I was a little on the fence about this idea, given that I already have so many systems for dealing with “capture” ideas. I have been working on using fragments as a means to capture timeseries ideas, and have an enormous, ridiculous “todo” system that I have been meaning to clean out for forever.
This vastly simplifies the whole ordeal. It is a native solution that doesnt depend on a complex plugin like TaskNotes, and effectively coagulates several of my different workflow optimization techniques under one roof.
It solves the “todo” note problem by dedicating a note to them to keep its context. (tags, location, etc) wihtout getting lost with the actually completed notes, and making the experience worse for the published site.
It fixes the captures system by reducing bloat, and frankly I dont need to have a kanban board just to mark a note as “done or not done”.
04-02-2026 Stub Notes
The best way to deal with all the problems of accumulation that we have seen with todo notes, Uncreated Notes, and tasknotes has been completely solved by the inbox system.
It is the simplest way to manage things to do, but there is one thing I neglected to mention: write stub notes.
For something to be in the inbox, it has to be completely empty, like barely even started. For the inbox system to work as intended, you need to accept writing simple notes for complex topics. A great example today was finally writing the Kuramoto model note. my explanation was shallow, and frankly doesnt really tell you anything about the model itself.
However, to really leverage the effectiveness of obsidian, you need to accept doing this. Instead of writing the whole final note in one sitting before marking it as done, it will always be done the moment you move it out of the inbox. It will be through the accumulation of backlinks and returns to the topic organically that you find ways to enrich. For the Kuramoto model, this was reading the paper Biomimetic model of corticostriatal micro-assemblies discovers new neural code, and realizing that it used a Kuramoto order parameter. this consituted a backlink, and a return to the topic with some updating about its use in Neural Circuit models.
Update 04-16-2026
made a page on Write Stub Notes now, it codifies exactly what is said above with a bit more detail.