Obsidian Workflow: Personal Knowledge Management using Dataview plugin

I have been using Obsidian daily for managing my notes for more than a year now. In this period I have tested the most varied plugins available and my favorite is Dataview. This is a plugin that allows you to create custom views to present data from all your notes in lots of cool ways.

It is fundamental in my workflow for note-taking from all the types of content I have consumed such as articles, videos, and courses. What I like most is that it doesn't matter much how I organize the notes. All I need to do is use metadata fields and create visualizations showing the most important information.

Here's how my setup looks like:

I created a page called Knowledge Sources Dashboard. It is composed of 3 sections:

• Internet Exploration - Everything I consume from articles, YouTube videos, and newsletters.
• Books - Notes written in my own words about the books I read.
• Courses - Notes I write when I take a course.

The sections are sorted by frequency of consumption. Internet Exploration is on top because I use it more often, with the books section coming after, and lastly the courses I take occasionally. I like this separation exactly to try to maintain a balance in my knowledge sources. If I see that I am only consuming one type of content more than another, I try to balance it. For example, I don't want to go months without reading a book or taking a good course. Every time I open this panel I can notice imbalances and better plan what kind of content to consume.

Get the most out Obsidian

Every week I write an email newsletter with tutorials, links to articles, and content that I recently enjoyed. I'd love for you to join.

How to set up

I use 3 plugins for this setup:

• Dataview to generate the tables automatically.
• QuickAdd to quickly add new notes using specific templates. I use one command for each content source (Add Item, Add Book, and Add Course).
• Obsidian Buttons to create buttons that when pressed run one of the QuickAdd commands.

These are the code blocks of the 3 sections:

[[Internet Exploration]] 🌐

    ```dataview
    TABLE
        medium AS Medium,
        topics AS Topics,
        shared AS "Email share?"
    FROM #InternetExploration AND -"003 Templates"
    SORT file.ctime DESC
    LIMIT 5
    ```

    ```button
    name New Item
    type command
    action QuickAdd: Add Item
    ```

[[Books]] 📚

    ```dataview
    TABLE WITHOUT ID
        ("![cover|80](" + cover + ")") as Cover,
        file.link AS Title,
        author AS "Author",
        date AS "Date read",
        rating AS "Rating"
    FROM #Books AND -"003 Templates"
    SORT date DESC
    LIMIT 5
    ```

    ```button
    name New Book
    type command  
    action QuickAdd: Add Book
    ```

[[Courses]] 🎓

    ```dataview
    TABLE WITHOUT ID
        file.link AS Title,
        status AS Status,
        topics AS Topics,
        cost AS Cost
    FROM #Courses AND -"003 Templates"
    SORT file.ctime DESC
    LIMIT 5
    ```

    ```button
    name New Course
    type command
    action QuickAdd: Add Course
    ```

Finally, these are the 3 templates I use for the notes in this system:

## Metadata
type:: #InternetExploration
medium::
source::
topics::
shared:: No

## Metadata
type:: #Books 
author::
date::
rating::
topics::
cover::

## Metadata
type:: #Courses
status:: #ToDo
source::
cost::
topics::

That’s it! I hope you found this article useful, thanks for reading. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send me a message.