Apps and Notes: If You Can't Live without Them, You Have a (Solvable) Problem
It's time to craft a future-proof workflow
![Black and white photo of a black bird sitting on a barbed wire fence, facing a yellow glow Black and white photo of a black bird sitting on a barbed wire fence, facing a yellow glow](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e445ad6-8c92-436f-874a-b9b4b4db6ee3_1600x1063.png)
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 …