There are essentially endless options for taking notes, managing goals and projects. Each one wants you to organize your stuff in accordance with how their systems were designed & developed. Each one you may utilize has the chance of folding, or being shuttered (in the case of Google products) - leaving you high & dry. Mark migrated out of Evernote, for example, and it was a challenge.

Mark's solution for this dilemma was to go old school. Notes stored in plain text files, utilizing Markdown for formatting. The files are stored in a small amount of folders, and linked together utilizing relative links.

Plain text is durable. Tools may come and go, but every tool can work with plain text. They are the most widely openable file format in existence.

If you can’t write about something coherently and intelligibly, then your thinking on that topic or subject is vague and incomplete.

• Mark Koester

Advantages

• flexibility of toolset
• No forced new tools
• Portability
• Future-proof
• Trackable

Disadvantages

• Weaker UI
• Plain text editors aren't necessarily meant for notetaking
• Search & discoverability
• Required more personal organization habits

Many of the disadvantages can be eliminated by using a good notetaking tool (The Archive, Typora, etc). Which feels almost like going back to regular apps.

General Organizational Principles

1. Outcome Thinking - everything you do should be for a reason. Why?
2. Establish Next Actions - what's the next thing?
3. Leverage External Systems - our brains suck. Use lists, paper, and whatever other tools.