# [[Taking notes on people in Obsidian]] plugins:: "[[QuickAdd plugin]], [[Dataview plugin]], [[Obsidian Plugins/Community Plugins/Dice roller plugin|Dice roller plugin]], [[Obsidian Publish]], [[Obsidian Sync]], [[Meld Encrypt plugin]]" <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4jYUQXy0nsg" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> ## Timestamps [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=0s) Intro [00:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=25s) Why take notes on people? [01:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=111s) When should you take notes on people? [02:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=164s) Meeting template [04:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=263s) Person template [11:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=687s) Knife theory [12:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=776s) In-person meetings and conferences [16:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=972s) Consuming content from people [16:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=1017s) Following up with people [18:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=1122s) Privacy [22:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYUQXy0nsg&t=1329s) Outro ## Transcript This might be weird, but if you've ever been on a call with me, met me in person, or just made some sort of a connection with me on a social network, then the chances are pretty high that somewhere in my Obsidian vault is a note with your name on it. In this video I'm gonna talk about how I use Obsidian to take notes on people and I'm gonna share the templates that I use as a framework for those. Why take notes on people? Well, the lifestyle that I've chosen has me moving around a lot and traveling and that makes it kind of difficult to foster these friendships. Usually I might start something online or in person but the majority of the relationship is going to have to be online. That requires a little bit more work on both parts and so any type of relationship is going to have to be intentional. Having notes with me helps me prioritize who is the most important to me and make sure that I allot my time accordingly. There's also the issue of just not being able to remember everything about everybody that I care about. But you know what does remember? Obsidian. So when I meet a person that I think is really interesting, I take notes so that I don't have to remember it in my brain and it's not taking up space in my head that I could be using for something else. All I have to do is know that this person is important and then I know to look in Obsidian for some of the notes that I took. When you haven't seen someone in a while, think about how long you spend trying to remember what they said to you last or how much you rehash things that you've actually gone over already. Having notes on people helps me maintain and make deeper connections faster. When do I take notes on people? Well, the overarching principle here is to listen in the first place. So I do always take notes but not when they're right there in front of me. When I'm talking to someone, my primary objective is to just be there fully present in the moment with them. Now that does look a little bit different depending on whether I'm there in person with them or if I'm on a call with them. I feel like on a call there's a little bit more leeway to take notes like I don't have to look at what I'm typing to be able to type. So it's a little bit easier for me to maintain that eye contact while also taking notes. But in general, when I have a meeting, that's what I'm doing. I am trying to have a connection with the person by looking at the camera or looking at their face and then I'm just like typing my notes on the side. So this is what that looks like. These templates are in my Patreon vault. You can sign up for Patreon here and I'll also leave it in the description below. But this is what it looks like. This is my meeting note that I apply every time I have a meeting and these are Templater strings that get replaced by, in this case, the date. And then this one will be the title of the meeting. I usually put attendees here. Then I just have Agenda, Log and Next Action. So in agenda, I might put things that I've prepared to talk to the person about beforehand and then log is just for things that come up during the meeting. Let's say I want to create a new meeting. In my Patreon vault, I already have some macros set up using the Quick Add plugin. So I just have to go to the command palette which is Command+P for me. And then I want to select this one, Quick Add, which is going to apply a template to a new note. So I'm going to hit that. This is already going to have the date so I'm just going to write the title of the actual note. So let's say meeting about stuff and that opens up in a new pane here and that was already filled out like the date is in there and it has the inbox tag. And let's say for attendees, I'm meeting with a new person. Let's call her Hanna, and I would type the agenda and log here, and next action. So if I have any, let's say I also want to create a note for Hanna. So then I'm going to just command click that and that automatically brings through the person template, which is right here on the left. So as you can see there are some more things in the person template than were in the meeting one, and that's because this is really where all the meat is. I'm going to move these two over here so that you can just see them bigger. All right, now this is my note for Hanna. I would then type her company. Let's say she works at Grafana Labs like I do and then I might put her location, let's say she's in the Netherlands. By the way, I'm using keyboard shortcuts that I have using a separate app called Text Expander but that's a different video. So I then just go through all of these. I always set publish to false. I mean I do have this automatically go into the People Folder, which is never published but you know, I just wanna be extra, extra sure. So then I would fill out all of these fields but I do want to call out this date last spoken field and the follow up field. So if Hanna is someone that I think is either relevant to what I'm doing right now or someone that I'm gonna be working with or just someone who's cool, I would go ahead and put true here and sometimes there's like a real useful reason for doing that. Sometimes it's just, hey, I connected with this person. Maybe I'll catch up with her at some point. And then I would say, date last spoken. And then I would just put today's date. Again, that's still a Text Expander shortcut but it's just today's date in the specific format that I use for Obsidian. Then I would write something about Hanna, like Hanna is a graphic designer who lives in France. And then I would put here the agendas. As soon as I think that somebody is someone that I would meet up with on a regular basis then I switch to having the agenda on their person note and then I can pull that into a meeting if I need to. I would talk about how we met like we both know Pepe let's say. And then I would fill out these sections. These are more like prompts. So if our conversation went into this direction then I would fill out, maybe this could be employment history or where she's lived in before, then if she mentions like, you know, a partner or kids or something, I would put family there. Now I also have some other things that I don't always fill out. You know, sometimes all I fill out for a person is this initial one or maybe like company location and title. But I think that when I get closer to somebody I would go and try and fill more of these out. So I try to put things about their personality that kind of just strike me at the time. Like I would say Hanna is an incredibly positive person but I also use this template that I already have prepopulated, and this is actually from D&D. I like to play tabletop role playing games, TTRPGs, kind of like D&D or "Dungeons and Dragons." And in those sorts of games we have player characters and non-player characters, both of which you need to have some sort of framework to be able to understand like who they are and what they like. And so these are actually inspired by those games. There's something called OGAS Framework, it's occupation, goal, attitude, and stake. I kind of skipped the occupation because I figured that'll be where the title is. And then I just go to the GAS part. Goal, attitude, and stake. So goal would be like her motivation, she wants to live in Africa someday. Her attitude, well I kind of already said that she's positive, she's cheerful about it. Now what is her stake? Stake is something that can kind of swing the pendulum one way or another. So she has this goal of wanting to live in Africa. So she wants to travel probably, and she's quite cheerful but what makes her not want to travel or what makes her not be as cheerful? Maybe she doesn't like it when things are spontaneous and unplanned. There are people like that. And then if you've played D&D, this Ideals, Bonds and Flaws is pretty common. It is a standard framework for most NPCs, non-player characters, in the game. So an ideal would be something like freedom, independence, you know, abstract ideas that she really gravitates towards and what are things that she's bonded with? They could be, not so much ideas but like people or factions. She really gets along well with Pepe, let's say. And what are her flaws? Let's say she's easily rattled when things don't go her way and her character alignment in role playing games and in D&D in particular, there are these two sort of axes. So there's chaotic, neutral and lawful and then there's good, neutral and evil and you kind of mix and match the two to see how they go. So maybe she's more like chaotic good, let's say. And then just for a fun thing sometimes I put "Magic the Gathering" colors. By the way, all these, at least in the Patreon vault, I do have them linked to notes from my personal public vault where you can see the note that I have on it. So for example in "Magic the Gathering," there are five different suits and each one kind of stands for something. So when you have a deck, 'cause this is like a deck of cards you can choose a theme for the deck based on the colors and you can mix and match as well. But I kind of just stick to one. So well we said that she likes, you know, freedom and independence. She also does like disinhibition though. I'm gonna say she's red, freedom, emotion, action. Well she's not about impulse. Hmm, you know, let's say she's green, let's say that she's more green and this is just a little bit of fun. The idea is not to kind of pigeonhole people into this label. The idea is to come up with a set of shortcuts that are a little bit more fun. And then if I don't remember her exactly but I remember that I wanted to get to know her then I can kind of look and be like, oh yeah, that's right. She really loves nature so maybe I shouldn't ask her to go see a movie with me. Maybe I should ask her to go hiking with me or something like that. And then I really love this idea of knives. The idea is that when you are in a role playing game and you're creating a character backstory you should sharpen some knives that are interesting hooks that the Dungeon Master can then use to pull you in. So if you say that one of your knives is that you are a wanted person because you have a lot of debt then the Dungeon Master can later use that knife and have those people come looking for you. So I kind of extend this to real life, to real people by having knives as things that get them fired up. It could be good things or it could be bad things. These like hot button things that every time I talk to Hanna, she just fires up and gets really excited and can talk forever about let's say the environment and climate change. They're just a bunch of topics that, you know, if I really want to provoke or inspire her in some way, these are the topics that I can talk to her with. It can also just be as simple as interests. And then here in meetings I have this Dataview query that automatically pulls in all the meetings where I put Hanna in the Attendees field. So this is how it looks to have a somewhat filled in person template. The second way that I might be meeting somebody is in a conference or an in-person meetup. And in those cases I don't always have the chance to stop and take notes. I mean, if you're standing and you know, you also have like a sandwich in your hand or coffee or something you can't just be like, wait, I gotta take notes. So what I do in that case is I just try to remember as much as I can and then I look for breaks in the day or I just do it at the end of the day and then just dump all of my thoughts. Usually it's going to be in my daily note. So let's look at that. In a daily note, this is just an example, I have a few things here because this is the Patreon vault but I'm not actually gonna use any of that. So I might just quickly jot down a few things. Like let's say if I didn't have that meeting with Hanna and I actually met her in person I could just put bullet points like lives in France, wants to go to Africa, loves freedom, travel, environment. And then I would go on to the next one and Pepe and then so on. So when I have a conference, I mean, I can't actually show you an example of these notes because sometimes they can be pretty revealing when people say something that, you know, even though I'm a stranger, sometimes they reveal things about themselves that I can't actually show. But this ends up being like a long bullet point list. And sometimes for some people it's mainly personal things. For some other people it's more like where they work or what they're currently working on. And that's totally fine. I just dump in everything that I can see and then later on at the end of the day I then go back and try to actually like make links out of them like this and then create notes for the people that I don't already have notes for. So it can be difficult to remember people's names sometimes. So what I like to do is use social media as an excuse. I whip out my phone and say, you know, "Do you mind taking a photo with me?" And then I then take the photo and it's good for the event usually because they like the social media interaction but also then I remember what they look like. I might bring that into Obsidian later. And sometimes if I'm lucky I can also like snap a picture of their lanyard with their name and you know their title or company and otherwise I sometimes use LinkedIn. So I have the LinkedIn app on my phone. If it's a work thing it's easier. But what you can do, and I didn't know this at first is you can actually go into search here and then you can have a LinkedIn QR code and somebody else if they also have LinkedIn on their phones can scan that and you can get connected right away. So that's your code. And then you can also scan something. Oh look, there you are. But then you would scan somebody else's code and then they could also be added to your connections to your network on LinkedIn. And then the third way that I would meet people is when I'm consuming their content, this is like not me really meeting them. This might be, you know, someone wrote this tweet that I think is really interesting or something on Mastodon or wrote an article and I don't really even know them. I've made videos on how I process articles from the web. Basically I use something called Readwise, if you wanna sign up for that, that's Readwise.io/Nicole and check out this video to see more about how I use that. So I've shown you my templates for people and for meetings and I've talked a little bit about how I would go about it if I were in a conference and was meeting people like in person. Now I wanna show you what I do to follow up. Remember I had that follow up flag in the people note. Well this is how I use that, in my daily note, I have a few things here like for processing notes but I also have a section for people to catch up with with a Dataview query that returns results from the People Folder where follow up is true and where the date that I last spoke to them is a month or more ago. Now you can also adjust this based on what your preferences are. Maybe when you put follow up true to people that's like you wanna talk to them every week or something. And in that case you would just put one week here. But let's say that when I talked to Hanna, that was actually two months ago and I do have follow up true and this is more than a month ago. So let's go back to the daily note and Hanna's going to come up there and this is kind of like a prompt for me to say, "Hey, remember that cool person that I met at this time on January 20th? Maybe I should catch up with her." And just to kind of add an element of randomness, I also have a Dice Roller string here which just randomly chooses a person with the tag, "person," and then returns that link. So I don't have many people here. I think I have Hanna, Pepe and person, the template. So it's not going to be too useful but I can like kind of roll through the dice and just if I don't wanna talk to Hanna today then I can try and get somebody else. In my actual vault, I have more people here so this is more useful than that. One thing I try to always keep in mind is that because of the nature of the notes that I take about people where I at times I'm trying to peek into their psyche and trying to understand why they are the way that they are. Sometimes I write things that they told me that maybe shouldn't be made public and because of that privacy is a really important thing for me. So there are few things that I like to do to make sure that I maintain people's privacy. The first is what I already talked about. I like to keep all people notes in one folder. So in this case it's under the People one. And this is handy because then I know that I will never publish this folder and like I do use Obsidian Publish. So let me just show that to you in my main vault. And I do have a folder here called, "Gente," that's people in Spanish. And when I go to Publish, so in Obsidian Publish you can go and click Manage Publish Filters here and you can exclude a bunch of folders that are never going to get published. So as you can see, Gente is one of them. So that doesn't get published. And then also I do have that flag in my person template that says `publish:false`. The other thing is if you're using Obsidian Sync then I would make sure to encrypt that folder, it is optional. So you can go into Sync here. So this one isn't being synced, but you can, when you're creating a remote vault, you can choose whether or not it's going to be encrypted. And if you are taking notes on people, I would suggest that you do encrypt your vault. And the other thing is this plugin called Meld Encrypt which I've just installed and it is a way to encrypt notes and kind of password protect them. So let's say I'm in today's note, I can just hit Command+P and Meld Encrypt, I'm going to create a new encrypted note and this one is going to have a password and I'm just going to put `nvdh` here because it's not really a secret. I wouldn't actually put it in the hint, but just so you can see then this note is completely encrypted and I can type whatever I want and it can be an complete secret. This is cool because it's encrypted locally, it isn't making any calls out to anywhere on the internet and it is password protected. So then you can also rename this "Secret Hanna Note," and then on the day you can kind of link to it. So then you can just type the title of it. If you don't remember, you can just kind of copy it here and then you can just type it there so that you'll be able to jump to it. If you do use this Meld Encrypt plugin, I would recommend that you go into the settings and then where it says "Remember Password," maybe untick that so that it doesn't automatically remember it. So this time when you open the Secret Hanna Note, it's gonna ask you for the password. In this case I put it as the hint, but you know, that way you actually have some security on it. I don't take notes on every person that I meet. I take into account a bunch of factors such as how likely it is that I'm going to run into them again, my chemistry with them and how important or relevant they are going to be in my life or how much they're going to affect it going forward. And then I just take notes accordingly. After years of taking notes like this, I've come to the conclusion that maybe taking notes on people in this way isn't not as weird as it might initially seem. I actually think that it's the opposite. When I take notes on someone and I go through all of those things that I showed you, I actually see it as a compliment. It's like me saying, "Hey, I know I'm not going to remember as much as I would like to about you. So I just wanted you to know that I care enough about you to try to have a system so that I do remember those awesome things that make you you." And when viewed under this lens, I think that it's a pretty positive thing and it's definitely helped me make connections with people that are a lot more genuine. If you'd like to see more about how I use Templater to create the format for a bunch of different notes, then check out this video, thank you for watching. One who finds a friend, finds treasure.