For a long time I was a productivity-app tourist. Notes in one app, tasks in another, a fancy second-brain system I spent more time maintaining than using, plus two more apps I downloaded because a video told me to. Then a laptop migration went wrong, half of it didn't sync, and I realized I couldn't actually find anything. So I did something drastic. I moved it all into a single plain text file.

One file. Tasks at the top, notes below, a date line when I remember. It opens instantly on anything, syncs through the same cloud folder everything else uses, and will still be readable in twenty years because it's just text. No subscription, no account, no migration the next time an app I love gets acquired and ruined.

Why the boring choice won

The apps were optimizing a problem I didn't have. I don't need linked databases and kanban views; I need to write something down and find it later. A text file does that with zero friction and zero lock-in. Every feature I gave up turned out to be a feature I never actually used — it just looked productive in the demo.

The hidden cost of the fancy setups was maintenance. Every tool wants tending: tags to keep tidy, templates to update, a system to honor. That upkeep masquerades as work. A text file asks nothing of me. I open it, I type, I close it. The tool disappears and the thinking stays, which is the entire point.

What I'd tell my past self

I'm not anti-app. If a tool genuinely fits how your brain works, use it. But notice the difference between a tool that helps you think and a hobby that feels like progress. For a surprising amount of knowledge work, the answer is plainer and cheaper than the internet wants to sell you.

A year in, nothing has broken, nothing needs upgrading, and I've stopped losing things. The most reliable piece of software I own turned out to be the one with no features at all.