Searching for notes — Optimizing note discoverability
As many people here, I have a folder structure (studies, management, templates, resources, family, etc. with at most another level (family/wife, family/son1, management/knowledge, management/finance, management/stakeholders, etc.)) (Meu Obsidian) and notes automatically fall within one of them based on the context of the note. This helps with narrowing down things in case I'm searching for the note outside of Obsidian or if I'm navigating the file explorer in Obsidian.
Note names are descriptive of the contents (“tax information 2024”, “son 1 first grade payment receipts”). This, again, helps with navigation but also helps search since I'd be looking for things like “how much we paid for school” while creating my tax report. Things start connecting naturally, even though they are in different folders (or the same folder, it is up to how you think about things and how you structure them).
I also have chronological information / dates standardized (Managing time in notes), so they provide extra information and context. I know something happened in May or June 2024, I can filter things by date, search by date.
There are some other patterns (Patterns to make linking easier) I use to connect information (Note linking process) that also serves as filters. Standard keywords that help narrow down things.
There are notes with descriptions for each binary file in my vault, helping me find this type of contents with basic search.
Links aren't the URL only, they contain the title of the page or a description of the contents. The same way as in this note (and if it is something I've published somewhere, there will probably be an internal link to the same contents as the external link, as it is intentionally shown in this note).
I use Omnisearch, for some improved search options and for searching inside PDF files.
And, finally, as my vault is synced via OneDrive, I have it to search my files as well. It indexes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, text files (markdown files), provides OCR for my handwritten images or text in other images, and other features from that tool so it is my last resort.
I'm disciplined in the sense that each time something was hard to find for a specific context, I make changes to my notes to make it easier to find: adding some additional tag, alias, category, or other property to the note, adding extra text, or even creating a new note linked to the one I found but with the extra information that is relevant. I also use the same approach to the notes related to attachments, making them discoverable outside of OneDrive.
In other words, my vault works as my brain. It has contexts for the information in there, I know what is there, and I take care that the vault synapses — the connections — exist and are relevant, meaningful, for how I think and search.
Creating a new note is really fast, and 95% of the time they're born complete and at the right place. Maintenance is really low, and it is possible to automate things very easily.
Since I think that Obsidian is one tool in my toolbox, I design things for the other tools as well (other text editors, external scripts, file system navigation and search, Onedrive usage, etc.), even if I don't use them (there's no script that I run in my files, but I have things structured so that it would be easy to do that in one file, one folder, many folders via properties, and of course, the whole vault).
Understanding how you think, how the tool works (and testing) — Getting started with Obsidian (Obsidian - getting started) — a lot. And I don't fear making changes (Vault evolution and changes) to my vault. My brain and my needs change with time, so the vault structure can't be static. Properties change, files move around as layout changes (this is very rare after decades using this system, but it happens), tools evolve and bring new possibilities (back of the note Excalidraw diagrams are a great thing to me), and so on.
Design your notes for how you query them, not how you create them. Using the information is the goal.