A Future-Proof Method for Organising your Obsidian Folders

Fairly soon into the game when using Obsidian, you'll have a note which doesn't fit neatly into your folders. It might straddle two or three topics and so you sit there, you look around, you watch the sand running through the hourglass. Then three hours later you wake up in a ball on the floor.

I've been round the houses with this and honestly, found it frustrating. It ate up writing time.

I've written about the Zettelkasten method for organising your notes in another post. I've also written about using Maps of Content to link your notes, an idea I came across in Nick Milo's writing (The Linking your Thinking YouTube Channel).

But what about folders?

I'm just so conditioned by years of using folders that I find it hard not to have some kind of folders to put notes in. I know the search facility in Obsidian is amazing, but it still turns up lots of notes you have to sift through when you use it. I want to be able to go - neolithic - bang! - I'm there. Some Like it Hot - Whoosh! - Milliseconds.

I would try and find some kind of shape my Obsidian folders, but then have to re-do my folder structure as the notes grew. I needed something which I knew would be able to grow over time. So I thought, how do the experts do it? How would a librarian do it?

Finally I've landed on a future-proof method of organising folders in Obsidian - the Universal Decimal Classification method (UDC).

If it feels like sledgehammer and nut territory, bear with me.

Using The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) in Obsidian

I first started looking at the Dewey Decimal system, which is used in a lot of libraries. But some of the ways it classifies certain subjects is unhelpful, especially literature written by women.

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) was developed using the Dewey Decimal System as a jumping-off point. It was created by Belgian bibliographers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine in 1895. They wanted to develop a universal system for organising knowledge - not just books on shelves, but journal articles, pamphlets, maps... anything. They also wanted to express relationships between ideas in UDC. But if you use Obsidian, that's built in already.

The Ten Main UDC Classes

UDC has ten main classes (class 4 is vacant, reserved for future use). If this feels like far too much and your writing is concentrated in just one or two of these areas, bear with me. The idea is to take what you need for it, not adopt it wholesale.

Here is the top level of classification:

0 – General works, knowledge and information
1 – Philosophy and psychology
2 – Religion and theology
3 – Social sciences, law, government
4 – [Vacant, reserved for future use]
5 – Mathematics and natural sciences
6 – Applied sciences and technology
7 – Arts and recreation
8 – Language and literature
9 – Geography and history

(Why not 1-10? Because using 0-9 means each main category has a one digit number associated with it. the next layer down has two digits, and so on.)

Each class is then subdivided decimally. So that means, each subject can be organised with more and more specificity. Let's say you just write about English Literature. Here are example codes for English literature:

8 - All of literature (novels, linguistics, your granny's autobiography, everything!)
82 — We are now only talking about literature
821 — Literature written in specific languages
821.111 — English literature

This is then divided into:

821.111-1 — English poetry
821.111-2 — English drama
821.111-31 — English novels

You can carry on going deeper into the levels, but as Obsidian links notes so beautifully, I'd recommend keeping the folder structure as flat as possible. Fewer clicks for you.

One important thing to bear in mind - if you use this system, don't put a full stop at the very beginning of your folder names (for example, like .821). Unix-based systems (Mac and Linux) treat files starting with a dot as hidden, which can cause molto headaches if you ever want to publish your vault online

I use it as simply as possible. I use the main categories which are relevant to me. I have one other level of folders inside them and that's deep enough at the moment. The main thing is, I know I won't hit a dead end by using this system and have to re-organise everything from the bottom up.

Linking Ideas in UDC

This is not necessary in Obsidian as the linking is already beautifully taken care of. But it's interesting.

The creators of UDC recognised that some books can straddle multiple areas. So, they created a method of linking. I'll just mention one of them - the colon (:), which they used as their main linking tool.

It means you can link say the plays of Samuel Beckett in relation to (:)  the History of the Second World War.

If you want to get deep into the weeds, here is the UDC Consortium website. You can also check out the Library of Congress Classification System.

I've written two other posts on Obsidian: An Introduction to Obsidian for Writers and How to Publish Your Obsidian Vault.