Templates as Object Oriented Knowledge Management With Obsidian

I mentioned previously that one of the things I’m most excited about regarding Obsidian Bases is the open acceptance of what I’ve termed Object Oriented Knowledge Management. Object Oriented Knowledge Management is the storage of different collections of information as notes with the same properties. Each note is a single instance of that type of object.

With Obsidian Bases, these collections can now be viewed and manipulated more easily than ever before - and in more ways than ever before.

We interact with objects in different apps every day. Any time you connect to a contact in the contact list on your phone, you’re interacting with an object. Pull a recipe out of a recipe manager app? That’s an object. Each email message you send or receive is an object.

There are many advantages to recognizing when you’re going to be handling the same type of note (object) over and over again. Recognizing and thinking about the objects you interact with gives you opportunities to take advantage of what R.J. Nestor in his book The Rhythms of Productivity calls Productivity Bridges. Productivity Bridges help you get from a starting point to a place where you have everything you need in order to do your work. The simplest form of a productivity bridge is a template.

In preparation for Bases to launch to the full Obsidian User Community, I thought this would be a good time to update a series about templates I originally published in 2022. That series included the following:

• What’s the difference between Templates (Obsidian Core Plugin) and Templater (Obsidian Community Plugin)

• Deciding which is right for you

• Identifying when you need a template

• Enabling and using the templates core plugin

• Creating your first template with the templates core plugin

• Using your first template

• Setting up and using a daily notes template

• Installing, enabling, and configuring the Templater Plugin

• The templater “language”

• Put notes where you want them with Templater’s Folder Templates

• Bind a template to a keyboard shortcut

• Some of my favorite templater snippets

• Other plugins that work great with templater

• Other great templater resources

The original series was 4 articles and it’s still a great starting point for anyone who is just starting out with Templates. That said, that entire series happened before Obsidian Properties was released - and definitely before the anticipated public release of Bases.

Additionally, I didn’t cover any of the ways that I use Dataview currently - and plan to use Bases in the future. So, as we get started on this new series, I’m planning to completely refresh that original series with updates for properties and bases - and we’ll probably throw in a little dataview along the way.

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