diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index bd5167c..474d4e6 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 A daemon to monitore filesystems events with inotify on Linux and execute tasks, which can be Python functions or shell commands.
 
 ## Dependencies
-[pyinotify](https://github.com/seb-m/pyinotify)
+* [pyinotify](https://github.com/seb-m/pyinotify)
 
 ## Installation
 * Install pyinotifyd with pip.
@@ -10,3 +10,22 @@ A daemon to monitore filesystems events with inotify on Linux and execute tasks,
 pip install pyinotifyd
 ```
 * Modify /etc/pyinotifyd/config.py according to your needs.
+
+## Global configuration
+The config file is written in Python syntax. pyinotifyd reads config options from a dictionary named **pyinotifyd_config**. 
+This is the default configuration:
+```python
+pyinotifyd_config = {
+    "watches": [],
+    "loglevel": logging.INFO,
+    "shutdown_timeout": 30
+}
+```
+
+Global options:
+* **watches**
+  List of Watches, description below.
+* **loglevel**
+  Set the loglevel, you may use every available loglevel of the Python logging framework.
+* **shutdown_timeout**
+  Timeout to wait for pending tasks to complete when shutdown.
diff --git a/pyinotifyd.py b/pyinotifyd.py
index b1e158c..8aef052 100755
--- a/pyinotifyd.py
+++ b/pyinotifyd.py
@@ -285,15 +285,15 @@ def main():
         print(f"pyinotifyd ({__version__})")
         sys.exit(0)
 
-    default_config = {
+    cfg = {
         "watches": [],
         "loglevel": logging.INFO,
         "shutdown_timeout": 30}
 
-    cfg = {"pyinotifyd_config": default_config}
+    cfg_vars = {"pyinotifyd_config": cfg}
     with open(args.config, "r") as c:
-        exec(c.read(), globals(), cfg)
-    cfg = cfg["pyinotifyd_config"]
+        exec(c.read(), globals(), cfg_vars)
+    cfg.update(cfg_vars["pyinotifyd_config"])
 
     console = logging.StreamHandler()
     formatter = logging.Formatter(