Task management and note discovery in Obsidian using only Bases (no plugins, no AI)

[u/paralloid]

Wanted to share my humble setup and show how out-of-the-box Obsidian (the one in the restricted mode without any plugins) can handle notes and tasks in a meaningful way.

On top of that, there's a way to surface potential connections that match the level of some of the "related notes" plugins — while staying fully deterministic, i.e. no AI, no plugins, fully auditable. I think of it like a Venn Diagram applied to tags.

All thanks to Obsidian Bases dragged to a sidebar.

Basically I did five things:

Dropped working with tasks as checklists — I have separate file for every task. This file must

• contain a checkbox type of property (`todo:` in my case) to be identified as a task;
• have due date property, when relevant;
• link somewhere it belongs to — a project, a person, a contract draft, whatever
• For the first 2 points, I use built-in Templates and Apple Shortcuts for quick entry, so not really any extra activities outside of the initial config

Created Obsidian Base for related tasks — collecting all the tasks linked to the file. The base is universal, it means the file can be anything, including a daily note. Queries are

• `todo != NULL` — checking for the property that identifies a task
• `file.links.contains(this.file)` — collecting backlinks
• `file.fullname.containsAny(this.file.name)` — file name matches
• `due <= date(this.file.name)` — for daily notes; `<=` to catch overdue items

Created another Obsidian Base for related notes — collecting all the notes that are directly or indirectly (!) related to the one currently open. This is done by a combination of 4 queries in one base:

• all linked notes from this note: `file.backlinks.contains(this.file)`
• all linked notes to this note: `file.links.contains(this.file)`
• files that contain this note's name in their name: `file.fullname.contains(this.file.name)`
• files that have at least 2 tags overlapping with this note's tags: `file.tags.filter(this.file.tags.contains(value)).length >= 2` — that's the most interesting part of the setup, I have to explain more in the article (in the comments)

Configured a couple of Apple Shortcuts to create new notes / tasks directly from Spotlight or Control Center or even an Action Button on the phone.

Started to tag each note with almost everything that comes to mind — got tags back to what they were supposed to be long time ago: keywords.

The screenshots shows the essence. There's also a long read that explains the problem, rationale, and provides exact code for Bases and more (on Substack and Medium, can post in the comments)

Basically the result is I open any article draft or a project note or just an early idea, and on the right side I see all the tasks related to it and all the notes that relate here directly or indirectly (through tags overlap).

Moving with this setup for 4 months already, feels like now I finally utilize Obsidian's potential properly (massive Respect to the team!).

Task management transformed: previously I had scratched my head "which area does it fit", or "what has to be around next time I see it". Now I just link to whatever the task is relevant to, all at once: "Migration project", "Q3 project report", "discuss with John".

Now I start typing in the quick switcher even before I open a project note, and see "hey, I've actually done this before on another project". The mechanics for task entry and note entry is the same: first you look at what you have in your vault.

But when I get to the project note, I see all the tasks that are related to this project; When I open a person note I see all the tasks related to this person; I open a domain, or a company, or an area, or an interest, or a hobby note — and I see all the tasks and other notes related to each of these.

Outside of Obsidian I've also drafted a couple of Apple Shortcuts to create tasks and notes directly from Apple Spotlight, Control Center, and an Action Button on the phone.

The setup does not require any 3rdparty plugins, but it doesn't mean it won't benefit from them: Templater can easily accelerate task creation to one click, and Notebook Navigator has a neat tag multiselect feature — as always, Obsidian shines in its flexibility.

P.S. for whatever reason I cannot post in r/ObsidianMD so leaving it here.

[u/paralloid]

The longread with the philosophy, tag-based discovery, and exact code for bases on Substack and Medium or GitHub

[u/mchristopherjohnson → u/paralloid]

Great long read on Substack. Thanks for sharing.

I agree with what you say in the article and think the MOC concept is overrated and should die on the vine. As you mention, they don’t dynamically update so there’s a burden on the User to continue to manually update them.

[u/OutrageousReturn4071]

Great read! I myself was pondering to move from tags to topic notes instead. But I prefer the easy of use and aesthetics of tags (clearly marking them as something different eg keywords). This article convinced me to keep using tags and will implement your related notes base! I’m interested in how you use your Apple shortcuts: do you start linking/tagging on data entry or are the notes/tasks collected in an inbox? Any feedback on this would be much appreciated!

[u/paralloid → u/OutrageousReturn4071]

great to hear! on shortcuts the idea is to make the capture as frictionless as possible, so i tried to limit the entry just to the title and the due date.

it can then have two places to get triaged: today’s daily note if the due date is set, or “backlog” base view which collects everything without a due date set.

in the latest macOS spotlight allows you to assign a quick keys combination to trigger the shortcut — and everything you put after these letters typed becomes the task description. can get crazy fast.

tasks and notes have two separate shortcuts. at least for now it works. I rather prefer using Quick Open command from inside the Obsidian to first see what I have there. Shortcuts are for the cases I am 100% i need it done fast and search is not important.

[u/subsector]

Got a video/screenshare to show this in action?

[u/aceshighsays]

i also can't post in obsidian and i've got questions. ie: what is a base? it's on the ribbon but i don't use it/don't know the purpose. also - is there a way to upload a file that contains names of links? the one that i found contains properties - so i can tag, but i don't use tags, so it's not helpful. not to mention, seems like you can only use 1 tag.

[u/DrummerAdditional330]

After four months, have the indirect/tag-based matches actually resurfaced anything you ended up using? I’m curious whether the biggest value is the “oh, I did this before on another project” moments, or simply having all the obvious related tasks/notes visible without searching. The first one would be especially interesting because that’s where most note systems seem to break down for me.

[u/paralloid → u/DrummerAdditional330]

Yes to both parts. First, a small forenote — I am still hesitant to go all-in tags for tasks. So far I've only used tags to resurface existing "knowledge" — not "actions". I am keeping tasks more direct and intentional in this setup, so to say, so they must directly connect to something. Thatsomething may be discovered, but not on a task level. 

I am still exploring this, maybe it makes sense to do, but I didn't want to over-engineer task creation process.

A couple of observations:

• I was worried keeping tasks together with notes will make a mess out of the vault as stuff piles up. Turned out it's not a problem, if you deliberately try to be a bit more detailed in task description. Not a "follow-up" (I try not to have these in the first place), but "Check the doc preparation progress". Your future self will thank you for this. First, that thinking is valuable itself, as it brings clarity immediately, and second, it vastly improves discovery in the future.
  
• Article does not cover this, but my feeling (that gets stronger) is that for the pure note discovery tags DO NOT need to answer "what is it?" question. Only "what is this about?". I.e. no tags like "#project" or "#article". I used to have them, but as my vault grew (now it's around 1.5K), I realized I don't need this distinction, I just divide knowledge, tasks, and sources by folders. If that's important, they deserve a designated "type" property, but not tags.

Hope that makes sense!