While working on this blog, I noticed something: over time, my Obsidian vault had become unnecessarily complex. What started as a clean setup slowly turned into a mix of folders, utilities, plugins, and routines. It all looked structured, but it didn’t really help me think or get things done. I was organizing more than I was using the system. So I decided to reset it and reduce everything to the essentials.
The problem
Complexity doesn’t come all at once. It builds up gradually — more folders, more layers, more plugins, more supposedly useful additions. At some point the system becomes the focus. You collect, but you don’t use. You organize, but you don’t move forward.
Obsidian makes this particularly easy to fall into. There’s a plugin for everything, and most of them are genuinely useful in isolation. But every plugin you add is something to configure, maintain, and think about. At some point I had more plugins than I had notes I actually used.
The setup
I went back to a minimal structure based on PARA:
00 inbox
01 journal
└── daily
10 projects
20 areas
30 resources
40 archive
No additional layers, no utilities section.
Plugins
I removed almost everything. What remains: Search, Backlinks, File Explorer, and Templates. That’s enough. Anything else tends to pull you back toward overengineering.
The ones I cut: Dataview, Kanban, various theme plugins, a custom toolbar, and a handful of community plugins I had installed but never really used. Getting rid of them felt like clearing a desk. The vault got faster, and I stopped thinking about the tooling.
How I use it
The structure is simple, but what matters is how you move things through it.
1. Capture
Everything goes into 00 inbox. No sorting, no structure at this stage.
2. Process
Once per day, five to ten minutes. For each item, I decide:
- Projects — has a clear goal, requires multiple steps, will be finished
- Areas — ongoing responsibility, no clear end, needs continuous attention
- Resources — useful knowledge, not actionable now, worth reusing later
- Journal — thoughts, reflections, ideas that need thinking
- Trash — no clear use, no action, or duplicate; when in doubt, delete
3. Think
I use a simple daily note:
## Thoughts
## Decisions
## Next
No complex journaling, just a way to clear my head before I start working.
What changed
The main difference isn’t the structure itself — it’s the reduction. Fewer decisions, less friction, clearer focus. The system gets out of the way, which is exactly what it should do.