.

My process of journaling and brain dumping

It took me a couple of years to journal effectively and discover what works for me.

I use journaling to keep track of what I did over time, my projects and progress within those projects, and personal reflections.

Recently, I started using it as a daily brain dump: a process where I write everything down on my daily note. It helps relieve both cognitive load and stress, and it helps me avoid forgetting important tasks, since relying on memory doesn’t work well for me.

Setting up your vault

In this section, I’ll guide you through some basic plugins and settings that I find useful in my personal journal.

Allowing community plugins

1. Open Settings.
2. Open Community Plugins.
3. Select Turn on community plugins.

Searching, installing, and enabling community plugins

Once enabled, you can browse and search for plugins in the plugin library. Open the plugin you like, click Install, then exit to the Community Plugins menu and toggle to Enable the installed plugins.

Recommended Community Plugins

Periodic Notes Plugin

Link to the Periodic Notes plugin

Periodic Notes is a better alternative to the Daily Notes core plugin. Besides daily notes, it allows you to create weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly notes that you can use according to your workflow.

Configuring Periodic Notes

Toggle the note types you want to enable. For each note type, configure:

Format

This sets the note location and note name in your Note Folder based on the note date. The Periodic Notes plugin uses Moment.js conventions for formatting.

Below is my recommended configuration:

Reasons behind this structure:

• It allows easy navigation through your journal.
• It provides exact referencing to specific notes without collisions.

Daily / Weekly / … / Yearly Note Template

Choose which template file to use when creating a new note. This helps avoid redundant typing, offers a common structure, and allows advanced capabilities when combined with the Templater Plugin.

Note Folder

The root folder in your vault where you’ll store your personal journal notes. Examples could be My daily notes, My diary, or My Journal.

Templater Plugin

Link to the Templater plugin

The Templater plugin is extremely powerful, providing extensive features that enable smart templates when creating new notes (automatically or on demand). In this guide, I’ll focus on the basic features that will hopefully give you a taste for more.

Configuring Templater Plugin

For journaling purposes, here are the essential steps. I’ll cover the other settings in a separate guide.

Template folder location

Create a folder within your vault to store your templates. I use the name Templates and place it in the root folder of my vault. Then, in Templater’s settings, specify this folder as your template folder location.

Template example

Below is an example of a daily note template I use:

---
tags: [DailyNote]
---
[<< Previous](<% tp.date.yesterday("YYYY-MM-DD")%>)    [Next >>](<% tp.date.tomorrow("YYYY-MM-DD")%>)

# Daily Routine
## Free writing...

## Daily Tasks
- [ ]

## What did I do today
-

## I would like to thank myself for...
1.

Explanation File headers

Defined by --- at the start and end of the header block. These can contain built-in properties like aliases, tags, and creation_date, as well as any user-defined property. It allows you to search the vault for every document containing these tags and properties.

Navigation Links

This is an example of advanced template functionality. <% tp.date.yesterday("YYYY-MM-DD")%> is replaced by Templater with yesterday’s date (based on the day you create the page), following the YYYY-MM-DD format. See the Templater documentation page for more details.

Lists

Lists, enumerated lists, and tasks follow standard Markdown syntax.

Calendar Plugin

Link to the Calendar plugin

The Calendar plugin adds a new side panel to Obsidian, allowing easy access to your periodic notes. By clicking on a date, week, month, or year, it will open the corresponding note or offer to create one if it doesn’t exist.

Configuring Calendar Plugin

If you are using weekly notes, please enable “Show week number” toggle.

Natural Language Dates Plugin

This is a highly useful plugin that allows referencing relative dates by typing something like @Yesterday, @Tomorrow, @Next Thursday, and so on. The plugin will replace these with the correct dates in your preset format.

Configuring Natural Language Dates Plugin

Some notable settings:

• Date format: Make sure it matches the Daily Notes name format in the Periodic Notes plugin.
• Trigger phrase: The character sequence that triggers the date reference replacement (defaults to @).

Journaling

Here are my tips for journaling effectively in Obsidian.

Focus on writing and not formatting

Your journaling experience should be as frictionless as possible. If you use tasks or lists, prepare corresponding sections in your note template so you can focus on the content. Once you finish writing a list item or a task, just press Enter to create a new one below it.

Creating notes

You can create a new periodic note in several ways.

Using the Periodic Notes plugin

Left clicking on the Periodic Notes icon will create a daily note. Right clicking on the Periodic Notes icon will present a menu with Daily, Weekly, and Monthly note type if you have enabled those in the plugin options. Supports daily, weekly, and monthly notes.

Using the Calendar plugin

Click on a specific date or a week to create a new note. This will either create a new note, or ask for a confirmation, depending on the plugin’s settings. Supports daily and weekly notes.

Using the command palette

Press Ctrl + P on Windows or Linux, or Cmd + P on Mac and start typing to find the note type that you want to create. Supports all enabled note types.

Linking

Following the advice of Nick Milo, consider adding links to important terms, subjects, and even personal names. This will let you connect important ideas to each other. It doesn’t matter if these files don’t exist yet; when you eventually create them, you might discover you’ve linked to that notion several times, revealing connections you didn’t remember.

To link, just type the double square brackets [[. Obsidian will create the matching brackets, and you can start typing in between them. Alternatively, select a word or phrase, type [[, and Obsidian will surround your selection with brackets.

Example: Linking in [[Obsidian]] is very important.

Linking is a major feature that, in my view, is worth the extra effort.