3 Ways to Create a Life Summary Page in Obsidian

Whether in a notebook or an app, start today to record something of your life

Recording the beauty of every day life. Photo by Author.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a regular person in possession of an ordinary life, will benefit from recording the best of times and the worst of times.

Analog or digital, daily, weekly, or monthly, if it isn’t written, it will be forgotten.

The important thing is to see who you are by looking through the lens of where you’ve been.

Why not write a little of your wonderfully ordinary life?

Here are three ways to create and compile a list of all your life summary entries in Obsidian. Method one is quick and easy, but I think methods two and three are better options.

Method 1 — Tags

Make your notes on a weekly or daily log page, and preface each with a tag, eg. #2022-Life-Summary. Clicking on the tag will bring up every entry, sorted by its daily or weekly note file name.

You can also create a summary page for the year, and call up each tagged entry with a query.

```query
tag: 2022-Life-Summary

This method is quick and easy, but it’s inflexible, and my least favourite.

Method 2 — DataView plugin

Preface each entry with your chosen field name, eg. summary::, followed by a 1-line text entry. You can write as many entries as you like, anywhere on your weekly or daily note, and they will appear in a list on your summary page. If you're using a weekly log, you could preface each entry with the date.