IT'S ABOUT TIME - How I integrate time into my Obsidian notes - GTD

A daily notes page can function as the backbone of a personal knowledge graph when every meeting note is logged chronologically there—while the same content is also nested into the right topic pages (projects, people, systems) via transclusions. The payoff is a single “what happened today” timeline that still preserves context, so the same information can be reused from multiple angles without duplicating it.

The system rests on a “latch principle” attributed to Richard Saul Wurman: information organization should account for five aspects—location, alphabet, time, category, and hierarchy. Time matters because it anchors a day-by-day record, but it’s only one dimension. For time representation in a knowledge graph, the workflow described here blends two approaches. The “daily notes first” method links everything to the daily notes page: meetings, visits, reading, and research all leave a footprint on that day. The “content first” method instead treats context as primary—linking a book to the topic being researched rather than the date it was read. The creator’s setup aims to use both, depending on what kind of information is being captured.

In the Obsidian workspace, the daily notes page is the chronological log. For work, the page includes meeting entries that are implemented as transclusions: text lives on the relevant topic page (for example, a person’s page) but appears inside the daily notes entry. A meeting with “rolly” on Wednesday demonstrates the mechanism: the daily notes page shows the meeting text with a distinct background color, and clicking opens the underlying note on Rolly’s page. Each topic page follows a consistent structure—header, a tasks section, and a notes section—so the same workflow scales across projects and people.

The tasks section is generated with a Data View query that pulls actions from a task list. A small technical trick improves reliability: the query includes a random number “fingerprint” comment so Obsidian live preview refreshes instead of reusing a cached result. This ensures that when a meeting note records an action under a project or person, it immediately surfaces as a task in that topic’s task list.

Notes are organized with headings that reflect both time and context. Dates are second-level headings on topic pages, while meeting-specific nested notes use a third-level indent so transclusions start and stop cleanly. When a discussion shifts—such as taking notes during a meeting with “bob” but deciding the details belong under “project k”—the system creates the nested subsection on the correct topic page, preserving the source (who the meeting was with) and the context (which project the discussion concerned).

To make this fast, templater scripts automate meeting note creation. Typing a person’s name creates a link to that page and running the meeting template inserts a dated section and places the cursor ready for typing. The moment the note is created, the user can see tasks and topics tied to that person. The same script can be used mid-meeting to create a nested note under a project page, automatically inserting the correct third-level section and transclusion back into the daily notes.

The result is a system where the daily notes page provides a scan-friendly day log, while each topic page acts as a “diary” of all related discussions—connected through nested transclusions. A small CSS snippet further improves readability by removing default transclusion boxes and scrollbars, keeping notes in long-form text. Scripts, the CSS snippet, and the Data View query are offered for reuse, with the workflow primarily aimed at meetings, projects, and people, while other knowledge uses the content-first linking style.