My Visual Daily Note-Taking Workflow in Obsidian 🎨 | Excalidraw & GTD

Technological concepts & workflow overview (Obsidian + Excalidraw + GTD)

• Goal: Build a visual daily note-taking and PKM (personal knowledge management) workflow in Obsidian, integrated with Excalidraw and the GTD (Getting Things Done) approach.
• Core idea: A daily journal/daily notes page acts as the “anchor” for everything captured that day, while individual notes are stored in their proper long-term locations (e.g., person pages, project pages, book pages).

Context-first task management (“in-context task management”)

• When you’re on a person/page/project, you only see tasks relevant to that context.
  • Example: “meeting with Bob” shows Bob-related actions.
• Achieved using the Obsidian Tasks plugin, plus links/ontologies that connect daily notes to the appropriate pages.

Visual navigation & cross-linking features

• Zero walls-of-text workflow: Notes are mostly placed and navigated as visual canvases/whiteboards rather than markdown-only documents.
• Visual daily timeline / sequence: Daily notes are arranged in date order; each day links forward/back to other days and related topics.
• Cross-linked “in place” content:
  • Notes created during the day can appear as:
    • Drawings/Excalidraw-style visual notes, and/or
    • Markdown notes
  • The note content is embedded back into the original context page (daily view), while remaining in its “home” location (project/person/book page).
• Mind map / ontology-driven layout:
  • An ontology of links determines relationships between the daily note and the note you’re capturing.
  • A mind map auto-arranges related notes so opening any page shows relevant context.

Data modeling / structure details

• On person pages:
  • Shows tasks waiting for that person and the notes taken with them.
  • Example: meeting notes with “Bob the Builder.”
• On project pages:
  • Supports document properties (and project-level properties), plus linked notes and embedded captures.
• Templates & demo vault:
  • A demo vault is provided preloaded with templates and preconfigured Excalidraw/ontology settings to help users start quickly.

How the “capture note” script works (tutorial/process)

Script availability

• The creator shares a capture note script in the Excalidraw/Excalibre script store (installed via the Obsidian “Tools”/script panel).

User flow during meetings/activities

1. Run capture note (via hotkey / command palette).
2. Enter/select the target entity (e.g., Bob the Builder) and choose short name.
3. Choose note type:
   • visual (mind map/Excalidraw frame), and optionally
   • markdown
4. Choose an ontology relation type (e.g., meeting/coaching meeting).
5. The system creates a note, links it to the daily journal, and also connects it to the correct “home” page (person/project/etc.).

Automatic updates

• When switching between pages (daily ↔ person ↔ project), the canvas updates and the mind map layout refreshes.

Frame fitting / organization

• The script can “fit” the created note into an appropriate frame area to keep the whiteboard organized.

Review/analysis style points (rationale & prior work)

Motivation

• Inspired by a quote attributed to James Clear about vision being dominated by sensory receptors.
• The creator’s argument: changing what you see (from text lists to visual engagement) can significantly change behavior.

PKM theory

• Daily-journal anchoring + “latching” concept:
  • Inspired by Richard Saul Wurman’s five organizing principles: location, alphabet, category, hierarchy, time.

Evolution since earlier videos/tools

• A prior GTD workflow existed earlier (2022), plus earlier experimentation with Excalidraw.
• Improvements leveraged newer Obsidian capabilities:
  • Tasks plugin
  • Document properties
  • Other features mentioned (e.g., mind map builder)
• Additional custom innovations:
  • two-sided notes
  • markdown embeddables
  • “back of note cards”

Deployment / community plan

• Two-part release:
  • Part 1: This video (workflow + script concept/demo).
  • Part 2: Only for the Sketchnote Mind community, including deeper setup of the demo vault.
• Planned feedback session: Early June community session to review the workflow.
• Community call: Encourages joining for templates, settings walkthrough, and configuration details.

Main speakers / sources

• Speaker: The video creator (no name given in subtitles).
• Referenced sources/authorities:
  • James Clear (quote about sensory receptors / vision)
  • Richard Saul Wurman (“LATCH framework” / information organization principles; TED Talks founder mentioned)
  • David Allen (GTD book referenced)