[ryneandal]

I have issues with memory/retainment due to a traumatic brain injury from a car accident in high school, and am incredibly dependent on using Obsidian as sort of a "second brain."

While I've only adopted about half of the methods outlined in Tiago Forte's book, Building a Second Brain [1], it's been very effective for me. I prefer hierarchical folder structure for organization, but I do use his overall PARA structure.

I also use an "inbox" or intake folder inspired by Zettelkasten for newly created notes. I really believe significant cognitive overhead of sorting/tagging/organizing gets in the way of getting your thoughts/notes written down. I generally spend ~10-15 minutes after getting the kids to bed to organize any notes created throughout the day. This is part of my wind-down routine, involving quickly journaling an overall summary of the day on my daily notes and migrating any outstanding TODO's to the next day.

IMO though, the most important thing is to use whatever method of structure/routine/organization works for you. Approach it as an iterative process and play with interesting ideas or methodologies.

One thing in Tiago Forte's BASB that I _strongly_ agree with is that regardless of how much organization you put into your digital notes, search is often the fastest way to find something you're looking for, so spending immense time on organization is counter-intuitive to the reason to take notes. Spending some time to organize your thoughts can inspire connections between notes that you hadn't initially thought of, but it is a slippery slope: it is easy to get lost in the process of structuring your notes and end up with that as your sole purpose of your documented thoughts.

1: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/book