If you’re new to Personal Knowledge Management, let me share something that took me years to fully appreciate: daily notes are the secret sauce that transforms a collection of random notes into a living, breathing knowledge system.

Here’s the thing most people miss when they start with PKM—it’s not about having perfect notes, it’s about connecting your notes to real moments in time. Daily notes do exactly that. They’re like having a personal assistant who remembers not just what happened, but when it happened and who was involved.

The “Aha!” Moment: From Chaos to Clarity Link to heading

Let me paint you a picture. Without daily notes, your vault might look like this:

  • A meeting note about discussing project timelines with Sarah
  • A capture note about some interesting article you read
  • A random thought about a business idea
  • Another meeting note with a different team

These notes exist in isolation. You have to manually hunt through everything to find connections.

With daily notes, magic happens. Every note automatically connects to a specific date, which means:

  • You can instantly see what else was happening when you met with Sarah
  • You remember what you were thinking about when you captured that article
  • You can track how your business idea evolved over time
  • You understand the context of decisions made in meetings

How Daily Notes Actually Work (The Simple Version) Link to heading

Every daily note in your vault uses a simple template that creates automatic connections:

---
tags: [note/daily]
ISO Date: 2025-07-15
Year: "[[2025]]"
Month: "[[July 2025]]"
Week: "[[Week 29, 2025]]"
---

The real magic happens with this simple dataview query:

## See Also
```dataview
LIST FROM [[]]
```

This one line automatically shows every single note that mentions this date. It’s like having a time machine that shows you everything that happened on any given day.

Obsidian’s built-in backlinks feature is sufficient, too, but using dataview lets you do some more interesting things like filtering or showing a table with metadata.

The Four Ways Your Notes Connect to Time (And Why Each Matters) Link to heading

1. Meeting Notes → Daily Notes: “Who Did I Talk To?” Link to heading

When you create a meeting note, you include the date:

---
Date: "[[July 15, 2025]]"
Attendees: ["[[Michael Bryan]]", "[[Sarah Johnson]]"]
Organisation: "[[TechCorp]]"
tags: [note/meeting]
---

Why this is valuable: Six months later, when Sarah mentions “Remember that thing we discussed about the project timeline?”, you can:

  • Go to Sarah’s entity note
  • See all your meetings with her
  • Click on the specific date
  • Instantly recall the full context of that conversation

This is relationship context on steroids. You’ll never again have that awkward moment of “I remember we talked about this, but I can’t remember what we decided.”

2. Capture Notes → Daily Notes: “What Was I Learning?” Link to heading

Every time you capture knowledge, you link it to when you learned it:

---
Link: "https://example.com/article"
Author: "[[Author Name]]"
Created: "[[July 8, 2025]]"
tags: [note/capture]
---

Why this is valuable: Knowledge acquisition patterns become visible. You might discover:

  • You learn best on Tuesday mornings
  • Certain topics cluster around specific life events
  • Your interests evolve in response to work challenges
  • You can trace how one article led to a chain of discovery

3. Project Planning → Daily Notes: “What Was I Working On?” Link to heading

When you plan projects, you reference specific dates:

| Duration | 10 days, Friday [[September 1, 2023]] to Sunday [[September 10, 2023]] |

Why this is valuable: Project context becomes effortless. You can:

  • See what other projects were competing for attention
  • Understand why certain decisions were made
  • Track how your priorities shifted over time
  • Remember the external factors that influenced your work

4. Entity Interactions → Daily Notes: “When Did I Last Connect?” Link to heading

When you mention people, places, or organizations in daily notes:

## Random Notes
- Call to [[Lucas]] at 14:29 about [[LandSAR]] deployment
- Grocery shopping at [[Woolworths]]

Why this is valuable: This creates a interaction timeline for every person and organization in your life. Before your next meeting with Lucas, you can quickly check when you last talked and what you discussed.

The Compounding Value: Why This Gets Better Over Time Link to heading

Here’s where daily notes become truly powerful — they create compound value that grows exponentially:

Pattern Recognition Link to heading

After a few months, you’ll start noticing patterns:

  • You have better conversations with certain people on specific days
  • Your energy levels affect what type of work you do
  • Certain topics keep coming up in different contexts
  • Your network connections reveal unexpected opportunities

Effortless Context Switching Link to heading

When someone asks “What were we working on in March?”:

  • Go to the March 2025 monthly note
  • See all daily notes from that month
  • Click on specific dates for detailed context
  • Instantly understand what was happening

Relationship Intelligence Link to heading

Before meeting with anyone, you can:

  • Check their entity note for background
  • Review recent daily notes mentioning them
  • Understand the current context of your relationship
  • Prepare more meaningful conversations

The Network Effect: Where Things Get Really Interesting Link to heading

The combination of daily notes and entity notes creates something I call temporal relationship mapping:

[[Michael Bryan]] ←→ [[July 15, 2025]] ←→ [[Multiversal Ventures]]

This simple connection tells you:

  • Who: Michael Bryan
  • When: July 15, 2025
  • What: Related to Multiversal Ventures
  • Why: Check the daily note for context

Multiply this by hundreds of people, organizations, and dates, and you have a living map of your professional and personal network that shows not just who you know, but when and why you know them.

If I ever need to investigate something or synthesize my knowledge, I can open the vault up in Cursor and it’ll have all of the context it needs.

Practical Daily Workflows (Start Here) Link to heading

Morning: Set Your Temporal Context Link to heading

  • Open today’s daily note
  • Review yesterday’s note to maintain continuity
  • If you ever need to jot something down, add it to the “Random Notes” section for that day (this is a good place to capture random thoughts, ideas, or tasks and link them to relevant notes)
  • Bonus marks if you use the Obsidian Tasks plugin to automate your to-do list

Evening: Capture Your Day Link to heading

  • Add key interactions to today’s daily note
  • Link to any new people or organizations you encountered
  • Note any insights or decisions made
  • Don’t overthink it—just capture what felt significant

Weekly: Find Your Patterns Link to heading

  • Review the past week’s daily notes
  • Look for recurring themes or people
  • Notice what energized or drained you
  • Plan the upcoming week based on these insights

Common Beginner Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them) Link to heading

1. Over-Structuring Daily Notes Link to heading

Don’t do this: Create elaborate daily note templates with dozens of sections Do this: Keep it simple—random notes, log section, and the “See Also” dataview query

2. Inconsistent Date Formats Link to heading

Don’t do this: Mix formats like [[2025-07-15]] and [[July 15, 2025]] Do this: Always use [[Month D, YYYY]] format for consistency

3. Trying to Capture Everything Link to heading

Don’t do this: Write detailed journal entries in daily notes Do this: Use daily notes as connection points, not comprehensive records

4. Ignoring the Temporal Hierarchy Link to heading

Don’t do this: Focus only on individual daily notes Do this: Use monthly/quarterly notes to see bigger patterns

The Long-Term Payoff Link to heading

After using daily notes for a year, you’ll have something remarkable: a complete temporal map of your intellectual and professional journey. You’ll be able to:

  • Trace how ideas evolved over time
  • Understand the context of past decisions
  • See patterns in your relationships and work
  • Navigate your knowledge through time, not just by topic

Start Small, Think Big Link to heading

Don’t try to implement everything at once. Start with:

  1. Create a daily note template (use mine as a starting point)
  2. Link meeting dates to daily notes
  3. Add a “See Also” section with the dataview query
  4. Consistently use the same date format

The temporal backbone will build itself as you use it. Within a month, you’ll start seeing connections you never noticed before. Within six months, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

As of this writing, I have 1134 daily notes in my vault, with a total of 58,883 words and about 3259 outbound links. That’s a pretty comprehensive web of notes detailing the last 3+ years of my life!

Remember: The goal isn’t perfect daily notes — it’s connected daily notes that reveal the story of how your knowledge, relationships, and projects evolved over time. That’s the real power of PKM.