Formats outlive apps

If your notes are in a format only one app can read, your work depends on that company’s future. If the app shuts down, gets bought or falls out of fashion, you shouldn’t lose a thing.

Keep notes as plain text files in folders you can see, with the details in a simple header at the top. Keep recordings next to their notes, tasks as normal checkboxes, and lists in a format other tools can already read. Anything an app builds for itself, like a search index, should be something it can rebuild from your files whenever it needs to.

Text files from the 1980s still open. Most of the proprietary formats from back then don’t, and whatever was written in them went with the software.

With plain files you can open your notes in any editor and sync them however you like. You’re never stuck waiting for an export that doesn’t exist. A good tool shouldn’t need to make it hard to leave.