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Notes on note-taking

I’ve tried every note-taking app imaginable. Notion, Obsidian, Roam, Bear, plain Markdown files, even a physical notebook. Each time I settle back into something simple. Here’s why.

The portability argument

Plain text files are readable by any program, on any operating system, forever. Proprietary formats come and go. Your thoughts shouldn’t depend on a startup staying solvent.

My current setup

  • A single ~/notes directory in a git repository.
  • One Markdown file per topic, named with a date prefix.
  • A tiny shell script that opens today’s file in Neovim.
  • Synced to a private remote — no cloud vendor lock-in.

The shell script

#!/usr/bin/env bash
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
FILE="$HOME/notes/$DATE.md"

if [ ! -f "$FILE" ]; then
  echo "# $DATE" > "$FILE"
fi

nvim "$FILE"

The best note-taking system is the one you actually use. Keep it boring. Keep it yours.