This is the Notes App Exit Strategy You've Been Looking For
How 'Posh Mum' inspires me to simplify and backup almost everything
I don’t know if Catherine Tate uses notes apps, but I do know that if her Posh Mum character did, she’d be completely reliant on features she has no idea how to control or replicate elsewhere.
Hilarious! I also like the one where the trauma of running out of extra virgin olive oil is almost more than she can bear, and the one where the Nanny from the North comes to visit. Golly gosh, it’s lucky we’re not like Posh Mum and her brilliantly toffy kids, isn’t it!
…Or are we?
Time to refocus on notes apps, roll back to the beginning, and have a look-see.
3 App Categories
In my mind, there are three broad categories of interactive apps. The information you place into them falls into similar categories.
Vital
Useful
Play
Vital
Vital apps are your bread and butter. They’re the programs you have to use for work, and where you store information that would cause personal or professional devastation should the app (and therefore your data) to disappear.
These are mine:
Affinity Designer
Affinity Publisher
1 Password
Useful
Useful apps are just that. They’re the tools you use to manipulate and extrapolate data; they’re the mixer, not the cake.
These are mine:
Calendar 366
Numbers
Obsidian
iA Writer
PDF Expert
forScore
Plus a nice collection of utilities, including—
Keyboard Maestro
VS Code
PhotoBulk
Shottr
Rectangle
Play
Play apps are for entertainment and relaxation. They’re usually for consuming, not storing content.
These are mine:
Deezer
Tweetbot
Teachable
Where’s Your Data?
Hard as it is for me to fathom, I get that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for plain text productivity. I’ve accepted that many people are at peace with keeping their precious brain blurps behind a locked door whose key belongs to someone else.
If that’s you, I have an invitation with your name on it. Call it advice, if you like. It goes like this:
Build a habit of regularly exporting your work and tucking it safely away.
If you use your notes app daily, then a daily export is best.
What if it turns out you’re like the industrious ant, but preparing for a winter that never comes? It’s better to have a full larder and not need it, than to be like the starving grasshopper, who thought the sunshine would last forever.
If your app has an auto-export feature, turn it on. Today. — Now.
No auto export? Make one, or do it manually. Set a repeating reminder or alarm to make sure it gets done. Be kind to your future brain, and write down the exact procedure as a personal SOP.
I came across a page on the Mem Roadmap today, where users were expressing reluctance to move their data to the app without better export options. Seems I’m not the only one with these concerns.
Once your data export habit is established, I recommend having more than one backup.
Even though my Obsidian vault lives on my hard drive and in iCloud, I use the Aut-O-Backups plugin to make incremental backups to Dropbox. My entire hard drive (Mac)is also backed up with BackBlaze (affiliate link).
The Notes App I Want, But Don’t Need
I’ve spent years in proprietary apps like Notion, Evernote, Notejoy, and Roam, before moving to plain text apps like Simplenote, The Archive, Obsidian, and iA Writer. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.
When Obsidian has a freak-out moment on my iPhone (sadly, it happens more often than I’d like), my notes look and work just fine in iA Writer. I can also view them in the Dropbox app, and within iCloud’s Files.
While I practically live in Obsidian these days and have no desire to leave, if it disappeared tomorrow, I’d be okay. And more importantly, every one of my (thousands of) Markdown notes would be okay, too.
If Obsidian Vanished, Would I Be Ok? (Hint: Yes)
How 'Posh Mum' inspires me to simplify and backup almost everything medium.com
What about you?
Could you bounce back if your notes app just up and vanished, or would it feel like a chunk of your brain was missing?
Don’t be like Posh Mum.
Take control. Simplify.
iA Writer Helped Simplify My Obsidian Daily Note
Why an app-agnostic approach can be better in the long-term medium.com