How I Setup an MBA Tracker in Obsidian

One of the challenges I’ve been wondering about is how to use Obsidian for MBA Tracking. I already use it so heavily for task tracking, CRM management, and collecting articles of note. I worry that I have been stretching what Obsidian should be, but an MBA tracker was missing from my Obsidian toolkit.

To give context, as I begin submitting applications, I need to have a method to track application status, companies of interest, events of interest, and the people I meet. Getting these features into Obsidian can be a bit tough, but I’ve found a system. The only issue I have with my method is that it does add some distinct yaml headers that serve no other purpose than as part of this particular tracker. As someone who has been trying his hardest to reduce clutter in the background settings, it didn’t sit too well, but it does answer what I need right now.

Prior Setup

Parts of this setup were installed and setup for my use previously. Specifically:

1. TaskNotes Calendar
2. Templater
3. QuickAdd

I’ll outline the tracker I setup in the next section.

1. TaskNotes Calendar

This is what makes this setup possible. I have multiple calendars, and I’ve set them up to sync with TaskNotes Integrations. I’ve also setup a simple ICS calendar template that allows me to get this working. Because of this, I can create notes quickly and easily based on events I’ve blocked time for. To add on to this information, I use Templater to add extra yaml data.

2. Templater

While very much overkill for what I’m using it for, it tendency to combine pre-existing yaml data with the selected templater note is invaluable for this. Once I create a note in obsidian using TaskNotes Calendar, I use templater to add extra details if it is an interview or a recruiting event. To identify coffee chats in the tracker I’ll describe, I simply add the tag ‘coffee-chat’ and ‘consulting’.

3. QuickAdd

The only purpose for QuickAdd is to rapidly create application based notes, since it can quickly generate and populate notes from pre-specificed templates. It CANNOT replace templater as I can’t seem to make it handle the yaml header combination trick in the same way!

The Obsidian Tracker

As a quick Outline of what I created: