A Complete Life Planner System For 2025 in Obsidian
Based on Prakash Joshi Pax's video on YouTube. If you like this content, support the original creators by watching, liking and subscribing to their content.
Write numeric and named properties in Daily notes so DataView can aggregate them into Monthly goal progress automatically.
Briefing
A 2025 life-planning system built inside Obsidian ties daily journaling to automatic weekly and monthly rollups, then extends that same data model into goals, projects, habits, and a dashboard. The core idea is simple: write structured properties in daily notes, and use Obsidian’s data queries plus templates to compute progress bars, reflections, and task/project completion—so planning stays lightweight while reporting stays consistent.
The setup starts with a dashboard that acts like a control center. It includes navigation buttons for Daily, Weekly, and Monthly notes, a light/dark mode toggle, a tasks view, and multiple DataView queries for goals, habits, recently created notes, and recently updated notes. From there, the Daily/Weekly/Monthly note chain does the heavy lifting. Daily notes link to yesterday, tomorrow, the weekly note, and the monthly note, and they also embed monthly goal tracking. Instead of manually copying goal numbers, the monthly goal progress is computed by extracting specific daily properties (for example, a metric like “Focus mate,” plus a numeric target) across all daily notes in that month.
Weekly notes pull in daily content through DataView: weekly reflections and summaries aggregate metadata written in daily notes, and weekly targets live alongside those rollups. Monthly notes then repeat the pattern—monthly reflections and summaries aggregate weekly-level metadata, while monthly goals remain editable at the monthly level. Navigation links connect months to their previous/next months and link weeks within each month, keeping the whole system navigable without losing the thread of time.
Beyond the calendar spine, the system adds specialized dashboards. A goal dashboard manages individual goal files with frontmatter fields like progress and Target, calculating progress against a deadline. A project dashboard computes completion by counting completed versus incomplete tasks inside each project file, producing a percentage progress value. Habits are tracked via DataView queries—either number-based metrics or checkbox-style tracking using JavaScript-enhanced DataView logic.
Under the hood, the system relies on a specific plugin stack and CSS customizations. DataView powers the queries and inline JavaScript. The Journals plugin generates the daily/weekly/monthly (and optionally quarterly/yearly) note structure using a calendar-based folder scheme like Year/Month/Week. Templater templates generate links (previous/next months and weeks), format titles, and insert goal sections. Metabind creates dashboard buttons, while style settings and multiple CSS snippets reshape the UI—centered daily layouts, hover-revealed properties, and “clean embed” styling so embedded content looks native.
The transcript also mentions an auxiliary productivity tool, Voice Inc, which uses local Whisper AI models for voice-to-text in 100+ languages—positioned as a typing shortcut for knowledge workers who will be filling in daily notes and structured properties. Overall, the system’s value comes from automation: daily inputs become weekly and monthly reporting, and those same structured fields drive progress visuals across goals, projects, and habits.
Cornell Notes
The Obsidian life-planner system for 2025 is built around one workflow: write structured properties in Daily notes, then let DataView queries and templates automatically roll that data up into Weekly and Monthly reflections and progress tracking. Monthly goals are edited at the monthly level, but progress is calculated by extracting the relevant daily properties across all daily notes in the month. Weekly notes aggregate daily summaries and metadata into weekly reflections, and monthly notes aggregate weekly summaries into monthly reflections. The same data-driven approach extends to separate dashboards for goals, projects (task completion-based progress), and habits (number-based or checkbox-style tracking). This matters because it reduces manual reporting while keeping planning consistent across time.
How does the system make monthly goal progress update automatically without manual recalculation?
What role do templates and the Daily→Weekly→Monthly links play in keeping the system coherent?
How are weekly and monthly reflections generated from daily inputs?
How does the project dashboard calculate progress?
What options exist for habit tracking, and how do they differ?
Which plugins and CSS elements make the dashboard and note UI work the way it does?
Review Questions
- If you wanted a new monthly metric (e.g., “Exercise minutes”), where would you add the property and how would the monthly progress bar pick it up?
- Describe the data flow from a Daily note review/metadata field to a Weekly reflection and then to a Monthly reflection.
- What changes would be needed to switch habit tracking from number-based metrics to checkbox-style streak tracking?
Key Points
- 1
Write numeric and named properties in Daily notes so DataView can aggregate them into Monthly goal progress automatically.
- 2
Use the Daily→Weekly→Monthly template chain to ensure every period has the same metadata fields and reflection sections for reliable rollups.
- 3
Keep monthly goals editable at the monthly note level, but calculate progress from daily properties across the month.
- 4
Track projects by task completion counts (completed vs total) so progress percentages update as tasks change.
- 5
Choose habit tracking mode based on preference: number-based metrics for simple tracking or JavaScript-enhanced checkbox logic for streaks and records.
- 6
Build the dashboard with Metabind buttons for fast navigation and use DataView queries for goals, habits, and recent notes.
- 7
Rely on Journals + Templater + CSS snippets to standardize folder structure, generate period links, and control UI behavior like hover-revealed properties.