Hi Mitch, sorry for the slow reply, lots of deadlines at work presently (NotePlan is definitely earning its keep at the moment!).
NotePlan isn’t my “official” PKM. I use DevonThink for that (which I love and it’s probably not hyperbole to say it changed my life). In fact, I archive old notes from NotePlan into DevonThink. I’m not sure that’s a normal user behaviour, but e.g. I only have calendar notes from the last couple of months in NotePlan, the rest have all been archived in DT. I do this so that the search function in NotePlan only shows current, recent and pending tasks/notes. (This is really easy to do as the notes are just text/markdown files in an iCloud folder with a standard naming convention. I drap and drop!).
I have a template set up for my daily notes (templates are easy to create and amend, I tweak mine a lot!). One tool I found very valuable in NotePlan is the ability to import calendar events as a list, which I do every day. Then I have a list of all my meetings and their times. Mine are set up to import as H3 in markdown. Then I can add notes for meetings under each header for things I need to remember for specific meetings that day. Another good thing about templates is they don’t install by default, and you can add them to a note at any time. I tend to only set up templated days a few weeks in advance, and it doesn’t erase existing notes when you add a template later. (This is good because I might already have notes in a day a few months from now, but I probably haven’t added a template for that day yet. When I do, I can then just move my notes to the right headings).
I do use the folder & note structure in NotePlan (only for work-related items) and have notes other than calendar notes (I think the available calendar notes are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual. You can tick which you want to use - I only use daily, weekly and monthly currently and am thinking of dropping the weekly view). I have folders based on my main areas of work, and within each I have what are basically project notes that sit outside the calendar note structure. I mostly keep meeting notes, thoughts, and scribbles to myself in those alongside actual tasks - one note per project. I also have a folder just with notes for how to do some tasks that I have at work, so it is a PKM for stuff very specific to my job (e.g. how to upload an image to our image library correctly, etc.). I archive project notes in DT once a project is complete and has no use in NotePlan any more.
I mostly live in the daily note but I try to be diligent about creating a project note for bigger pieces of work and keeping most tasks in that note instead, just so it’s all in one place (you can link to notes, so in my daily note my task might just be “work on project X” and I can go to the project X note to see pending tasks and thoughts.
NotePlan works for me because I want to write notes alongside tasks, and that was often why other apps failed for me (it took me a long time to realise that’s what I needed). I often don’t just write “Send email to X”. I also have “here is X’s message about subject A.”, “Here’s a comment from Y about subject B which I think X also needs to know about”, etc. I want to be able to add these notes alongside the tasks and I really dislike having tasks isolated from my thoughts about the tasks. To me, this is as close as I’ve got so far to mimicking a paper diary where you could scribble little memos to yourself along the tasks and meetings you had.