# Organize Daily Notes
> [!abstract]
> How this journal's daily notes are set up in Obsidian, and how to set up your own: one note per day, created from a template, opened for you when the app starts.
## What daily notes are
A daily note is a plain text file for one day. Obsidian creates it on demand — when you open today's note, it makes the file from your template and files it in a folder by date. The goal is simple:
**Open Obsidian → today's note is there → start typing.**
Daily notes work as a capture system for the day:
- **Quick capture** — jot down what happened, as it happens
- **Organized by date** — find any day instantly
- **Linked to the rest of the vault** — connect a day to the topics it touched
- **Lightweight** — plain text, no structure to maintain
- **Reviewable** — look back over days, weeks and months
## Setting it up
### Step 1: Enable Daily Notes
1. Open Obsidian Settings
2. Go to **Core plugins**
3. Turn **Daily notes** on
### Step 2: Create a template
Create a `templates` folder and a note in it called `Daily Notes Template`. This is the template this journal actually runs on — the `<% %>` fields are filled in by [[Templater Setup|Templater]] when the note is created:
```markdown
---
previous: '[[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD dddd", -1) %>]]'
next: '[[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD dddd", 1) %>]]'
created: <% tp.file.creation_date("YYYY-MM-DD") %>
week: '<% tp.date.now("[W]WW") %>'
tags:
- ☀️
publish: true
resources:
---
## Routine
- [ ] Open Daily Note
- [ ] **Daily Checks**
- [ ] Self Care 🛀🧴
- [ ] Pet Care 🐕🚶🏻♂️
- [ ] Make Breakfast ☕🍳
- [ ] Get Focused 🖥️
- [ ] Check [Calendar](https://calendar.google.com) 📆
- [ ] Check [Mail](https://mail.google.com) ✉️
- [ ] Review [[Yearly Log]] 📝
---
## Log
-
---
## Notes
```
Three sections, in order: a **Routine** checklist that is the same every day, a **Log** of what happened (one line per event, no clock times), and **Notes** for anything longer. The `publish: true` line only matters if you use Obsidian Publish; delete it otherwise.
### Step 3: Point Daily Notes at the template
In Settings → **Daily notes**:
- **New file location:** `journal`
- **Date format:** `YYYY/MM_MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD dddd`
- **Template file location:** `templates/Daily Notes Template`
That date format creates a folder per year and per month, and a file named by date and weekday:
```
journal/
└── 2026/
└── 09_September/
├── 2026-09-13 Sunday.md
├── 2026-09-17 Thursday.md
└── 2026-09-18 Friday.md
```
### Step 4: Open it automatically
In the same **Daily notes** settings, turn on **Open daily note on startup**. That is the whole trick: Obsidian opens today's note every time it launches, creating it from the template if it doesn't exist yet.
### Step 5: A hotkey (optional)
Settings → **Hotkeys** → search for **Open today's daily note** and give it a shortcut, so you can get back to the day from anywhere.
## What a day looks like
```markdown
## Log
- Long walk before the rain.
- Finished the draft I'd been avoiding all week.
## Notes
Reading about how the old bullet journals handled migration: you copy forward
only what still matters, and let the rest stay where it was.
```
Keep the log to what happened. Names of other people, and anything you would not want a stranger to read, don't belong in a note that might one day be public — this journal is, which is why its rule is written down.
## Principles
1. **Just text.** No databases, no fancy features. Type.
2. **Organized for you.** Obsidian builds the folder structure from the date.
3. **There when you open the app.** Startup opens today.
4. **Capture, not archive.** A daily note is where things land, not where they end up.
5. **Searchable history.** Any day, instantly.
6. **Hybrid-friendly.** It pairs well with a paper bullet journal; the paper is for thinking, the vault is for finding.
## Date format options
**By year and month** (used here):
```
YYYY/MM_MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD dddd
```
**By year only:**
```
YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD
```
**By week:**
```
YYYY/[W]WW/YYYY-MM-DD
```
**Flat, no subfolders:**
```
YYYY-MM-DD
```
## Related
- [[Daily Notes Template]] — the template itself
- [[Templater Setup]] — the plugin that fills in the dates
- [[Journal Index — 2026]] — the published days
- [[How To Get Started]] — what this site is