Robert Greene And Ryan Holidays' note-taking system in Obsidian

A practical note-taking system for long-form writing is only useful if it stays aligned with the writer’s workflow—so the system should help a project “hold shape” instead of forcing the mind to constantly re-sort ideas. After months of using Zettelkasten-style methods (including Smart Notes) to organize research, the creator hit a capacity limit: general knowledge and project-specific notes started blending together until the project became hard to think about. The fix was to separate the writing effort into its own Obsidian vault and organize it using a Robert Greene / Ryan Holiday approach—built around research cycles, emergent themes, and a folder structure that mirrors how chapters take form.

Greene and Holiday’s research process begins with book structure. Once the outline’s parts are defined, research starts: books are read carefully, marked up heavily, and notes are taken in batches. The key rhythm is time-based filtering—notes are captured, then the material “sits” long enough for weaker ideas to fall away. After that, notes are produced in a focused session spanning multiple days. The creator reports that strong books typically yield around 20–30 notes, with fewer notes often correlating with lower note-taking payoff (not necessarily worse reading).

Instead of building a bottom-up knowledge graph, the system uses a top-down container first: three project “parts” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). New notes land in the vault root as a queue—analogous to stacking index cards before sorting them into boxes. As research accumulates, themes emerge naturally. Once a theme becomes clear, notes are dragged from the part folders into theme subfolders that can later become chapters or sections. A concrete example comes from reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: after taking roughly 30 notes about neuroplasticity and how the internet differs from other media, the creator groups them under a “shallowing of the mind” theme, ready to become a chapter or section when writing begins.

The same structure supports later thematic development. After Cal Newport’s A World Without Email, the creator’s Part 3 theme becomes “Working the Depths” (working title), with a broader “Life of Less Convenience” / digital minimalism thread. Notes from Newport’s ideas also spawn sub-themes such as “Escape Your Inbox,” which then branches into practical concerns like task boards, improving meetings, and communication overload.

To make retrieval and citation reliable, each source gets a dedicated reference note. For each book or article, the reference note stores bibliographic metadata (author, title, publisher, publish date, ISBN, and editions) and links to all notes taken from that source. Notes follow templates and types: summary notes, paraphrases, and quotes. Quotes are formatted using a community plugin (Adminer/“admin nation” as referenced), which creates clean quote callouts.

Finally, the workflow borrows from software engineering: a Kanban board tracks reading and research progress. Columns include Backlog (prioritized reading), Ready (next up), Doing (currently paused for meta-learning on research craft), Waiting (e.g., “Escape Your Inbox” chapter work), and Done (e.g., Perennial Seller once notes are completed). The result is a system that helps the writer re-enter the project quickly, pause without losing context, and use folder-based bucketing to turn research into an outline for drafting.