Thank you for being a subscriber to my Plain Text; Paper, Less Substack-hosted blog! I’m incredibly grateful for everyone who has read, commented, and financially supported my work over the past year.

My time on Substack has come to an end. I’ve answered the call to move to a more independent home on the web; a space that I own and control. New posts will now begin on ellanew.com and then be syndicated elsewhere — the POSSE approach.

As an existing subscriber you will continue to receive a weekly email. As always, you can opt out at any time.

Potential subscribers, sign up to hear about posts on my new blog here.

PAYING SUBSCRIBERS: please be aware that your subscription will renew at the usual rate and Substack will continue to take their 10% cut before passing it on to me.

I cordially invite you to consider cancelling your support on Substack and re-subscribing on my Ko-fi page. 100% of funds given there go towards helping me to stay an independent writer and creator.

This week: Plan.txt and the Plus, Minus, Next method for making sense of the week that’s been and the one to come. Define your priorities to keep Obsidian the tool you need it to be.

No AI input here; all words 100% human made. PTPL is now paywall free! Support through reading, sharing or becoming a paid subscriber is gratefully received.

Tools Are Not the Answer, but Do You Know the Question?

Cal Newport wrote about plan.txt back in 2008, eight years before I started taking my own first steps toward simplified productivity.

Each week Cal writes what he intends to do, and how he intends to do it. There’s no template, no rigid rules. He might write a paragraph, or several pages.

My plan.txt file…allows my brain, each week, to do what it does best: figure out a very workable short-term plan for making progress on what’s important. This is freestyle productivity in action.

— Cal Newport

It’s taken me a large portion of the past eight years to move my focus from tools to systems, so I imagine that even if I’d known about Cal’s approach back then it wouldn’t have helped me skip the queue. I had too much inner work to do and would not have been ready for it back then.

These days I simplify wherever I can to keep myself focused. Plain text and simple paper-based systems are my attempt at avoiding the kind of overthinking that gets in the way of actually achieving my goals instead of just placing them on (yet another) to do list!

At the end of each week I write a review of the past 7 days. Achievements, memorable moments, frustrations, joys, failures, observations. I write this on paper, preceding each point with a dash. After I’m done I’ll read it back, and change the dash as needed:

• A vertical line changes the dash to a plus for positive points

• An arrow head added to the right of the dash marks future plans

• The dash stays as it is for things that didn’t go so well

And there you have it — a freeform Plus · Minus · Next exercise done and dusted, without having to think of which category I’m writing about before putting pen to paper!

When I’m running paperless, the Plus, Minus, Next review goes at the beginning of my weekly note in Obsidian.

More about Plus, Minus, Next

Relative Priorities, and Obsidian

Three important relative priorities I’ve adopted since beginning this journey in 2016, and one guiding principle:

• Content of my notes and plans first, tools (digital or analog) I use to create them second

• Files (that I own and control) first, apps that can read and change them second

• Self-observation (i.e. via interstitial journaling) first, inspiration from other people’s systems second

• Have as few capture points as possible, and review them at least weekly

There’s irony in the article that Steph Ango, the CEO of Obsidian, wrote on the topic of files over apps. His points are valid and his writing is stunningly concise, as usual, but his app has 1000 ways (plugins) to bind the unsuspecting user to it!

I’m only half kidding here.

Obsidian is my favourite Markdown app — it’s where I’m creating these words right now — but it takes informed, intentional effort to keep my files free from plugin-generated cruft that won’t work anywhere else.

The good news is that keeping your files independent and portable between apps is not hard to do! Plugins are great, I love them and encourage people to use them on top of their files; as clothing that can easily be changed or discarded, not as a beneath-the-skin digital skeleton you can’t live without.

Plan.txt and Plus, Minus, Next for making sense of the week that’s been and the one to come. Define priorities to keep Obsidian the tool you need it to be.

How am I doing?

I love hearing from readers, and I’m always looking for feedback. How am I doing with Plain Text. Paper, Less? Is there anything you’d like to see more, or less of? Which aspects do you enjoy the most? Let me know in the comments, or hit reply if you received this as an email.

No AI input: all words 100% human made (though I totally stole the above paragraph from @jayclouse). Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-released updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

This week: While Obsidian’s Bookmarks feature is powerful, a more universal form of inter-app deep linking would be better — Hookmark helps bridge the gap. A case study showing how I use embedded queries to keep track of my language learning flashcards, and how the same queries can easily be created in iA Writer and the Finder.

No AI input here; all words 100% human made. Non-subscribers are welcome to read for free.

Digital or analog, a collection of notes over a certain size without a system to bring it into some kind of order, is of little practical use. We need a way to identify call up files, topics, and sentences that meet specified criteria, at will.

Our options are — 

• Folders

• Search

• Tags

• Metadata

• A combination of these

I like to use a combination of the above, depending on what I’m doing. Mine is a just-in-time approach, where the system evolves according to the demands I place upon it. I use strict metadata for my flashcards, ABC Notation music, and published articles, but these also live in a folder because this makes sense to me.

Nicole Van Der Hoeven made me laugh when she labelled folder-users, “heathens”, in a well-intentioned jibe in a video explaining Obsidian’s Bookmark feature. People seem get as attached to their preferred way of organising information as they do the way the toilet paper ‘should‘ hang over the roll!

Bookmarks are great, but I’d rather have ubiquitous linking instead

In an effort to keep my files free from being locked into any one app, I’ve held back from using Obsidian’s Bookmark feature. That, and the fact that it’s not working in my main vault due to what I assume is a plugin conflict!

Bookmarks in Obsidian are shortcuts that allow convenient access to your most used items. According to the official help files, Bookmarks can be created from — 

• Files

• Folders

• Graphs

• Searches

• Headings

• Blocks

That’s an impressive display of power, but I’m reluctant to rely on Obsidian’s take on Bookmarks. I’d much rather see a more universal solution for deep linking that also works in other Markdown apps, and fortunately, one exists.

I’ve written about Hookmark before, and I’m going to keep the fanfare going while no other inter-app deep-linking solution exists (for Mac users; if there’s one for Windows, I don’t know about it).

There are various methods of using Hookmark with Obsidian, and each have their pros and cons. If you’re a Setapp user, you already have access to Hookmark. If you’re yet to explore that most delicious of Mac playgrounds, using my affiliate link (plus the code ELLANE) will give you a nice 30-day free trial instead of the usual 7-days, and me a small commission. 

While I’d rather use a more universal system for deep linking, I am content to use Obsidian’s Bookmarks (when I can get them working), for two reasons:

1. A viable, app-agnostic alternative exists

2. Practical access to my working notes doesn’t rely on Bookmarks

Case Study: Language Learning Flashcards

Here’s an example of how I use collections of embedded search queries in Obsidian, rather than the built-in Bookmarks. I used to use the latter, but came up with this alternative when Bookmarks stopped working for me (they work just fine in my other, simpler vault).

For my French studies, I collect phrases that I present to my language partners for checking. Once a phrase has been corrected, I change the metadata from Unverified, to Hard. Other levels are Good, Easy, and Archived. With the following embedded queries, I can view all cards that fit particular levels on one page, sorted by language partner and date last reviewed.

In this query, the search is looking for a file name containing F (for Flashcard), 84 (my code number for French), and .0 (code for Unverified).

```query
file:F84.0
```

You can use any file name here, or use content: instead if you’re searching for specific metadata inside your files. For more information on embedded queries check out the Obsidian help files, and Michelle Mac’s excellent article on the topic. Another great way to teach yourself how queries work is to play around in the Search bar, with the Explain Search Terms option toggled on.

I like Obsidian’s embedded queries and am happy to rely on them to access my files, because I can easily create the same searches elsewhere, for example with Smart Folders in iA Writer, and Saved Searches in the Finder itself.

Ellane encourages simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-released updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

This week — 

• Finding my focus for building a digital garden that may or may not ever see the light of day (and why that last part doesn’t matter)

• How Obsidian’s block references are making my weekly note a useful, (though non-essential) hub of information

No AI input; all words and pictures 100% human made. Non-subscribers are welcome to read for free 

A Digital Garden Revisited, This Time With a Purpose

I first learned about digital gardens in 2022, from Anne-Laure le Cunff and Maggie Appleton. The teachers had appeared, but this student was not as ready as she thought she was. Putting in the work to set up a garden online should have been the last step, not the first!

Ninety or so episodes of the PTPL series later, I finally know what to plant! The texty wild flowers and rambling pumpkins, cherry tomatoes and perennial basil seeds are ready to germinate and flourish. In practical terms, this means that I’m combing through each of the past editions of this series, pulling out the ideas that still resonate, reframing where needed and linking them into a beautiful knowledge salad.

Yes, this salad lives in an Obsidian vault, but regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I’m keeping it app-agnostic. It works just as well in iA Writer (and other wiki link enabled Markdown apps) because at its heart, my digital garden is simply a folder of good old-fashioned text files. Files that live on my computer.

This folder of beautiful, local-first text files is synced to all my devices, and backed up and encrypted off-site with BackBlaze. I’ve been a customer of theirs since 2018, and am very satisfied with how easy it was to set up, and to retrieve files I’d feared were lost forever. If you’re interested in checking them out, there’s a nice long free trial period available with my affiliate link (if you sign up with that link I will receive a small commission).

I love that the infancy of this garden is entirely private! There’s no pressure around what other people might think, although I am doing my best to optimise the structure for the non-technical-but-curious.

Whether or not it is ever exposed to the public eye or (shudders) an algorithm, isn’t the point. This is about gathering and linking what I’ve learned about plain text and personal knowledge management over the last 8 years without thinking of any of that. It’s an intuitive process, and I have no doubt I’ll recognise the next step once I’m ready for it.

You might like to bookmark this tutorial from Nicole Van Der Hoeven to learn how to put a digital garden online, for free. I’ll report back if/when I try it.

Block References in Obsidian Make a Cautious Come-Back

I just added a block reference to my weekly note in Obsidian, mere days after declaring in public that I’d given up such things forever! 

This note is now a hub of the information that’s most important to me. It uses embedded queries to gather and display notes related to each day of the week, and now includes the relevant daily sections of the One Big Text File (OBTF). That’s where the block references come in.

Thanks to the Periodic Notes plugin, it’s easy to view the same information one day at a time, or with all 7 days on one page. OBTF makes it easy to enter information, and my bespoke daily and weekly notes break it into bite-sized pieces when bite-sized pieces are what I need.

All the above will be explained in detail in my updated sample Obsidian productivity vault, which I’m working on alongside the digital garden. My purpose in telling you this isn’t to give details on how it works (soon, though), but to show that I’ve learned it’s okay to strew flowers on a plain text pathway, even when they’re a variety I can’t grow myself.

Ellane builds bridges between the desire for a simple, autonomous digital life, and the skills needed to attain it. No AI input: all words 100% human made.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian demo vault) here.

This week: how giving your projects a code name can help you understand the why behind them at a much deeper level, leading to increased motivation and better quality work, and the Obsidian Sync noob’s guide to switching vaults on your phone.

There’s no AI input here; all words and pictures 100% human made. Non-subscribers are welcome to read for free.

Sorry if you’re getting a second copy of this; the first one didn’t seem to work on my end.

Naming my projects helps me remember why they exist

When I read Ben Thompson’s words on giving all his projects a name (Medium article) my imagination sparked! So I jumped right in and did the same, with satisfying results.

According to Ben, this practice helps to — 

1. limit scope creep

2. increase motivation to work on the project

3. remember what’s on your plate

4. define and internalise the meaning behind each project (the why)

Plus, there’s no denying it’s a super cool thing to do. Like, we get to be our own (ethical) secret service agency and make important things happen for the good of …whatever our project is about!

Here are the four projects I have in front of me at the moment, and the names I’ve come up with for each.

• Project Satellite — Interactive PDF planner for teachers (teachers need to oversee and care for multiple areas of responsibility)

• Project Homestead — Planner printables for people who like the DIY approach (inspired by homesteading families on Instagram, I’ve fallen for the delight one can get from doing everyday things simply, by hand, instead of buying ready-made)

• Project Wildflower — Growing my digital garden (wild flowers grow scattered in amongst everything else; gathering them into unique bouquets highlights their beauty)

• Project Scherzo —Theory of Music card games for children (these games are to be light and playful while teaching what might otherwise be dry and boring)

Naming my projects was a fantastic exercise in digging down into what they’re really about, and much harder than I thought it would be. It took me not minutes or hours, but several days.

You might choose not to name your projects, but could you do it? If it feels too hard to come up with even a hypothetical code name that means something to you, perhaps there’s more work to be done with defining the project’s deeper character and purpose.

Moving between Obsidian Sync vaults on iOS was confusing

Obsidian Sync has been working flawlessly on my laptop, iPhone, and iPad since late November 2023. Today I tried to switch to a different vault on my iPhone for the first time, and ran into a wall.

Set up Sync? Create new vault? Neither of those options seemed to fit the bill, but I figured I needed to press one of them, as the long list underneath them didn’t look relevant.

Long story short, I inadvertently ended up creating a new Sync vault on my phone for the vault I was trying to open. Not good! That thing is huge.

What I should have done was to scroll down-down-down that long list, and pick the vault I was wanting to open. Two seconds later, it was open. Felt like a numpty, I can tell you! Anyway, it’s all good now, and I learned something in the process.

Ellane encourages simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously. She’s on a journey to find a new home for her blog.

No AI input: all words and pictures 100% human made.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

All words and pictures human made: no AI input. If this article has slipped behind the paywall before you were able to read it, click here to read for free (Medium Friend link).

The Mac-only subscription service, Setapp, has a new subscription structure. 

It launches on February 28th, 2024, and will offer two tiers: AI Enthusiast, with 100 credits, and AI Expert, with 200 credits. For reference, 10 credits get you about 18 messages with GPT-3.5 Turbo, or 6 messages with GPT-4. Credits reset each billing cycle. Pricing structure yet to be announced.

Now, the announcement email from Setapp began like this:

We agree with everyone: GenAI tools give humans superpowers.

The first part grated on me because I don’t like being thrown into a bucket with the AI acolytes, but even if the last part is true, there are some superpowers I’m happy to leave alone!

Artificial Intelligence. According the Dictionary app on my phone, the word ‘artificial’ means, in part, something made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally. Oh, the irony!

We need to more closely define what “made or produced by human beings” actually means.

If a human makes a machine that can make things independently of its creator, the thing that the latter makes cannot, in my mind, be classed as having been made by humans.

Joanna Holman recently said (and Tony Stubblebine boosted) the following on Mastodon the other day, and I wholeheartedly agree. She's talking about entertainment content, but the same principles also apply to other (not all) uses of AI.

AI created entertainment content feels like the tech version of meal replacement shakes. Sure both are technically going to achieve something, providing you with some vitamins and protein from the shakes, distraction and entertainment from the AI content.

Both might have some small legitimate uses in the context of a well rounded individual life and society. But made a major part of our lives they are both soulless, highly artificial impersonations of the creativity, care and culture making that’s part of what makes us human and which makes living in community with other humans worthwhile.

So, yes, I am opinionated on this topic. I generally don’t trust AI as far as I wish I could throw it, but I do have to concede that it’s useful in some situations.

AI for language learning is both awesome and horrifying

Take MurmurType, for instance. It’s an excellent AI-powered translation utility, and a limited version will be available at the regular subscription price. Nice move, Setapp! MurmurType comes with 15 credits.

As a student of the French language who regularly exchanges audio messages with a language partner, this is the best utility I’ve found for transcribing rapid-fire audio that I could never have understood on my own. I’ve also used it to decipher the foreign language content of videos. Anything you can play through your computer’s speakers can be transcribed and translated with MurmurType.

But be warned: Chat GPT can be a bit of a disaster for checking your work.

Yesterday I wrote a response to a French toot, in French. I asked Chat GPT (the regular version, nothing to do with any particular app) whether I got it right, and it congratulated me that yes, indeed I had. It then explained in detail what I’d done correctly, and strongly implied I should be proud of myself.

Nice!

Except that when I asked my (living, breathing) language partner to check the sentence, she said No, we don’t say it like that. The sentence doesn’t work at all in French.

Talk about a faux ami ! I should have known better. Use AI with caution, no matter how well credentialed it comes.

How to visit the best Mac App Playground in the world, free for a month

Give Setapp a go for free for 30 days instead of the usual 7 with this link, and enter the code ELLANE. If you sign up I’ll get a small commission, and you’ll have access to a truly impressive (and growing) playground of Mac and iOS apps. I’m a happily paid Setapp subscriber. I refuse to recommend anything I (as a miser) don’t use and love.

Links for further reading on my experiences with Setapp:

• Setapp apps that make the subscription more than worth it for me

• 6 Setapp Apps That Can Simplify Your Plain Text Life and Work Alongside an Obsidian Vault

• Setapp’s New AI Search Just Gave Me a Great Plain Text App Suggestion

• Behold the Antique Soul of a Future-Proof Digital Workflow!

Week 2 of the One Big Text File Experiment (OBTF) has me examining the pain points of resurfacing notes at specific times, security, and having more than one source of truth. There’s an action that can make Drafts the plain text inbox of your dreams, though I question whether this approach is overkill.

There’s no AI input here; all words and pictures 100% human made. Non-subscribers are welcome to read for free.

On My Mind: Making Drafts a one-stop inbox

E. C. Chang left a comment on PTPL 088 about the On My Mind action for Drafts (made by FlohGro), which you might like to check out if you’re interested in using that app as a one-stop plain text inbox. Read the comment as it appears on Medium, or go straight to the Drafts action page.

The whole effect is that you have that elusive one-stop plain text inbox that can then send your content to wherever seems best to you. Before I stumbled onto this, using Drafts as an inbox was kind of clunky and felt like a necessary evil. Using On My Mind makes it easy to collect and then disseminate inbox items. — E.C. Chang

I intend to try it out at some point, but find myself holding back because right now I’m in my simplifying, do-it-by-hand phase. Let me know in the comments what you think, and if you give it a go.

Week 2 of the One Big Text File Experiment

Week 1 lives here. You can also follow #OBTF on the Fediverse/Mastodon.

Even the lowest-friction note making method on the planet is going to have its pain points, and during the past week I’ve discovered three. None are earth shattering, but as a self-appointed, unofficial PKM scientist, I shall note them here for posterity.

Pain Point 1: Resurfacing entries at specific times

It’s easy to resurface particular notes at specific times when each entry is its own file; not so much when all entries live in one file.

I missed that in-built advantage today when making a note of the favourite foods of two of my grandchildren, information I’ll want to see part way through next month when they’ll be spending the weekend at our place. There are several things I could do:

1. Refactor the entry into its own file, to be searchable by name and to automatically pop up in the relevant weekly/daily note (via my previous system)

2. Create a Collection in my paper Bullet Journal and make a note of the page number on the Future Log on the weekend in question

3. Add each child’s favourite foods to the file I have on them in my People folder

Block references are another option, but I gave those up a couple of years ago and I’m not going back! They’re an Obsidian-only feature, and would make the information accessible in only one app. I’m committed to keeping my notes app-agnostic.

I’m aware that Logseq is made for this kind of thing, but same story — I want portable notes and a system of using them that doesn’t rely on the features of any one app.

The most elegant solution in this instance is number three, along with a brief note in my calendar to shop for those foods the day before the children are due to arrive.

Lesson: The simplest solution is oftentimes the best.

Pain Point 2: Security

When a large amount of your personal information lives in a single file, you’re going to want to keep it out of nefarious hands. Not that we’d intentionally keep passwords in there, but if a scraping of this kind of file could reveal our favourite dog/school/teacher/city, that would not be a good thing!

Add to that my habit of regularly pressing ⌘A → ⌘C while working as an interim clipboard backup, and there’s the potential for accidentally sharing waaay too much information. At least in my head, there is.

I’m not seriously worried about someone hacking my Dropbox / iCloud / home computer / iPhone to seize this file, but Paranoia is my third middle name so I’m always going to be a better-safe-than-sorry kind of person.

How does this fine example of overthinking affect the OBTF Experiment? I have no idea! 

Well, I suppose it has reinforced that the practice of regularly pressing ⌘A → ⌘C is best kept for writing done directly online, like social media post replies and the like. Read more about this practice here. 

Pain Point 3: Two sources of truth rather than one

Ideally I’d rather have one collection point for everything. One inbox, one place to go when entering and retrieving information.

Having two collection points, aka sources of truth, is the necessary state of things when using a hybrid digital–analog system—at least in the way I like to do it—and I’m coming to terms with it quite well.

Rather than viewing paper as an extension of my digital system, or digital as something I use when I’m not able to write in my notebook, I’m viewing each as different flavours of an overarching process. The process of observing my own life and learning from it so that I can, as Ryder Carroll puts it, design a better future.

Share

No AI input: all words 100% human made. I’m on a journey to finding a new home for this blog, currently exploring affordable options that suit my level of technical non-expertise.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

This week I talk about how using a physical notebook is shaping and simplifying my (Markdown) daily note template, and how One Big Text File is a great option for capturing thoughts and ideas in a plain text Bullet Journal. 

There’s no AI input here; all words 100% human made. Non-subscribers are welcome to read for free (Medium Friend link). 

Punctuation Trivia

Punctuation used to be about pauses, much like rests in music, rather than legibility. Usage practices were a hotly debated topic in the 19th Century. Read more

Using a Bullet Journal is profoundly changing my daily notes

It’s strange to see parts of my plain text planner fall into disuse as I continue using a Bullet Journal (rather than daily notes in Obsidian) for capturing, or logging, thoughts and ideas as they occur.

There’s no longer a need for the repeating list of daily tasks on my weekly note template, but I’ve decided to keep them around as a visual reminder, with no pressure to mark off the boxes each day. Tasks are now almost 100% managed on paper, and I’m really liking how that feels.

For the past few months my favourite part of the weekly note has been the embedded query showing all the files created or marked for review on that day. This is where I can review the ideas that occurred to me during the night, or at other times when my notebook wasn’t within reach.

And now these fingers are itching to write up exactly how it all works. This is the simple approach I was looking for several years ago, and I figure there’s someone out there who will get insights from it for their own system.

Yet even with that goal finally achieved, and despite not giving up my weekly note any time soon, I found my imagination captured last week by an idea I’d previously dismissed: the One Big Text File. Mike Grindle calls it the lazy man’s PKM; I call it my OBTF, or plain text Bullet Journal.

The One Big Text File experiment has begun!

I’m seven days in to a new personal experiment: One Big Text File (OBTF) for everything. It’s a concept I’ve seen, been intrigued by, and dismissed several times over the past few years. 

Mike’s recent article on the topic sparked something different in me this time. I knew I was ready! (Read it on Medium, or on his blog)

The concept is this:

Write everything you’d normally put into a digital daily note into one text file, and separate out sections as needed into additional files. People like William Hern and Jeff Huang do it differently from Mike, from each other, and from me, which is as it should be. 

I’ve been applying Bullet Journal principles, marking each entry with one of the following (ignore the actual bullets at the start of each line):

• N. This is a note; something I want to remember

• T. This is a task; something I want to do in the future

• E. This is an event; something that happened today

Why use letters as bullets, rather than symbols?

The OBTF is where I capture ideas when I’m not near my notebook, so I’ve made the ‘bullets’ as seamless as possible to enter on my phone. Letters are easy to remember, and the addition of a period (double-tap space bar) automatically capitalises the start of the actual entry.

Searching for a symbol, no matter how conveniently placed, always takes me longer than quickly tapping N for note, followed by two quick taps of the space bar. It’s quick and easy to do on my phone when an idea strikes, without requiring additional time/brain power that might cause the idea to flee my post-menopausal brain before being captured.

Here are some additional bullets (once again, ignore the actual bullets at the start of each line):

• C. This is a communication note, like an email, social media post, text message

• R. This is a reference note, like the hex code for non-repro blue #a4dded

• → This task or note has been migrated to somewhere else; eg. paper notebook, task manager, its own file

• <. An event that's been scheduled into my paper future log, or digital calendar

• X. This task has been completed

• xx. This task is now irrelevant

Another reason for placing a period after bullets is to make it easier to search for specific note types. I don’t type in capitals, so I’m rarely if ever going to find N. used for anything other than a bullet. 

I’d wanted to use > instead of an arrow → for migrated entries, but that one’s already taken by Markdown. Rather than escaping it as/>, which requires typing an extra symbol anyway, I settled on the arrow. Setting up text replacement on the iPhone keyboard has made it fast to type.

Quiz time

If I knew how to place a proper quiz at the bottom of this article, it would look like this:

a) I love this idea! OBTF, here I come!
b) Interesting! I have questions
c) Great idea for some, but I prefer my current note-capture system
d) Nope, not for me

The OBTF isn’t for everyone. If it doesn’t strike a tuneful chord in you today, I’d recommend leaving it alone until it does.

No AI input: all words 100% human made. I’m on a journey to finding a new home for this blog, currently exploring Wordpress as the most affordable option.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow.
Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free.

What might change in your life if you were consistently able to ask great questions? This week I look at how your daily note is as good place as any to practice this skill. I also talk about migrating my Bullet Journal to a disc bound book only one month into the practice.

Great questions bring great answers (daily notes can help)

Félix (@fay59), an Apple employee, wrote this on Mastodon last week:

 Thought Leadering of the day: asking great questions is an extremely underrated skill. 80% of the time you will find your solution as you’re writing the question, and the other 20% of the time people will find it really easy to help.

Tech support people the world over will be nodding as they read this, but what about the rest of us? When do we find ourselves needing to ask great questions? No matter who you are or what you do, the answer is daily.

This quote speaks to me of a deep curiosity which, when properly honed, will lead us to the answers we’re looking for in any field. Start with Why? and repeat this most basic of questions for each answer you come up with until you reach the core of the matter.

Your digital or analog daily note is a convenient place to practice asking the kinds of questions that can help you to problem solve on your own, and make it easier for others to help when outside input is needed.

Lifehack suggests the following four pointers once you’re ready to move on from Why, that can apply when talking to others as well as when using your notes for introspection.

1. Don’t ask Yes or No questions

Keep them open ended with words like who, what, where, when, and how.

2. Dig deeper

Most answers contain an assumption. Asking followup questions can bring further insights.

4. Use the power of silence

Humans tend to want to fill the gaps, so get comfortable listening to an answer and then waiting a while.

5. Don’t interrupt 

According to Inc.Australia, I’m a co-operative overlapper. I need to remember that turn-takers can see this style of conversing as rude, or as an attempt to take the dominant position in a discussion. Participants in the Rockefeller Global Leadership Program (RGLP) were introduced to a third style: the Pauser. This style of question asker / answerer not only listens to their interlocutor, they leave a space once the person has finished speaking before giving their contribution.

Your … daily note is a convenient place to practice asking the kinds of questions that can help you to problem solve on your own, and make it easier for others to help when outside input is needed.

I’m practicing asking good questions (good comes before great, right?) in my notes by asking myself open ended questions related to the notes I make (many of which are simply facts about my day), digging deeper than the obvious, and allowing myself space when I can’t immediately think of a response. 

Here’s hoping this practice will translate into my interactions with others! The “How to Change Minds” video is another helpful resource (French version here).

Bullet Journal migration to discbound goodness

This week I migrated my Bullet Journal from the mini stitch-bound notebook I made on New Year’s Eve, to a discbound version. I was very impressed with the website and packaging of my order from The Functional Teacher. I got the frosted A5 covers and frosted discs, which arrived wrapped in monogrammed tissue paper in a classy dark green box.

The 28mm discs are larger than I need, so I’ll be using my Happy Planner gold aluminium discs in the next size down. Sometime I’d like to make a wrap around folio cover for the book to protect the discs while in my bag, probably from cork.

In the spirit of the Paper Saver notebook, I have a section in my discbound book for single-sided scrap paper.

Before migrating to this new notebook, I scanned the text of the previous book’s Index page directly into Obsidian. It was pretty good, but not error-free; I need to be more careful with my handwriting to speed up the process next time.

This post is also on Medium (one day later than it’s published here), and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers. I’m currently at a standstill with migrating from Substack. Still on the journey, seeking clarity about the destination.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Plain Text; Paper—Less posts are paywall-free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free on Medium. 

So, what’s the attraction?

Do you know why you are drawn to productivity information and apps, and the technology that drives much of it?

Imagine for a moment that you’re as productive as it’s humanly possible to be.

Your day is effortlessly time-blocked, and all your tasks are done in the right order, ahead of time. You never miss a deadline or let anyone down.

In this ideal situation, you’ve arrived; you’re at the height of productivity! Congratulations. As you stand there with the world at your feet, what can you see from the peak? Why did you climb the productivity mountain in the first place?

Above are excerpts from a piece I wrote back in 2022, called How to Stop Obsessing Over Apps and Embrace the Right Kind of Productivity. It explores why we want what we want and do what we do, and whether or not it’s possible to indulge in a little new-app-wonder from time to time without losing focus on what’s most important.

If your Why is feeling a little shaky, I highly recommend doing the deep work to discover what it is (like, what it really is, not what you think it is). Dr. Kara Monroe is someone to watch in this space (website).

Plain text and paper really are (a few of) my favourite things

It delights me to report that thought capturing, note making, and idea exploration is as strong in my plain text environment of choice (Markdown; mostly Obsidian) as it ever was. Yay! I was starting to wonder if I would end up pulling away from the digital completely, now that paper is featuring more prominently in my life management system.

I love the idea of plain text so much, it’s a real relief that this is not the case.

Instead, now that I’m clearing my brain and capturing thoughts as they occur on paper rather than digitally, my date-based text files are a quiet, dependable resource rather than a constantly referred to core of everything. 

They are now a source of truth in my personal knowledge management system, not the source of truth. And this feels right.

What Ryder Carroll (Mr Bullet Journal himself) says about notebooks, can apply in equal measure to whatever system you have chosen; digital or analog or both — 

Our notebook serves as a mental sanctuary where we are free to think, reflect, process, and focus.

Finally feeling that my system is a “safe playground” for my mind, where I’m “completely free to express [my]self without judgment or expectation” is how I know I’m doing it right, and how you can, too. (Quotes are from The Bullet Journal Method book, which is currently free to read for Amazon Prime subscribers)

As an aside, grammar geeks might be interested in this explanation why the unusual structure of the the heading “Perfect Productivity Doth Not a Happy Person Make” is acceptable English.

This (and every) post also appears on Medium, one day later than it’s posted here. P.S. I’m actively seeking a new home (away from Substack) for my work. Ghost is currently the strongest contender.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

A World Without Plain Text is Not My World

Allow me to introduce you to Matt Stein , who has a carefully curated workflow and likes to access his files in apps like Obsidian, iA Writer and Vim. It warms my heart to come across people who are just as deeply-rooted in plain text as I am!

If there’s a world where plain text becomes obsolete, I will find another world

↑ This! When I have my in-person cosy chat with God (we haven’t yet fixed the date) and I get to ask him all those hard questions I keep on a shelf in a corner of my brain, I will not be surprised to learn that the foundation of the entire Universe is… plain text. After all, in the beginning was the Word! — John chapter 1, verse 1.

Matt has a blog where he writes cool stuff like this:

I’ve learned the hard way that spending too much time customizing a tool can be a barrier to actually being productive with it, and it’s not an easy balance to strike. I’ve borrowed ideas from a lot of people here, and have been amazed by other ones I’ve deliberately avoided.

This kind of thinking tends to come with a mindset, I’ve found. One that doesn’t depend on political or religious conformity, but on a desire to get back to the simple authenticity that many of us would argue is what a best-case internet (and world) should look like.

I’d rather my words be personal. Mine. For your consideration, disregard, enjoyment, or whatever they mean to you. But never to exploit your attention, or persuade you that you need someone else’s product or service that I’m not personally eager to tell you about. Certainly never to pull your attention into a platform that will use it for profit.

Thanks, and high five, Matt!

Share

Inbox Evaluation Time!

How many inboxes do you have? This time last year I wrote about the need to corral my wild inboxes, so today I’m taking a look at how things are going 12 months later.

These are my current inboxes, that is to say, places where tasks are gathered for later processing:

• Plain text daily notes (usually viewed in Obsidian, but just as accessible in the Finder)

• Paper notebook (hand stitched Bullet Journal)

• Reminders app (Siri-captured tasks)

• Pinned emails (move ASAP to one of the above)

Missing from last year’s list is the Drafts app as an inbox. Something isn’t working quite right with sync between my Mac and iOS devices, so that little red notification dot on the Drafts icon no longer taps me on the shoulder. Middle of the night must-not-forget notes now go into Reminders, or if they’re really urgent, I’ll set a labelled alarm. Each morning I check each inbox, placing tasks where they need to go.

The Bullet Journal way of capturing tasks on the fly (along with everything else) is working well. I enjoy the process of combing through and rewriting, because this process helps me evaluate their form, priority, and even their very existence. Bigger projects with their attendant tasks still live in Markdown files in my main Obsidian vault.

Speaking of Obsidian, this year I’m making more use of the monthly note, as I’ve set it up to display all daily notes in a single list.

I often have multiple notes for each day, and I track both those and the French flashcards I review on any given day with embedded queries in Obsidian. It’s easier to skim through and see what I’m looking for with everything listed together than it is to skip from day to day. These files can just as easily be viewed in the Finder from the folder they live in. This is the kind of flexibility and simplicity I love!

Now’s as good a time as any to check in with your inboxes and see what they’re telling you.

Do they need to change in type, number, or the way you process them? Tightening up your inboxes can give you more time, and help stop things slipping through the cracks.

This (and every) post also appears on Medium, one day later than it’s posted here. P.S. I’m on a journey to finding a new home for my work; one that I control.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free.

Hyperlinked PDFs in Nebo!

The Nebo app has the most accurate handwriting to type conversion that I’ve ever experienced. At Christmas time they emailed me a PDF planner with clickable tabs down the side. What’s this! I thought; can Nebo read PDF hyperlinks at last?? Yes! Yes they can.

The ‘What’s New’ Nebo update screen on my iPad says that PDF navigation is now a thing. Like wow, people! This is brilliant news. GoodNotes is cool and all, and I still love Noteshelf, but I’m so pleased to have a text-centric app like Nebo able to handle interactive PDFs.

I’m noticing that links are a little slow to execute, but they do work. I haven’t found a way to press links with the Apple Pencil, so it seems like fingers are needed for now. The bottom of my teacher’s planner has a small index for access to any month or week from anywhere in the planner, and it’s hard to press those tiny buttons accurately without zooming in first.

I created a free minimalist interactive planner a while ago, if you’d like to try out Nebo’s new capabilities. Grab it here. You’ll see the brand E&R Publications on it — no prizes for guessing that I’m the E of that equation!

I tested Nebo’s prowess with searching for the word ‘optimistic’ in the flowery scribbles you can see in the sample calendar page from my planner, above: it was flawless! Even though a loopy letter from the line above overlays the target word, it took less than a second to highlight it in blue.

Adventures in Plain Text (and a little paper)

Budgeting

• Continuing to keep records on paper using The Budget Mom’s templates

• There’s something about physically manipulating paper that is helping me understand how the wheels of this machine work

• Discbound planners are ideal for paper budgeting — I’m using an A4, Junior Arc, and the skeleton of a Classic Happy Planner for the three different budgets in my life

Bullet Journaling

There’s a back-and-forth conversation going on in my head about whether or not my next BuJo should be discbound (free, easy, but potentially annoying) or stitched (free, not so easy, but sweeet).

Perhaps this can be a personal experiment, where I learn from experience if the discs in the centre of the book really would drive me crazy, and if being able to relocate, remove, and replace individual pages would awaken my dormant tendency toward obsessive planner tweaking?

If you are using a discbound planner of any sort, how are you coping with the bulk of the discs when trying to write close to the margin of the book?

Daily and Weekly Notes in Obsidian

I’m still using Obsidian daily for writing, capturing of ideas when I can’t access my paper notebook, and evergreen notes, but not for day to day task management. As wonderful as Bullet Journals are, I still need a reliable repository for the notes that demand to be written at 3 am, in the dark. These start their lives in Drafts, and are then magically transported to Obsidian via an action.

Plain text files and my paper notebook are my two sources of truth for notes and tasks.

No, the paper notebook couldn’t replace the files I keep in Obsidian, even if I wanted it to (I don’t), but it does act as the Master Control Room; the Bridge of the craft that’s getting me where I want to go.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

I’m actively looking to move my blog from Substack, and will let you know when that happens. Ghost? Micro.blog? Buttondown? Not sure yet which is the best option for my needs, and as someone who doesn’t want to handle the technical back end of things. Input welcome. Nothing will change for current subscribers other than seeing a different UI.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

Here’s what I hope you will gain from my writing this year

Not a system to copy, but principles to guide your own journey of discovery, with my experiences and perspectives as the backdrop. I’ll likely be changing platforms this year—more on that at the end.

New Year’s resolutions are the old year’s every day efforts

I don’t do new year’s resolutions. Every month, week, and day are better intervals to check in and see what kind of avalanche all those tiny choices are heading me towards.

There’s no point to attaching a new habit to the fresh feeling of a new year, because the newness inevitably wears off, and then where will you be? A consistent practice of introspection and seeking to make daily micro improvements will bring more progress than most New Year’s resolutions.

Your will is nothing more than the muscle of character. Every time you flexed your will, you either strengthened the muscle of decision toward good and selflessness, or you strengthened it in the opposite direction — toward evil and selfishness. Even the tiniest choices made their mark. Every choice matters — whether an unkind comment or the smile at a lewd joke or taking the time to help one in need. Taken together, they exerted a cumulative effect. All your life, you were gradually turning yourself into a better and more selfless [person], or into a more self-centered [person]. 

— Hell and Beyond, by Michael Phillips (The Beyond Trilogy)

If I was into New Year’s resolutions, this is a list I’d be happy to pick from. 

Something I started working on last year is to give more empathy, less advice.

How does your productivity system support the progress you are hoping to see? Does something need to change?

Anne Laure Le Cunff’s membership site, Ness Labs, is holding a live session on replacing New Year’s resolutions with the practice of designing personal experiments. It’s almost certainly over by the time you’re reading this, but the event will be available to rewatch for all Ness Labs members.

Tough questions

New Year’s Eve was quiet at our place. After a church service filled to the brim with fellowship and goodwill to all, we came home and feasted on a range of delicious snacks (shiitake mushroom jerky is so good!), and a simple evening meal. In the nourished calmness that followed, I finally welcomed the urge I’d been feeling to explore bullet journaling and set to making myself one before bedtime.

Success! I used a combination of machine and hand sewing to wrangle 120 pages (30 leaves) of 100 gsm paper into a coverless but functional book. It slots well into my Paper Saver cover.

We have a monster guillotine that can trim an inch thick wad of paper with relative ease, but it’s important to line things up properly before you lower the 3-foot long blade. Unfortunately I trimmed off a centimetre (or so) more than I intended to, so the book is now Moleskine width instead of the A5 I was going for!

It’s okay, though. I am content with it.

(Another of my not-New-Year’s-resolutions is to detach my sense of wellbeing from the results I’m hoping to see. To greet what happens with curiosity rather than fear, self-recrimination or resentment.)

Observing my bullet-journal-holding-self as an outsider might, I have questions. Tough questions.

• Why a paper Bullet Journal and why now, when your plain text system is finally what you’ve always wanted it to be?

• What role will plain text (and Obsidian) play in your day to day life going forward?

• Will you get sucked into the prettification of BUJO pages to the neglect of what they’re supposed to be helping you achieve?

• What about your beautifully sustainable scrap paper notebooks?

And the answers thus far are: “Have you got half an hour?”, “A significant one”, “No”, and “I don’t know”.

What I’m looking forward to discovering, once the honeymoon phase is over, is where things will naturally gravitate to text files, and which will feel better on paper.

I’m telling you, this is a very intuition-intensive process! I feel like someone who’s been on a longterm detox diet, now cautiously rediscovering some of the foods their newly-healed body couldn’t handle for a time. Stay tuned.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

I’m actively looking to move my blog from Substack, and will let you know when that happens. Ghost? Micro.blog? Buttondown? Not sure yet which is the best option for my needs, and as someone who doesn’t want to handle the technical back end of things. Input welcome. Nothing will change for current subscribers other than seeing a different UI.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. 

Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

Replacing Comic Sans, at last

Here’s a 22 minute video about the infamous Comic Sans. It’s a good history of how it became one of the most used and most hated fonts of all time.

If you’re scratching your head at what font choices have to do with productivity, try changing your notes app font to 8 point Alumni Sans Collegiate, and see how you get along!

Fonts are all about dressing your words in clothing that suits the occasion. You’re not going to wear a ball gown or tux to a football game (especially not if you’re playing), and a baggy t-shirt isn’t going to cut it for a night at the opera (especially if you’re singing).

Font choices absolutely affect my productivity.

You may enjoy the experience of seeing a handwritten-style font as the interface for your phone (Android allows this), while for me this would be akin to rubbing velvet up the wrong way or scratching my nails on a chalkboard every time I used the device.

Simplified formulas in Markdown tables!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my attempts to write simple formulas for my Markdown tables, to make tracking finances easier. Stowe Boyd kindly let me know in the comments about an Obsidian plugin I’d never heard of — CalcCraft. I’m pretty chuffed to have found it! Thanks, Stowe.

The documentation for this plugin gave me just enough information to be able to work out the formulas for what I’ve been wanting to do in my Markdown expense trackers: calculate the sum of a column of figures, and calculate the account balance after adding the Deposit and subtracting the Withdrawal from the previous row’s Balance.

I’m well aware it’d be easier in many ways to use a spreadsheet, but I’m far too comfortable with my Markdown-flavoured plain text life to want to give that up! Especially now that Obsidian Sync makes all the information quickly and reliably available on my phone.

CalcCraft adds numbers (1, 2, 3…) to rows, and letters (a, b, c…) to columns, so that formulas have a reference point.

These are the two formulas I’m using, which I’ve made into snippets in Keyboard Maestro for quick access:

=sum(+0c2:+0c-1r)

Calculate the sum of all figures in the current row, from one row below the header to the row above the cell in which the formula lives

=(-0c-1r)+(-1c+0r)-(-2c+0r)

Calculate the new balance by adding anything in the Deposit column, and subtracting anything in the Withdrawal column, all on the same row

Note that these formulas are relative. They refer to the first or second column from the column in which the formula sits, rather than specific table coordinates. In the Balance column below, you need to enter the balance figure once, on the first row. As expected, the formula takes care of the rest.

| Date | Transaction | Withdrawal | Deposit |                     Balance |
|:----:| ----------- | ----------:| -------:| ---------------------------:|
|  13  | 446.00      |            |   14.00 |                       14.00 |
|  13  | 446.00      |       4.00 |         | =(-0c-1r)+(-1c+0r)-(-2c+0r) |
|  13  | Stripe      |            |    3.07 | =(-0c-1r)+(-1c+0r)-(-2c+0r) |

The plugin’s documentation explains this and other, far more complicated formulas, in more detail. Check it out. 

Ellane loves helping simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Plain Text; Paper — Less posts are paywall-free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. It’s a busy, family and event-centred time of year for many of us, so this and next week’s editions are coming to you a day or so later than usual.

Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

Folders and plain text inspiration to help you get ready for the new year

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you’re reading this after the bulk of the festivities are over, and you’re looking to gently evaluate the year that’s been, while preparing for the one that’s nearly upon us.

Geet Duggal has written a 25 minute Medium article that’s 110% worth your time if you’re looking for inspiration for improving your hand-made task management system. If you’re not on Medium, I’m truly sorry I can’t yet share a Friend link. (FYI, I’m working on it)

I’ll be going over it a couple more times to learn from his method for capturing tasks in one big, messy pile, and revisiting these to determine what needs doing next.

His system, like mine, relies on plain text files and folders. It’s old and new at the same time:

Therefore, nothing I say here is terribly original. Except it is. It’s my take with its own unique twist that may or may not resonate with you. The same holds for your approach to productivity.

Geet and I both believe that — 

• Having one primary, trusted source of truth for captured tasks is worth striving for.

• Duplication when capturing tasks is good. It shows you what’s important enough to your brain to repeat.

• Captured tasks should be revisited often.

• Keeping reminders of tasks in more than one place can be a good idea, e.g. sticky notes, placing the item you need to bring with you in front of the door.

…the single largest de-motivator when working on a project like this is the urge to just do it all at once. I call that “do big”, and that approach can make doing anything substantial overwhelming and uninspiring. So this is the way I think now: Think big. Do small. Small will add to big.

The article is looong, but presented in a way that’s easy to digest and review. I’m so pleased to see the emergence of more voices writing about simplicity, flexibility, portability and autonomy in the plain text realm!

Plain text budgeting

Has it really only been a week since I last wrote about my adventures with plain text budgeting? I’ve spent several hours a day diving in over the past week and really feeling out how to do this. The manual nature of tracking financial data is helping me to see the larger consequences of a series of smaller actions.

A lot of people are going to prefer an app or a spreadsheet for this, but I know for certain I’m not alone in benefiting from doing the deep dive with my sleeves rolled up.

Here’s the two-pronged principle:

There’s no point outsourcing something (to a formula, or an app) when the benefits from being totally hands-on far outweigh the time saved and a pretty UI, and there’s no medal for doing things the hard way, when the easier way would be a better fit.

Keeping my records by hand is the perfect solution for me, where I am today. I could write up how to do it, package it up nicely with pictures (and maybe one day I will), but that’s not going to help you if it’s the wrong size for your productivity frame. As always, I encourage you to do the work of discovering what you as an individual need, at this point in your life, when it comes to personal knowledge management.

See last week’s missive if you’re new to the concept of budgeting on digital paper. Further to that, Stowe Boyd kindly pointed me in the direction of the CalcCraft plugin, that looks very promising when it comes to calculations in Markdown tables!

Ellane loves helping simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers. Plain Text; Paper — Less posts are paywall-free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow.

Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

Obsidian tables have had an update

People with early access to new features in Obsidian received a treat recently: tables now have Notion-like handles for easily moving rows and columns around! The Advanced Tables plugin has always been able to do this, but it sure is nice to see some table-love in the core of the app.

What I love is that everything I’m discussing today about tables, even the complicated formula stuff, is for convenience only. It’s nothing you couldn’t do manually, and it doesn’t do weird things to your Markdown.

My financial records journey

Earlier this year I tried my hand at plain text accounting using hLedger, and failed. Moved on to Beancount with the same result. And now I know: the gaps in my knowledge about how to organise finances, rather than the app, were the reason I unsucceeded!

After trying those two flavours of plain text accounting, I paid for a year of YNAB and enjoyed what I learned from their excellent support resources. It bothered me, however, that an app was looking after my data. Standing between me and my data, in effect. And so I threw it all in the proverbial dustbin, and started from scratch.

The course I’m doing now (nearly finished) is gradually filling in my knowledge gaps. It’s stretching my synapses and forcing new ones to form, which is strangely exhilarating, albeit mildly painful! Read this to learn more about my troubled relationship with mathematics.

You can learn the basics in a vastly pared down, free version of the course here. And no, you don’t have to be a Mom or feel like you’re even remotely within her target demographic to get benefit from this.

FYI I’m a satisfied customer, only. Kamiko doesn’t know me, and I don’t get any kickback from recommending her products.

Keeping analog-style records on digital paper

What I’m doing now is the plain text equivalent of planning my budget on paper. It’s somewhat laborious, but not overly so.

Perhaps this horrifies you? I can imagine some people throwing up their hands at the thought of keeping records by hand, but for me it’s necessary to teach me how the system works, as well as keep me mindful about spending and saving decisions.

I’m keeping my records within tables in Obsidian much the same way I would have done on paper. Same column headings, same information. The first step to creating a good budget is to track your income and expenses, which I’m doing in a table that looks like this:

Under the hood:

## Account Name

### Start $100.00 → End $392.16

| Date  | Transaction                   | Category  | Withdrawal | Deposit | Balance | Comments |
| ----- | ----------------------------- | --------- | ----------:| -------:| -------:| -------- |
| 01.12 | Starting Balance              | -         |            |         |  121.16 |          |
| 05.12 | Edgar's Mission calendars (3) | Gifts     |      71.00 |         |         |          |
| 14.12 | Paycheck                      | Income    |            |  300.00 |         |          |
| 15.12 | Gas                           | Utilities |      51.00 |         |         |          |
|       |                               |           |            |         |         |          |
|       | TOTALS                        |           |     122.00 |  300.00 |         |          |
<!-- TBLFM: @>$4=sum(@I..@-1);%.2f -->
<!-- TBLFM: @>$5=sum(@I..@-1);%.2f -->

I’m viewing this as writing on digital paper. The kind of ‘paper’ that has some distinct advantages over its fibrous counterpart:

• Available on all my devices

• Backed up and version controlled

• Alterations can be easily made

• Keyboard shortcuts make it a breeze to shift lines up or down

• Basic calculations are available

Did you note the formulas at the end of the table for tallying the sum of each column in my example table above? To make them work, you’ll need to get the cursor blinking somewhere in them then click the fx button in the Advanced Tables toolbar.

Next challenge: learn how to write the formula for (Balance — Withdrawal) + Deposit, to automatically keep the Balance column up to date. If you know how to do that, I’d be grateful for any help. No org-mode evangelism, thanks.

A full-featured Excel template came with the Building Blocks of Budgeting course, so the same method can be followed with much of the work already done. Once I have a good understanding of how to run a budget I’ll be interested to see whether I’m more drawn to the spreadsheet, or continuing with paper — digital or otherwise.

Ellane loves helping simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

Download productivity goodies (including a soon-to-be-updated Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Plain Text; Paper—Less posts are paywall-free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Subscribe now

Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

Gift-giving can be an overinflated, prickly ball to run with.

Intellectually, I believe that gifts are a nice but optional way of expressing regard for someone. Emotionally, I can’t bear the thought of anyone not having a gift with their name on it to open on Christmas day! Birthdays are a different matter, because I’m strange like that.

Here are a few things that I’d love to receive as gifts, if I didn’t already own them. Maybe there’ll be something here to bring a smile to the face of someone you’re looking to please.

Low Clutter

Logitech K380 Keyboard, Mac version

Lots of happy reviewers recommend this keyboard. It’s heavier than the Mac Magic Keyboard and it doesn’t have rechargeable batteries, but it seamlessly connects to three different devices, leaving the Mac version in the dust.

I thought I was buying this keyboard for my iPhone for times when travelling light, but I’ve ended up keeping it at home ready to connect with the press of a button to my iPhone, iPad, or Mac. The less hefty Magic Keyboard now stays connected to my phone, and travels with me in a Geekria carry case that fits either keyboard. 

If buying the Logitech K380 as a gift, I suggest packaging some AAA rechargeable batteries to go with it.

Customisable notebook covers suitable for reclaimed paper

Beautiful notebooks make nice gifts, especially when paired with a lovely fountain pen and some high quality ink. Leuchtturm1917, Rhodia, Baron Fig, Moleskine, and the (just released, not yet available) iA Writer watermarked notebook. If you’re in the US, check out The Gentleman Stationer. 

I use a Leuchtturm1917 Some Lines a Day book for my 5-year diary, and I’m just coming to the close of year 6, or the first space in my second book. Love it. For daily scrawlings, however, I prefer to use reclaimed paper. 

• Paper Saver- my daily driver. I’m a true convert to the freedom that comes from splashing my thoughts all over paper I don’t have to worry about wasting! Paper Saver have recently started paper made from stones, rather than trees.

• Roterfaden — My one-day-if-only cover. It’s beautifully designed and masterfully executed, and the price reflects its quality (and then some).

• Lochby — A good alternative to the first two. I might have bought one if the inside colour was more muted.

• Midori Traveller’s Notebook

Sketchnoting supplies

• Zebra Mildliners — beautiful tones in these highlighters make them ideal for adding colour to sketchnotes that enhances without being distracting. The WKT7–5C-NTC is a good example of the kinds of colours you can find in this range.

• Sticky notes in earth tones, like these.

• Tombow grey brush pen N75 — recommended by Eva Lotta Lamm. I’ve taken her Domestika course, and credit her with giving me the confidence to draw my own pictures for articles like this one. 

No Clutter

Setapp gift card

Choose from one, three, or twelve months access to 240 gifts in one. No one is going to use all of them, but everyone is going to find enough useful apps to make them very happy indeed! (Link below)

10 Setapp apps I use and love:

• Mindmapping — MindNode

• Speeding up a Mac, and generally keeping it in good health — CleanMyMac

• Beautiful screen and window captures with simple markup — CleanShot X

• Clickable, plain text links that can beam you directly to any folder or file on your computer — Hookmark

• Organise fonts — Typeface

• Accurate transcribing of speech in (practically) any language — MurmurType. In many instances I’ve found MurmurType to be more accurate than DeepL. Talk in English, hear and read your sentence in French or Chinese! It’s a lot of fun.

• Download and trim online videos — Pulltube, Downie. I use them to create audio snippets for my language learning flashcards.

• Clean up your Mac’s menubar — Bartender. I’ve tried all the free and cheaper versions; this one is the best.

• Compress and resize PDFs and images — PDF Squeezer, Squash, Clop. ilovepdf and iloveimg are respectable, free online alternatives but the Setapp counterparts are better.

• Format and save text — Popclip, Paste. I use these two utilities multiple times every day.

While Ulysses and Craft aren’t in my current rotation of apps, the PKM enthusiast in your life will be delighted to learn they’re included in the cornucopia.

Click here and use the code ELLANE to sign up for a 1-month trial instead of the usual 7-days, to see why more than 1 million people (including, more than likely, the person you’d like to buy a gift card for) think Setapp is awesome. This is an affiliate link. Purchases made via that link directly support me at no extra cost to you.

The Johnny Decimal Workbook

Johnny Noble’s method should be required reading for everyone who is in charge of organising digital assets of any kind. Seriously, if you’ve ever needed the latest version of a file and couldn’t find it within 1–5 minutes, you’ll benefit from getting familiar with Johnny.Decimal.

The basics are free to read online. The Johnny Decimal workbook is next level, hand-holding help for making it happen. 

I’m slowly getting through the workbook, adapting the system to my own way of working and smiling every time I think, file xyz? I know exactly where that is!

Domestika gift card

I’ve collected more Domestika courses than I’ll be able to complete in the next year, but don’t regret buying any of them. Book binding, sketch noting, bullet journalling, productivity, photography, creative writing, illustration, craft — Domestika covers the interests of most people who enjoy learning how to be more creative.

You can buy individual courses outright with a gift card, or a month’s subscription to their pro level gives access to a changing range of courses, much like the changing range of Kindle books you can read for free when you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber.

Many courses are in languages other than English, but the subtitles are generally good. I find that having to read the text while watching keeps my distractible brain on task.

Voucher for a meal, event, task

Sometimes what people want the most is to spend time with you / their loved ones. I’m planning to give my daughters vouchers for a meal coupled with babysitting, so they can enjoy a nice night out on their birthdays.

If the voucher is for a task you’re offering to do for them, make sure the recipient knows you’re serious about it by following up to a) make sure it’s something they’re happy for you to do, and b) to make sure it actually happens.

To Give, Or Not To Give?

Whatever you end up giving (or not) to those you care about, it’s worth remembering that the gift of listening (without thinking about what you want to say next) can be worth more than all the above put together. People know when you’re fully present while they’re talking to you, and when you’re not. It’s a gift you can give over and over, no money or wrapping paper required.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays, all!

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow.

Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free.

Do the simplest thing that could possibly work

Edward Vielmetti briefly examines the phrase “Do the simplest thing that could possibly work” (credited to Kent Beck) in this blog post.

When future you will have completely forgotten how you did something, maybe they will also try the simplest thing first and land on the same approach that past you tried.

I like the concept and am seeking it for my personal productivity practices, but I also like tying ribbons on things from time to time. Nothing wrong with a bit of pretty if that brings you joy or helps you focus.

Obsidian Sync made me buy a keyboard

If you’ve been following my writings for a while, you’ll know just how hard I tried to live the plain text life with my files on my back, hopping from one text-reading app to the next, like some sort of itinerant tech-hippie.

The dream is still close to my heart, but it’s a distant one. Time to live in the present and stop trading usability for an ideal that I prophesy will one day be. One day.

And so it has come to pass that I have become an Obsidian Sync subscriber, and yea, it is as good as they told me it would be. Hallelujah!

People on Mastodon are still telling me that Syncthing or Git could have done the job for free, but I was never able to get them to work — user error, no doubt. And anyway, looking more closely I saw that Sync offers some pretty fine grained options when it comes to version control, restoring deleted files, and what to sync on which device, than the free alternatives ever could.

Now that I have a sync service I can trust, saying that I love being able to seamlessly shift between my MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone, confident that the work I’ve done on one device will be there waiting for me on the others, is an understatement!

It’s this confidence that prompted me to buy a keyboard last week, plus a case so I can safely throw it in my backpack. It’s a super light setup for when I only have my phone with me (which is always), and want to do some writing or planning, or composing short tunes in ABC Music notation to help me remember sentences in French and random bird songs.

Obsidian Sync makes flashcards more fun

As I mentioned in a recent PTPL, I’m still sad it was necessary to subscribe to a specialised service in order to access my Markdown flashcards on my phone. That Apple have somehow crippled iCloud so that the free option for people who want to use Obsidian on their iOS devices is unacceptably slow.

As much as I dream about complete interoperability between text reading apps, my needs are (apparently) specialised when it comes to flashcards with integrated audio files, and so far Obsidian has proven to be the best option for those. 

And don’t forget being able to view the full names of files on a small screen! Ian Hayes and myself are seriously thinking about lobbying Apple to fix this, in the name of more complete accessibility.

The only hiccup I’ve had with Sync has been that the audio recordings in .webm format I made for my French flashcards inside Obsidian on my Mac, don’t sync to iOS. I’m in the process of converting and replacing those files. Oddly enough, I can no longer find the plugin I used to use for in-app recording; it spontaneously disappeared from my sidebar. 

Sharing recordings made in Apple’s Voice Memos to Obsidian has become a more compatible though slightly less convenient replacement.

Get it now if you need the space — offer ends December 31

I’ll end by saying that if you’ve been thinking about buying Obsidian Sync, now is a great time. They’re offering 5 × the storage space (50 GB instead of 10 GB, over 10 vaults) for life between now and the end of 2023, so if this something that interests you, don’t delay too long. They won’t be repeating this offer.

Ellane helps simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

Download productivity goodies (including an Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Plain Text; Paper — Less posts are paywall-free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a weekly, garage-door-up summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow.

Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free.

Have you identified the essentials?

Ben Werdmuller has. And because he knows what’s most important in helping him work more productively at home, all that other equipment falls into its proper place in the general order of things.

What I’ve taken from Ben’s short piece is this: 

It’s perfectly fine to add a tasty sauce to your vegetables, as long as you understand that the veggies (not the sauce) are the mainstay of a nutritious meal. 

First identify your essentials and have them firmly in place, and then think about adding your version of productivity or technology condiments.

New weekly and monthly planning templates

For the past month I’ve been planning my week in both Obsidian, and on paper. For the latter I’ve designed a weekly planning page that’s so generic, it’s both vertically and horizontally symmetrical! This came about because our only functioning printer at home at the moment is a dinky little black and white Epson that can’t do double siding.

A symmetrical master has taken away the mental load (small as it was) around trying to figure out every time which way up to put the paper. It’s also forced me to greatly simplify the design, thus avoiding the millions of iterations I’ve done in the past while attempting to get each tiny detail just right.

Not that iterating is a bad thing; on the contrary! Not only is it a useful exercise in design thinking, but I can also reuse the rejects in my Paper Saver notebook. The downside for me lay in never feeling like I was done. I’d add too many details when fewer would not only have sufficed, but have been better.

And I’m finding that a simpler design is more flexible.

Handwriting the hours of the day with a freshly sharpened 2mm lead clutch pencil is a quiet delight, giving my brain space to zone out for a bit and contemplate the meaning of time itself without actually trying to do so.

The symmetrical week and month templates referenced above replace the 2023 monthly planning sheet pack I created a few months ago. Free download here. 

I’m keeping the pages of these planning booklets together by sewing them down the centre with the longest stitch my machine can muster. The monthly pages are sewn onto a thicker card cover. Both booklets slot into the middle of my Paper Saver, but a Lochby or Roterfaden would be easier (and more expensive) options.

Too much colour distracts me, which is why the calendar page for December is decorated in black and grey only. This way, if I choose to add colour as the month progresses it will really pop, rather than just being more of the same.

Ellane helps simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

Download productivity goodies (including an Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Plain Text; Paper — Less posts are free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Welcome! I’m Ellane, and this is a garage-door-up, weekly summary of how I’m learning to simplify and future-proof my digital-analog workflow. Some of my articles are behind a paywall. Paying to access them is one way to support my work, or you can click here to read for free. 

Obsidian Sync — a Sad Necessity

After a detailed conversation on Mastodon about the lack of alternatives to Obsidian for certain key features and the unacceptable performance of iCloud on iOS, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is currently no other solution for my specific needs than Obsidian Sync.

And I’m sad about that!

I’m not sad because I now have to pay for another subscription; money is not the issue. I’m sad because I dream of living in a digitally interoperable world, and we just aren’t there yet. This really, really isn’t about looking for reasons not to pay for a good product.. It’s about being free to choose which interface I use on iOS.

I need all of the following to be true in an iOS Markdown editor:

1. Read subfolders

2. Display the complete names of files in the Library (file name on as many lines as it takes to display the name in its entirety)

3. Allows the playing of transcluded audio files within documents

4. App takes less than 1 minute to start up

5. Syncs reliably with my other devices

And it appears that only Obsidian fits the bill. iCloud is unreliable at best, unusable at worst. And that’s not how things should be! The good news is that there’s a special on at the moment for Obsidian Sync — 5 × the storage space for life, if you sign up before January 1, 2024.

Budgeting journey update, with an Obsidian / productivity analogy

The budgeting course I mentioned buying last week surprised me by digging into the psychological depths of my relationship with money. Beliefs, both negative and positive.

Was money talked about openly in your home growing up? (No, it wasn’t seen as polite.) What’s your self-talk around money?

This week we’re supposed to turn our negative self-talk into positive affirmations. Instead of “I just can’t do it!”, say something like “I might not be able to do it right now, but I’m working on things that will allow me to be successful.”

I’m forcing myself to be patient and go through the process, even though all I really wanted (or thought I really wanted) was some immediate help on tracking and planning expenses. The course instructor, Kamiko, is so convinced of the importance of doing the mental housekeeping first, she’s locked the course so the modules have to be done in order! Smart move. I feel like this is giving me a foundation that’s been missing my whole life.

Can you imagine, though, if Obsidian did this? It’s kind of amusing to imagine opening the app and being faced with thought-provoking pop-ups, like — 

• “Why are you really here?”

• “What are two of your underlying beliefs about productivity and note making?”

• (Tries to hit the new note button, sees this:) “Before proceeding, write three positive affirmations along the lines of, ‘I am capable of figuring out my own note making needs’; ‘I like to learn from other people’s systems, and I only take from them the elements that serve me’. Repeat them daily until they are part of your core belief system. You may now create a new note.”

The thing is, it’s up to us (and only us) to come up with our own set of guidelines for the productivity tools we use — or not. Although, I think that if we don’t make the conscious effort to define a personal manifesto of sorts, we run the risk of finding ourselves trapped in an ill-fitting system that never feels quite right, or of being pulled to and fro chasing the latest plugins and features, whether or not they are in harmony with what we truly value.

Your values are your guide

This past week I defined a set of 10 money values as part of my homework for the budgeting course. These are words that can guide my budgeting /spending decisions to fit within what’s most important to me. The fascinating thing is that, as I look at these ten words, they’re not about money at all. They represent core values that can also guide my forays into productivity, and any other venture.

It’s a great exercise, that goes like this:

1. Take 5 minutes to write down as many words as you can think of to describe what’s most important to you. Write single words, phrases, ideas, anything. What guides your decisions? What are your deal breakers? What determines if you’ll go for the more expensive, or the cheaper option in a particular field?

2. Circle the ten most important words from your list.

3. Write those ten words in order of priority.

4. Place the list where you can see it daily.

After doing the exercise, I came up with these value-words:

• Faith

• Family

• Health

• Freedom (independence)

• Security (sufficient for my needs, long term)

• Quality (value, longevity)

• Order (priorities, neatness)

• Education

• Time

• Fun

This is the first draft, so it’s likely my words (or the order of them) will change over time. If you take the time to do this exercise, I’d love to hear how it goes.

Ellane helps simplicity-focused Apple users to plan and learn effectively and autonomously.

This post is also on Medium, and includes a Friend link for non-paying subscribers.

Download productivity goodies (including an Obsidian Planner demo vault) here.

Plain Text; Paper — Less posts are free for the first four weeks after publication. Subscribe to receive them as soon as they come out.

Share