# The Obsidian Activity Tracking System A self-building knowledge base for everything you do — emails, tasks, calls, meetings, and more — and everyone and everything those activities involve: people, projects, organizations, and (if you teach) classes and assignments. You log each interaction once, as a small note with a few links in its properties. The system does the rest: every person, project, and topic gets a timeline that assembles itself from those links. You never maintain a timeline by hand. This site documents the whole system from scratch, so you can build your own. It also covers two optional automations: logging Apple Mail messages straight into the vault with one keystroke, and a two-way sync between your task notes and Todoist. ## What you'll build - A folder structure that separates **activities** (things that happen on a date) from **dimensions** (the people, projects, and topics they relate to). - A set of **templates** that stamp out correctly-formatted notes in one step. - **Dataview** queries that turn those links into living timelines, task lists, and rosters. - Optional: **Apple Mail → Obsidian** logging, and **Obsidian ↔ Todoist** task sync. ## Read in this order 1. [[01 Overview|Overview & Core Concepts]] — the idea behind the system. 2. [[02 Installation|Installation & Plugins]] — Obsidian, Dataview, Templater. 3. [[03 Folder Structure|Folder Structure]] — the folders to create. 4. [[04 Frontmatter and Naming|Frontmatter & Naming Conventions]] — the rules that make queries work. 5. [[05 Templates|Templates]] — what each template does and how to install them. 6. [[06 Dataview Queries|Dataview Queries & Timelines]] — how the auto-aggregation works. 7. [[07 Daily Notes and Dashboard|Daily Notes & Dashboard]] — your day-to-day home base. 8. [[08 Mail Integration|Apple Mail Integration]] — optional one-keystroke email logging. 9. [[09 Todoist Integration|Todoist Two-Way Sync]] — optional task sync. 10. [[10 Adapting and Extending|Adapting & Extending]] — make it your own. ## What you need - **Obsidian** (free) — the note-taking app this is built on. - The **Dataview** and **Templater** community plugins (both free). - For Mail logging: **macOS** with Apple Mail. - For Todoist sync: a **Todoist** account and a little comfort with the Terminal. You do not need to be a programmer. The integrations are optional — the core system is just folders, templates, and queries. ## Ready-to-use files Every template and script has its own page with its **complete source in a copyable code block**, so this guide is fully self-contained — you can build the whole system without downloading anything. The [[05 Templates|Templates]] page indexes all 14 template source pages; the [[08 Mail Integration]] and [[09 Todoist Integration]] pages link the script source pages.