Linking Notes Instead of Filing Them

Type [[ and start typing a page name. Dash suggests matches as you type; choose one and the link is created inline. If the page does not exist yet, Dash offers to create it, which means you can link to a note you have not written and fill it in later. Links resolve by page identity, so renaming a page keeps every link to it intact.

Because everything is local, the suggestions appear instantly and the links work offline. There is nothing to index on a server and nothing to wait for.

• Folders are for where something lives. One home per note. Good for projects, clients, modules, years.
• Tags are for what kind of thing it is. Many per note. Good for status and theme: draft, exam, follow-up.
• Links are for what a note is about. Many per note, and specific. A person, a concept, a piece of legislation, a character.

Used together they cover most of what people try to force folders alone to do. The rule of thumb: if you find yourself duplicating a note into two folders, it wanted a link.

Students: a page per lecture, and links to concept pages. Write [[Dynamic programming]] in three different modules and the concept page becomes the place where your understanding accumulates, instead of the same explanation being rewritten three times.

Writers: a page per chapter, links to characters and places. Clicking a name in a scene opens what you already decided about them, which is how continuity errors get caught before an editor finds them.

Work: a page per meeting, links to people and projects. Six months later the project page is a trail of every conversation that touched it, assembled without any filing.

Research: a page per interview, links to themes. A memo about a theme sits next to links from every interview that raised it.

The failure mode is linking everything, which produces a web where nothing stands out. Link proper nouns and concepts you will write about more than once, and leave the rest as plain text. Do not build the structure in advance; let pages come into existence when something needs to point at them. And keep using search, which remains faster than navigation for anything you can half remember.