So I've committed to [[The Plain Text Life]]. It gives me [[Plain Text Superpowers]] in my [[My Obsidian-Based Project Management System]] and [[Format These Notes to Work in Plaintext|my plaintext notes]]. Now that I've galaxy brained and see the strings[^1] that bind the universe together, let's look at what sucks about plain text (and how I offset its weaknesses). ### It's ugly If someone told me I had to troll through their folder of markdown files to understand something, I could do it. If instead they had me read a PowerPoint that walked me through the story, I'd probably have a better time. Plaintext is just ugly by comparison. You never see "productivity porn" or [[Bullet Journaling|Bullet Journal]] images that look like they're terminal files. > [!info] Mitigation > Accept it. If you **need** to make something pretty, use plaintext to do the work, then create a [[Derivative]] of that thing that's meant to tell the story. Also - use copious in-line graphics. ## Time is not well represented by text I know about [[ISO 8601]], it's how I write every date now. But text inherently doesn't care about *time*. There's no convenient way to structure a note to say "send me a notification to take out the recycling every 2nd Saturday". > [!info] Mitigation > Use plaintext for its strengths, and pair with [[Calendars are the Most Important Productivity Tool|calendars]] and, optionally, [[iOS Reminders App]]. Also - [[Dataview Plug-in]] and the [[Obsidian]] tasks plugin can help with this. ## Nothing is special Text by itself has no concept of [[Namespace]]s or [[Primary Key]]s. Any time you want to write about a topic, or adopt a new project, you have to consider naming conventions or run the risk of [[Hash Table|collisions]] of names. Your note titled "Do taxes" has to become "Do 2026 Taxes". Your notes about each of the Chris Joneses you know all become weirdly tagged (e.g. "Chris Jones neighbor", "Chris Jones accountant" "Chris Jones hat guy"). > [!info] Mitigation > Accept that you'll use naming conventions and/or tags and/or folders for things. Use [[Obsidian]]'s aliases if you like. ## Forced Serialization An obvious limitation, everything is rendered in-line. I cannot simply draw a giant circle around this paragraph. I cannot insert random arrows to things. Every single thing has an unambiguous "the very next thing" in a file. Paper doesn't have this. OneNote doesn't have this. > [!info] Mitigation > Mostly accept this is worth the trade-off. If you absolutely need spatial representation, bring in an image of some kind. Use [[Excalidraw]] for example. **** # More ## Source - self [^1]: is this wordplay?