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Getting Started

Welcome to your new foam workspace, let's get you started.

if you are already familiar with Foam and don't need help, just remove the docs folder for a clean repo.

Let's go through this to set up your repo:

  • if you are new with VS Code, see how to [[get-started-with-vscode]] and how to [[use-keyboard-shortcuts-for-editing]]

  • you can navigate the links between your notes by cmd+click (or ctrl+click on Windows) on a wikilink. You can go back with ctrl+-. Here, go to your [[inbox]]

  • to see how your notes are connected, execute the Foam: Show Graph command. See [[graph-visualization]].

  • #tags can be used to further organize your content. Look at the Tag Explorer view on the left panel to find and navigate the tags in your knowledge base. See [[tags-and-tag-explorer]].

  • Foam supports [[spell-checking]].

  • You can also paste images in your Foam, just press cmd+alt+v to create the image file and link to it from your note. See [[paste-images-from-clipboard]].

  • You can use Foam for your daily notes, or journaling. Execute now the Foam: Open Daily Note command to create a new file in your journal folder. See [[daily-notes]].

  • Want to see how to manage your tasks? Go to the [[todo]] note

  • The section at the end of this file contains wikilink definitions, which enable navigation of your notes from GitHub's web UI, and in general to make [[wikilinks]] understood by any Markdown parser. See [[link-reference-definitions]].

  • To explore all the Foam settings, press cmd+,, then Extensions > Foam

  • Living within VS Code, Foam can be customized in many ways! Look at the Foam Recipes for ideas!

  • Join the Foam community on Discord, introduce yourself and leave a message on how you found Foam and how the onboarding went :) We are always keen to do better

  • Take the Foam Welcome survey! It helps us better understand your need and how we can make Foam better and better for you :)

PARA folders to get you organized for Actionability

Tiago Forte developed a system called PARA. Those letters stand for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives. The essential idea is to organize notes by actionability.

If you look at the four categories, they’re actually a spectrum of actionability. Projects are your most actionable things. Like things, you’re working on right now, they usually have a deadline, they have a scope there, they’re really active.

The second one is Areas of responsibility. Things you’re responsible for. Things you need to pay attention to, or have some level of engagement with, but that are not as urgent.

R stands for resources. It is basically just like interests or things you’re kind of interested in. For example, web design, or Visual Thinking or big data, or coding or something like that.

Archives the last category is simply anything from the other three categories that is no longer active.

The benefit of organizing things by actionability is you can decide really instantaneously how actionable something is.

Advanced Features

  • You can create [[note-templates]] for things like book reviews, people, daily notes (coming soon), and more!

About Foam

Foam doesn't do all this magic on its own, it relies on some amazing extensions. Look at their documentation if you want to fully unlock the possibilities!

Here they are:

A special mention goes to Markdown Links and Markdown Notes which have now been replaced by our own implementation but were foundational to Foam's beginnings.