How many Obsidian Vaults do I need?
One Obsidian Vault to rule them all! Or maybe not?
One of the things I definitely love about Obsidian is its great flexibility. Its configuration options allow me to optimize it just right for my needs and preferences….
I’ve been an avid Obsidian user for about two years for all the knowledge management that passes through my hands, and if you’ve used it as much as me (or more than me ), you’ll agree that the gods at Obsidian thought this product through very well, as once installed and with your first vault created, it is incredibly easy, fast to use, and frictionless; it’s a true plug and play.
From this point on it is very easy to get hooked on the tool and start filling it with information, customizing it, optimizing your workflow, making templates and testing your own and the community’s plugins. If you like this kind of activities and customizations, I guarantee you will enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
This is how I started my first vault, the same one I keep today, and which is my main vault, and I say main because at some point from those first steps until today I started to create other vaults that would allow me to better segment and manage the information. But why, why segment the information in different vaults, is it for a performance issue, is it for an organizational issue, a sixth sense, a superstition?
Let me tell you the reasons I had to start segmenting the information in different vaults. Maybe some of these reasons will click in your head, maybe others will not. And that’s perfectly fine.
Why have everything in a single vault?
There must be a thousand reasons for this: ease of management, single place to search, avoid duplication of information, relate content and more, but I think the most obvious of all is that we want (or at least I do), that our vault is part of that second brain we want to have, that is, an additional support unit, in the form of “digital brain”, which stores and relates all the information that we consider important for personal or professional purposes.
In short: it is easier to have everything in one place. This way, just like my real brain, I can find and discover “things” more easily than if they were in different places.
It’s an extremely powerful reason, don’t you think?
So why have more than one vault?
Here I have 5 reasons why I have created additional vaults, maybe some of them make sense to you….
- Specialized content: Sometimes I have the need to generate content so specific that it deserves its own space. This happens when in a previous evaluation, I know that this content will make very little “click” with my main vault, and although I could leave it there to make my chart view look cooler, in reality, it would generate very few synergies, very few discoveries. We must avoid this kind of banalities that feed the ego (and the chart view)! That was one of my mistakes when I started using Obsidian…
- The content of a vault must be relevant and must have the potential to generate synergies and insights with previous content. That’s why when I know that the content will be very specialized as a result of strong research and analysis, I make a new vault! Without thinking about it! For me it’s like having this “second brain” in the form of a specialized consultant, which also has enormous potential to be easily shared to others to serve as a basis for their own studies. An example of this can be found in my article about a AWS Certification, where I share in two different versions an Pre-Loaded Obsidian vault (one free and one paid) with the content product of my own study for that certification exam, which perhaps can serve others in their own journey. Here´s the link:
- Sandbox: Another very useful situation to create and use new vaults is when you want to use some new plugin to explore, configure and test it, without affecting in any way our main working environment in Obsidian, until we have some degree of certainty or guarantee at the level of functionality, usability and stability. In other words, having a safe space where we can “play” until a final implementation (or not) in our main vault.
- Obsidian demo, tutorials and examples: If you are showing to others the possibilities of Obsidian in the form of a workshop, course or similar, perhaps it is best to use a completely new vault where you can go step by step showing and explaining the options of the tool or perhaps, with some pre-loaded test data. Here the idea is that you can have the facility to concentrate on your presentation or training, without having to worry about exposing or modifying private or sensitive information in your main vault.
- Multiple languages: This may not be the case for you, but it could be if you are learning another language and use obsidian to take notes. English is not my native language, but Spanish. At some point it happened to me that I had in a single vault very technical software development content, along with my English classes among other content. It turned out that every time I referred to something very technical, usually in English, Obsidian started suggesting me links to grammar, verb tenses and other notes about the language. In that context those links were totally useless, it did not generate any value for me because although Obsidian recognizes it and suggests it as related content, in reality it is not, or at least not for me. I know it’s a very particular case but it could happen with some specialized areas and languages.
And the last one, maybe the silliest of all, but not for that reason less important:
- Because you can!: Yes, just for fun. I know, it’s not a reason with much substance really. But it’s great that the tool allows you to have as many vaults as you want, and each of them in a totally independent environment, with independent configurations, with different plugins, and with totally different experiences and purposes of use, and all that just because. The holy grail of flexibility.
So the next time you sit down in front of your Obsidian vault, ask yourself if it is possible to segment the information? if it has the potential to be shared to others? if all the knowledge connects with each other or if there are very isolated and unconnected nodes? Or simply allow yourself to play with the tool and go your own way in shaping your knowledge.
It is no coincidence that Obsidian’s slogan is: Shapen your thinking. ;)
I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to dive into this reading. Your support means a lot, and I’m genuinely thrilled you’re a part of this journey. 😊 🤖 🪐
Your thoughts, opinions, and feedback are invaluable to me. I’d love to hear what resonated with you or any ideas you might have. So, don’t hesitate to drop a comment or reach out — let’s keep the conversation going!
Until next time wonderful readers. 🚀 😎
