The Queue

Obsidian — The Queue

[!NOTE]
I am currently not actively working on this project. Feel free to add issues/PRs anyway. The plugin itself will stay available for the foreseeable future.

There is no point in creating notes you never see again!

The Queue is a plugin for Obsidian.md that shows you random notes from your vault, one at a time. You can configure your notes to function as habits, flashcards, iterative reading prompts, to-dos and more.

It does this by simply opening a floating button bar in the corner, which allows you to react to the currently open note, and then get another note.

[!NOTE]
You are reading the documentation of The Queue 2, an all-new version recently released. I implemented some fundamental changes. If you're looking for the old documentation, see here. If you used the previous version, you have to do nothing, although it is recommended to redesign your learn notes as described below.

What The Queue can help you with

1. Overcoming favorite & forget
2. Gradually building up a genuine Zettelkasten
3. Low-friction iterative reading
4. Spaced Repetition flashcard learning
5. Getting through to-do lists without being overwhelmed
6. Building & tracking habits (a lot of them, if you want)
7. Intersperse boring or unpleasant work with fun and enjoyment
8. Serendipitously discover connections between your notes
9. Improving your PKM in a gradual, natural way

Installation

As Community Plugin

The Queue is available as a community plugin, so you can install it like every other plugin.

Manual

1. Download this repository as a .zip file and unzip
2. Locate your Obsidian plugin folder and copy the project folder there
3. Activate The Queue in your Community Plugins tab in your Obsidian Settings

If any of these steps cause you trouble, refer to Method 2 in this excellent installation guide.

Get Started

1. Select the little icon in your ribbon. ()
2. You are in your queue, have fun! Go to the next note by selecting any of the buttons in the bar on the bottom.

Usage, Features and Functionality

Frontmatter Settings

1. The Queue always shows one of your notes at a time
2. How exactly your note is treated is depending on its frontmatter (also called metadata)

If you never heard of frontmatter, I recommend this excellent introduction.

To define how a note should be treated by The Queue, you set the q property in the frontmatter, for example:

---
q:
  template: habit
  interval: 3
---

Clean your desk

For most note types, you set only the template, for some, you may also want to set the desired interval in days. All possible templates are described below. If you don't set an interval, a default interval of 1 day is assumed.

Types of Notes

You can set template to the following values: misc, learn, habit, check, todo, longmedia, shortmedia and exclude.

Standard notes / Miscellaneous / Default

If a note has no template, an invalid one, or template: misc, it will be handled as shown here.

Useful for...

1. thoughts that you occasionally want to be reminded of
2. quotes that you like but don't want to exactly memorize
3. paintings, memes, silly things
4. photos that you took; memories

Example

> Everything worth doing is worth doing badly

---
q:
  template: misc
---

> Everything worth doing is worth doing well

Learning/Spaced Repetition

To memorize notes, use template: learn.

Useful for...

1. learning vocabulary
2. memorizing quotes
3. studying for exams

Examples

---
q:
  template: learn
---

> [!faq]- What is the capital of Italy?
> Rome

It highly recommended that you use a collapsed callout to first hide the information that you want to memorize.

So, the flow is: Read the question, try to remember the answer, expand the callout, check the answer and select Wrong, Hard, Correct or Easy.

Habits

Habits are a lot like to-dos — however, they are recurring. You set them with template: habit.

Useful for...

1. enhancing your productivity (e.g. plan the rest of your day)
2. iteratively improving your note-taking system (e.g. import browser bookmarks to Obsidian)
3. taking care of your health (e.g. stand up and roll your shoulders)
4. staying on top of social obligations and relationships (e.g. convert at least 1 email in your inbox to a to-do and delete it)
5. almost any kind of habit that you want to establish, honestly

Example

---
q:
  template: habit
  interval: 7
---

Clear out email inbox

Set yourself up for success with habits

No matter how many habits you choose to put into your queue, we advice you to design them carefully. Having habits that feel to big, too undefined or too dreadful can quickly take out the fun. Some tips:

1. Set Smart Goals on every habit note
2. Set an optional Minimum Viable Habit: A tiny action in the right direction that is possible to do even when you are at your worst
3. Specify exceptions: What do you do when it's impossible to do the habit right now?

Take special care when you use habit notes for self-change or mental health concerns. It's no win to create a habit to feel better only to then feel worse because you're not up for doing it. Three additional recommendations here:

1. Create habit notes for habits you already do anyways; to build trust in your ability to do so.
2. Consider habit notes for things that are fun, silly, useless or unrelated to your goals, such as eat a piece of chocolate and really enjoy it.
3. For new habits, start tiny. For example, if you want to establish mood tracking, try draw a smiley about how you feel in your notebook instead of write a 1-page diary entry.

Please be aware that all these are just cheap hacks, attempting to simplify the extremely intricate topics of mental health and identity. Be kind to yourself.

And most importantly, know that The Queue can not replace human contact nor a mental health professional.

Check-Ins

Check-Ins are a little bit strange, but very neat. They are like habits, but formulated as a question to yourself and usually looking at the past or the general state of things. Here a few examples:

• Did you go to bed at a reasonable time yesterday?
• Are you spending enough time with your family?
• Do you have a glass of water within reach?

Useful for...

1. establishing habit systems that can't be supported by prompting specific actions in the moment, for example relating to sleep, exercise or lifestyle.
2. checking in with yourself on a broader scale, e.g. spiritually, regarding mental health, career trajectory, etc.
3. validating that you are actually applying learned concepts, processes or ideas

Example

---
q:
  template: check
  interval: 100
---

are you happy with your desk setup?

Be gentle & take care of yourself

We ask you to be careful with this type of note. While there is likely nothing wrong with checking whether you have a glass of water on your desk, analyzing your own mental health is a serious endeavour.

While "Are you happy with yourself?" may be the ideal prompt for one person to adjust their priorities, it may spiral into self doubt for another.

If you choose to use check for these things, be gentle and kind. Set yourself up for easy wins, especially in the beginning or when attempting big changes in your life.

And please remember, The Queue can not replace human contact nor a mental health professional.

To-Dos

To-dos are marked by setting template: todo in the frontmatter.

Useful for...

1. tasks that you have to do once

Example

---
q:
  template: todo
---

open that letter from the bank lying on my desk

Media/Iterative Reading

Iterative Reading is a method of getting through long reading lists. Instead of reading one article (or whatever) after another, you read everything "at the same time". The Queue makes this possible by randomly showing you articles you saved, prompting you to read a bit — it is up to you whether you stop after a sentence or a chapter. Bit by bit, you make progress, until you finished a given document. Once you finished a given piece of media, it's treated as a miscellaneous note and shows up occasionally.

To have a note show up in your queue in this manner, you have to set template to shortmedia or longmedia.

As you will see, the two types are treated almost the same. The difference is that The Queue limits the number of long media you consume at a time, while the number of active shortmedia is unlimited.

Useful for...

1. shortmedia:

• blog posts
• news articles
• videos
• (long-ish) emails
• any kind of content that takes 1 - 45 minutes to consume and understand

2. longmedia:

• books
• long-form video, including movies
• long essays
• any kind of content that feels like a project to get through

Examples

---
q:
  template: longmedia
---

📖 Dune

---
q:
  template: shortmedia
---

[📰 Everything Is Broken](https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1)

Exclude

If you set template: exclude, notes will be ignored, i.e. not opened by The Queue.

Credit

This ongoing project is the culmination of quite a few years of researching and tinkering. As such, it incorporates uncountable ideas, approaches, tools and concepts that others have built. I could not possibly name (or even remember) all of them, so here is a non-exhaustive list of the most integral sources that enabled me to create this:

1. Obsidian.md, which is not only the software this is built upon but also how I organize my thinking around it.
2. Piotr Wozniak's writing, which gave me many pointers on Spaced Repetition, iterative reading and more.
3. ebisu, the algorithm that flashcards used to be based on.
4. FSRS, the new flashcard algo.
5. The writings of Cal Newport, Niklas Luhmann, James Clear, Jeff Olson, Maxwell Maltz, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and many others, who all influenced my thinking about note-taking, productivity, learning and habits.
6. The folder settings' code is inspired by Templater, which in turn credits Liam's Periodic Notes Plugin

Running Locally & Contributing

Pull requests are always welcome — for ideas, complaints, feature requests or software patches.

There are no specific guidelines for contributing as of now; be pleasant and kind.

Detailed instructions for running the project locally are still pending, however this is just a basic ts project. Cloning it locally, installing dependencies with npm i and then running it with npm run dev should work fine. To use it in Obsidian, you have to put the project folder in your plugin folder.

To start hacking away at the plugin, check DOC.md for a brief introduction on where to find what functionality.

If you have any trouble, please open an issue. Cheerz!

Roadmap

(coming soon, hopefully)

• settings menu
• optional daily note limit
• better documentation :)
• allow filtering
• allow blacklisting folders
• enable prio