"chaos" actually a feature or am I Just doing it wrong?

I’ve been using Obsidian for about a year now, mainly for academic work (research papers and my PhD project). For roughly the past 6–9 months, I’ve been using it more systematically as a kind of Zettelkasten.

My workflow looks roughly like this:

• I read academic articles.
• I highlight and annotate them.
• Then I extract individual ideas, arguments, theses, quotes, and my own reflections into notes in Obsidian.

Over time, I’ve also started creating "meta notes" for broader thematic areas. Sort of hubs or category notes that link related notes together. So far, this has created a pretty dense network of notes, and in many ways it feels productive and intellectually alive. However, after working like this for a longer period, I’ve started to notice something that makes me slightly uneasy. The whole thing sometimes feels like it only looks systematic.

Because in practice, there’s always a degree of chaos in the process:

• When I create new notes now, I might forget that I wrote something similar 6-12 months ago.
• I might fail to link to older relevant notes.
• I might accidentally create duplicate ideas in slightly different wording.
• My meta notes evolve over time, so earlier notes may not be properly integrated anymore.

So I'm wondering: Is this an actual problem or is this simply part of how a Zettelkasten like in Obsidian is supposed to work? Is the "risk" of forgotten notes, partial redundancy, and imperfect linking something you just accept as a feature rather than a bug? Or do you have specific workflows that help you periodically re-integrate old notes and avoid fragmentation?

For example:

• Do you do regular review cycles?
• Do you rely heavily on search instead of structure?
• Do you intentionally allow duplication?
• Or do you have systems to keep your vault more tightly integrated?

I’m trying to figure out whether I should: A) Relax and accept that some degree of chaos is intrinsic and even productive or B) Introduce more deliberate processes to periodically consolidate and reconnect ideas.

Would really appreciate hearing how more experienced Obsidian users think about this.