Notes Should Outlive Apps
A Case for Plain Text
Your favorite note-taking app will eventually die.
You spend years building the perfect digital library. You fill it with ideas, journals, and project plans. Then it burns. It might not be this year. It might not even be this decade. But someday, a change forces you away from what you built.
This scenario plays out every year. Popular startups get acquired. Pricing models change. Servers shut down. If your work exists solely in the hands of another, you lose it.
You do not own your work in these systems. You rent access to it.
I trusted these walled gardens for years. Back in 2020 I was obsessed with Notion. I spent weeks tweaking it. But the more time I spent the more I realized I didn’t “own” the work. If Notion shut down, then what? Who gets to see my files? What if I want to write when the internet is out?
Of course, these weren’t the primary irritation. It was the simple fact that Notion was infuriatingly slow. I would type something and would have to wait before it would appear on the screen. They likely fixed this, but that was enough for me to leave it behind.
The solution is not to find a better landlord. The solution is owning the home.
Walled Gardens
Most modern productivity tools and writing apps operate as walled gardens. They lure you in with sleek interfaces and the promise of organized thoughts. But take a look at the foundation. When deciding which note taking app to use, think about this first: Where does the data live? How is it stored?
It likely exists in a format that only specific applications can read.
This is fine until you try to leave.
Exporting data from a proprietary format often results in a useless mess. It could be a PDF. Perhaps HTML. Or even a CSV. If you had any structure between thoughts, it is lost. Links break and hierarchy becomes meaningless.
A difficult choice is then presented. Do you manually copy and paste thousands of notes into a new system? Or do you stay put?
With a closed format, there is a higher barrier to migration. This leaves you stuck with whatever choices the company makes. How much are you willing to pay each month to preserve your notes? When does cost outweigh convenience?
Future-Proofing Digital Text
There is no such thing as a truly “Future-proof” form of media, unless you decide to engrave every shower thought into a steel slab. Hard drives fail. Paper rots. We are forced to constantly upkeep and backup media.
But with backups and duplicates in mind, plain text is the closest we get to digital immortality.
Every computer ever can read files ending in .txt or .md. I don’t think we will lose the ability to read these filetypes in the next 100 years either. You do not need special software to view the contents. You do not need an internet connection either.
I find a certain comfort in local files that proprietary cloud-only files lack. If a plaintext app disappeared tomorrow, the file remains on your device. You can open it with a code editor or notepad.
Markdown adds adequate structure without complexity. And its human-readable too, which means you don’t need an app to render it.
Backing up Your Files
Backing local files up is simple. Git and cloud providers are good options. If you’re paranoid about data loss, the 3-2-1 rule is a good standard. 3 total copies of data on 2 different storage media with 1 off-site backup. I won’t go into detail about all the ways to back up files here. It’s been covered extensively already.
Obsidian as a Viewer
I invite you to change your perspective on software like Obsidian. It isn’t the vault itself. It is a complicated file explorer. All Obsidian does is read files in a folder. It understands extra bits of info like links and tags.
Obsidian can seem daunting, but it should be treated differently than Notion or Evernote. The notes it reads are meant to last longer than Obsidian itself. Adding 100 plugins is messy (been there). It is a waste of time and just sinks you deeper into the Obsidian ecosystem. All that extra syntax for fancy buttons loses its value in another viewer.
My philosophy in writing in Obsidian is that the notes should be usable no matter what happens. My daily notes can be made manually. My bases aren’t required. I rarely use the canvas feature even (it’s a great feature don’t get me wrong).
When the content is separated from the tool, the words belong to you. The software is just the utility to interact with them. This gives you freedom to swap tools whenever a better one comes along.
Trade-Offs
Of course, this approach isn’t perfect. Sticking to local files comes with distinct disadvantages. Anyone who has entered the PKM community knows that every tool has flaws. A tool may sound perfect but it doesn’t have a mobile app. Perhaps it lacks tags or folders or complex databases. Sticking with local text files comes with its own disadvantages.
Collaboration is a big hurdle. It’s practically impossible to edit the same file at the same time with a coworker or friend like you can in Google Docs. Real-time syncing just isn’t feasible with Obsidian.
Complex data also suffers. Markdown is the wrong tool to use when you need a database with formulas and filters. Obsidian Bases has improved this problem, but once again it locks you into a specific ecosystem.
Handwriting is another gap. I believe that handwritten notes in a physical notebook is the way to go, but I understand the people that want to sketch a diagram on their tablets. Obsidian can take hand written notes, but its not made for it.
You have to choose your battles. I’m satisfied with Obsidian because I value ownership over drowning in features. I would rather just write than spend hours tweaking a dashboard. If I need spreadsheets or collaboration, there are other tools.
No one can predict the future of software. The tools we use today will look archaic in a decade. But the words we write should survive the transition.
Note taking should be less about the container and more about the contents. Don’t let the shiny features of a new app drag you away from working with your existing thoughts. Apps can become obsolete. Your ideas shouldn’t. Ideas are meant to evolve.
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