Apps and Notes: If You Can't Live without Them, You Have a (Solvable) Problem

It's time to craft a future-proof workflow

Photos by Zeynel Erdan on Scopio. Combined and stylized by Author.

The connection between control of our notes and control of our money (and other important things) lit up my brain yesterday. When I got up this morning, it was bubbling away and wouldn’t let me rest until I’d written it down.

This is what I wrote on the pkm.social instance of Mastodon that I’ve been calling home for the past week:

Your notes are a form of personal currency.

Leaving these notes in an #app that doesn’t give you control over your data is like leaving money — that’s not backed by precious metals — in the bank.

Both could be frozen, or disappear, at any moment. No, that’s not scaremongering. If you think locked-in notes data and CBDC sound awesome, I’d invite you to explore the definition of true #freedom.

If you must use a locked-in app, you’d better have a robust #backup system in place.

What’s that? App X has been around for years, and millions of people trust it? Oh, that’s nice. But our present fiat currency …