Sébastien Dubois

16 May 2025

My enemy: Information chaos, overwhelming knowledge work, scattered thinking, constant digital noise, and the resulting stress, inefficiency, and missed potential.

Which Obsidian tool should you use to find a note? It depends on what you remember. A thread 🧵👇

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store.dsebastien.netThe Obsidian Search Handbook | Find Any Note When You Need It (2026 edition)A 254-page ebook on finding your notes in Obsidian: note design, vault structure, search operators, Bases, the terminal and AI search. Book or Complete edition.

It's all in the Obsidian Search Handbook, with the research behind it. €19 with code LAUNCH until October 29, €29 after. www.store.dsebastien.net/product/obs...

Every week, I write about Obsidian, PKM and AI in my newsletter. Join us 👉 dsebastien.net/newsletter

Which Obsidian tool should you use to find a note? It depends on what you remember. A thread 🧵👇

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Just the idea? Semantic search, or an AI agent that can run the other four for you.

Too many results is a reason to move to the next step, just like zero results. Name, then phrase, then filters. Stop as soon as you find the note.

Which Obsidian tool should you use to find a note? It depends on what you remember. A thread 🧵👇

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A date, a link or a relation? Bases. Search can't do date math, backlinks or folders. Bases can.

You can't name it, but you know a related note? Start there. Backlinks, unlinked mentions, the local graph, a Map of Content.

Which Obsidian tool should you use to find a note? It depends on what you remember. A thread 🧵👇

You remember the title? Use the quick switcher (Ctrl/Cmd+O). It's fuzzy, it matches aliases, and it ranks title matches first.

Only a word or a phrase? Open the Search view (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+F). "exact phrase", -exclude, path:, tag:, [property:value], task-todo:, /regex/.

Six kinds of work, six ways they end: - Idea: promoted or dropped - Goal: achieved or abandoned - Plan: applied, revised or rejected - Project: completed or abandoned - Activity: retired, deliberately - Task: done Mix them in one list and nothing ends cleanly.

dsebastien.netSort your work by what it is and your lists will stop lyingA single to-do list can't tell an idea from a commitment, or a project from work that never ends. Sorting your work into ideas, goals, plans, projects, activities and tasks fixes that.

I wrote up the full model, with a worked example from "I could become a team lead" down to "book the training this week": www.dsebastien.net/sort-your-w...

Assets are activities. Changes to them are projects. Your product, your website, your team's tooling: activities. You keep them alive. A new version, a migration, a redesign: projects. They end. The project ends; the asset carries on.

The out-of-scope list is the easiest part of a project to skip. It's also the one that protects you when someone asks for "just one more thing". That's how scope creep starts. Write down what you're NOT doing before you start.

GTD sets a very low bar: anything that takes more than one action is a project. That's why GTD project lists get so long. I add two requirements: a finish line and a why. No finish line? It's an activity. No why? Ask whether it deserves your time at all.

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Use folders for note types. Leave topics to tags and links. Why? A note lives in ONE folder, but it can have as many tags and links as you want. Part 3 is out: folders, the archive, ISO dates, daily notes as a timeline, and a capture-time checklist 👇

www.dsebastien.net/structure-a...

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A project is a promise with a finish line. Everything else belongs somewhere else 🧵

Every project needs seven things: a finish line, deliverables, a why, a scope (in AND out), one owner, a status and a next action. Put them in one home per project. When anyone asks where it stands, the answer should be one click away.

dsebastien.netA project is a promise with a finish lineOnce everything is a project, your project list can't tell you what you've promised, what's late or what's done. A simple definition, what to keep off the list, the seven things every project needs and a one-pager to copy.

The lines you can't fill tell you something. No success criteria? Probably an activity or a goal. No owner? Nobody will finish it. No next action? It's stalled, whatever its status says. Full article: www.dsebastien.net/what-counts...

A project is a promise with a finish line. Everything else belongs somewhere else 🧵

A task takes a day or less. An idea isn't committed yet. A goal is an outcome you want to be true. An activity never finishes: it has a cadence and a standard instead of a deadline.

My rule for the confusing cases: assets are activities, changes to them are projects. A product you keep alive is an activity, and each of its releases is a project. The release ends. The product doesn't.

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The project one-pager I use: - Objective - Success criteria (checkable) - Deliverables - Why (the goal or activity it serves) - In scope - Out of scope - Owner (one person) - Status - Next action

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Five minutes to fill in. It saves you from weeks of work on something nobody cares about. Copy it from here: www.dsebastien.net/what-counts...

"The team" is not an owner. Every project needs one person accountable for getting it done. Not a group, not a department, not "we'll figure it out". No owner? Then nobody is going to finish it.

If you work inside someone else's project, demand five answers early: - What's the objective and how will we know it's done? - What's in and out of scope? - Who owns it? - Where does it live? - What's my next action?

Raising it in week one is much cheaper than discovering it at the end. The full article: www.dsebastien.net/what-counts...

And a whole part on organizing projects in the Knowledge Worker Kit: store.dsebastien.net/product/kno...

Put acronyms in parentheses. Name the note "Artificial Intelligence (AI)". Type "AI" or "Artificial Intelligence" in the quick switcher, and it shows up either way. No alias to maintain. Part 2 is out: names, aliases, note types, and the minimum metadata worth adding 👇

www.dsebastien.net/design-note...

Even when they knew details about what they wanted, people in a 2004 MIT diary study used keyword search in only 39% of their searches. We navigate first. We search when navigation fails. That's why findability is decided when you WRITE the note. Part 1 is out 👇

www.dsebastien.net/why-you-can...

Prefer one book over 12 articles? The Obsidian Search Handbook has the whole series, with "Try this" exercises in every chapter. €19 with code LAUNCH until October 29, €29 after. www.store.dsebastien.net/product/obs...

A "Year in Media" page, generated from my notes: - what I watched, played and finished this year - hours per medium - ratings by director and by decade - what's up next Plain Markdown, published on my site. Built from 10,260 notes.

obsidianstarterkit.comObsidian Starter KitJump straight to stress-free note-making with Obsidian

Full write-up, with real code from my vault: www.dsebastien.net/media-manag... The whole system ships with Obsidian Starter Kit v5.1, a free update for everyone who owns it: obsidianstarterkit.com

dsebastien.netFree Obsidian Search Cheat Sheet: operators and the search escalation ladderA free 13-page PDF with the Obsidian search operators worth remembering and the search escalation ladder: which tool to try first, depending on what you remember about the note.

I put the Obsidian search commands and operators worth remembering on one free cheat sheet: quick switcher, Search, Bases, CLI, ripgrep, qmd. Plus the search escalation ladder: which tool to try first, and what to try next 👇 www.dsebastien.net/free-obsidi...

My Obsidian search series is free, and the overview is up today. Then one new part every weekday for 12 weekdays, starting tomorrow. Start with the overview. It has the search escalation ladder, the findability stack, and a table that maps what you remember to the tool to use.

www.dsebastien.net/the-complet...

dsebastien.netThe Complete Guide to Obsidian Search - Find Any Note When You Need ItMost searches in your vault are re-finding searches; you wrote the note, now you want it back. This overview tells you which tool to reach for, compares them all, and points to the 12 parts that go deep. Based on a 30,000-note vault.

The weakness of Obsidian's native Kanban that bothers me the most: it doesn't know which values are valid. Write "In progres" once, anywhere, and the board quietly adds a new column. Your card disappears from the column where you expected it.

dsebastien.netObsidian now has native Kanban boards and I'm not switching yetObsidian 1.14 adds a native Kanban view to Bases. I love it, and it's great news for everyone. But after comparing it feature by feature with the Kanban Action Planner, I'm not moving my system over anytime soon. Here's why.

With a handful of notes, you'll spot it. With hundreds of tasks over months, you won't. How I avoid it: www.dsebastien.net/obsidian-na...

I wrote a book on finding notes in Obsidian 🚀 The Obsidian Search Handbook: 254 pages, PDF + EPUB. The science of re-finding, the tools (quick switcher to AI search), the habits, and "Try this" exercises in every chapter. €19 with code LAUNCH until October 29. €29 after.

www.store.dsebastien.net/product/obs...

Rather read it for free? You can. All the chapters are free on dsebastien.net as a 12-part series. The overview is up today, part 1 comes out tomorrow, then one new part every weekday. www.dsebastien.net/the-complet...

Pick any task on today's list and trace it upward. Which project or activity does it serve? Which goal does that serve? If you can't answer, either a link is missing, or the task doesn't deserve your time.

You might need better structure: www.dsebastien.net/sort-your-w...

I built the Kanban Action Planner because I hit the limits of every Kanban solution I tried. Goals, projects, tasks, books, videos... each note type has its own lifecycle and its own "done". The native boards in Obsidian 1.14 are great. They don't cover that (yet).

Why I'm keeping my boards where they are: www.dsebastien.net/obsidian-na...

community.obsidian.mdKanban Action PlannerRender your notes as configurable Kanban boards and calendars inside Bases, with statuses, ordering, relationships, and scheduling.

The plugin: community.obsidian.md/plugins/kan...

An action system rots if you don't look at it. Each level needs its own rhythm: - Tasks: daily and weekly - Projects and activities: weekly and monthly - Goals and plans: monthly to yearly - Ideas: at least once a quarter, or the funnel becomes a graveyard

The article: www.dsebastien.net/sort-your-w...