My Obsidian Daily Note Template

How I use Obsidian to track my day-to-day.

My Daily Note

I’ve spent the last few weeks using Obsidian as my daily note-taking app. With the addition of a mobile app this month, I am now all in on Obsidian. My work notes have centered around my daily notes. They are the home base of each day, and from there, I link out to other notes. In addition, I have some dynamic sections showing past due tasks from previous days and what’s due today. By doing this, I will quickly build out a library of thoughts, documentation, and historical data for my work.

Tasks I check daily dynamically generated from the tasks plugin

So what are daily notes?

Daily Notes are single markdown files created each day. In settings, you can configure the file name utilizing the date in some way, specify a location, add a template using the Core Templates plugin, or the Templater community plugin, which I use.

Daily Notes Settings

Each day, I create a new note to start the day. I click the daily note icon in the left toolbar, and it creates the note. If the file already exists, it opens it. I even have a button on my Stream Deck set to open the daily note that I use constantly.

Update

When I open a daily note for the first time, I skim down to my Daily Checklist/Start of Day checklist. There, I have a quick list of tasks that I do each morning.

Daily Checklist — Start of Day

Then, I typically log my first meeting and check any tasks that are due today. For the rest of the day, I add notes as needed, track all communications, meetings, do some time tracking, and take notes. As I need to, I break out into other notes if the information requires more details.