I envy people that stick for a system like this for so long. Because when you master it, it is when you can build a system around it. For this piece, i suggest the author to build his own frontend app, that mimics this system but with a better, clean UI interface. Hell, he can just vibe code it in under a hour these days and at the end leverage the ergonomics of a clean interface, and of course implement integrations that the app will enables, to build systems around it, to become even more productive.

Mine is as well. Well actually one TXT file per project. Still, they are tens of megabytes in total size at this point.

Something like this would be perfect for a local LLM assistant.

I've been doing pretty much the same thing since 2019. The only big change I made was in early 2023, when I started saving a new version of the long txt file each day. It works very well for me but I recognize it isn't the right system for everyone!

I have a file like this, several years long, but parsed with YAML so that each day is clearly separated from the next, and for list parsing, and for dictionary parsing so each project I work on is associated with a YAML dictionary key. I can go back in time and easily find notes related to specific projects or specific dates.

Gonna be honest, my productivity app once upon a time was unsaved sublime text documents

Google Keep for me is the way to go. Easy to use on desktop or mobile, can "share" anything with it. I like to make notes with various titles & colors that I use to organize my life/thoughts.

I did something similar since 2001:

    -rw-r--r--  1 nick nick    691 Mar 16  2001 2001-03.txt

I separated mine by YYYY-MM which is long enough to keep related things together but short enough where it's easy to find things within a single file. It's all super easy to grep things out on demand.

There's no procrastination about organizing or perfect tags. Just brain dump the thought or notes and move on with life.

https://github.com/nickjj/notes was created so I can type things like `notes hello world` and it inserts it for the correct YYYY-MM or `notes` to open the current YYYY-MM in your $EDITOR. It supports piping into it too (good for pasting from your clipboard). It's ~40 lines of shell scripting with comments.

I do something similar but with Emacs and org mode. I start a new file each time I join a new company and just keep on updating it with things as I'm progressing through my day. The one I carry right now goes back as far as Dec 2017. It's a super useful resource for dailies, or looking back at what you did. Heck I even add TODOs and shell snippets that I often find useful. If you feed it to some LLM then you can even do nice summaries and meaningful searches that aren't necessarily based on single keywords.

This was my system for a long time and I eventually moved to Notesnook with success, but I bounced off so many notes apps before it. I don't know why, but the feature set had to be just right because one little thing would keep me from sticking with anything else. Plain text files are great and served me well but don't lose hope that some new option could come along and be an improvement.

Sometimes a simple bash script will give it wings: https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman

What this is:

$ diary # opens vim to $DIARYDIR/year/month/day.md

I ended up doing a similar thing when I was a contractor. Just a really long note file that I'd track everything I was doing.

Relatedly, I find all of the todo/task management apps to be utterly overwhelming for my person tasks. I'm so tired of all of the task apps adding way too much complexity.

All I want is:

* Something that's available on all of my devices.

* Can be ordered by sections

  * Triage

  * Now

  * Today

  * Tomorrow

  * Soon

  * Eventually

  * Whenever (when-never)

* Let's me add a task without thinking (default to triage)

* Lets me drag-and-drop tasks for ordering

Actual checkboxes that are reorderable but otherwise a text file is the way to go.

Longer explanation: https://zachsaucier.com/blog/notes-the-best-todo-app/

My productivity app is tasktxt.com (no affiliation).

I don’t even login into account. I use it as a blank canvas and delete contents each day, even if I didn’t finish something. For longer term stuff or something I have to do in future, I use calendar or Reminders app.

Each day is a new plan with rough estimates of time the task will take. This way I can keep track of small bureaucracy stuff I did through the day.

My productivity measure is usually how much time I spent in code or in designing architecture. When I feel like I wasn’t productive any day, I see a huge wall of checkmarks with other stuff I did. It is also satisfying to have good estimates on tasks.

I used to have a zillion todo txt files in the early 2000's, migrated to OneNote around 2005 and have been using the same OneNote notebook for 20 years now. My life is in there - 20 years worth of todos, lists, thoughts, ideas, etc.. always evolving, perfectly synchronized across computers and mobile. I'm referencing and updating my OneNote all day as I get things done, have ideas, and think of new things to do, or things to remembers. It's an extension of my brain at this point.

I've tried alternatives, but OneNote has been simple and reliable, it just works everywhere. Probably one of the most important apps in my life.

Previously, (I ain't complaining, I like fresh conversations on this one.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39432876

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661167

I've done the same thing for a long time

The only extra thing is I set up autohotkey macros

For example typing $today or $yesterday will insert the date with a dividing line underneath to separate days into clear blocks

I've tried a lot of different note apps and what I eventually realized is that when it comes to work, I generally don't actually care about old notes 98% of the time.

I only really care about the last week or two and when everything is in one file its optimized for viewing that, like a working memory.

The text file ends up gigantic but its still small data for a computer even after many years of adding to a single file and searching is still fast.

Obsidian + Lights (https://ultraworking.gitbooks.io/lights/content/) is my stack

I have TXT files by week, and sum up each day to the bottom of each day of the week if that makes sense.

Then the next week's new file has the pasted-over to-do items on top.

These were OneNote/Sharepoint files forever until earlier this year. Now they live on my local network, backed up, glaciered.

With notepad.exe:

At the first line of the a .txt file put .LOG This will then put a timestamp at the end of the file every time you open it.

Also, if you press the F5 key it inserts a timestamp.

Been using this for years and it's pretty much all I ever needed.

Store/ version with git, throw Claude code at it, and it’ll be amazing

One thing I would like about this system is that I wouldn't get incessant notifications about things I haven't yet done lol. I do think that building a habit to check on a txt file periodically (like the author says) to stay on top of things is better for emotional health than a wall of notifications on the phone lock screen that I've been conditioned to just tap on and select "Remind me tomorrow " without even thinking.

Knowing myself, though, I don't think I'd keep up with this since it would take mental strength on my part to overthink the data structure for the task entry. I've been thinking about how I might also track emotional impact of my todo items on me. I wonder if the open nature of a txt file would be good for instant journaling about things that give me stress?

I really like having some guardrails when it comes to organizing thoughts so this system might not be for me. Also building up the daily habit to organize the todos at the end of each day is something I'd probably struggle with for a while. I do agree that is a great habit to have, still.

txt file is great. Makes me wonder, does the author always have their laptop on them since that's the only place I know of where a txt file can live? Do they go to sleep and wake up next to their laptop?

I've always been an iPhone user and have never seen a .txt file on one and probably you wouldn't be able to edit one on an iPhone if you did have it in Files app - I'm not counting Notes app as a text file here.

I do quarterly notes inside of Notes app but it mostly non-work related stuff and doesn't integrate well with desktop since its kind of a pain to login to iCloud from browser. Quarterly notes bc once the note gets too long, it gets very laggy on phone and is difficult to navigate; i.e. getting to the bottom to write a new line can be tough on mobile.

I am incredibly jealous of people for who this works for. Mine just become too unwieldy to manage or work with because they grow out in a crazy fashion.

My "productivity solution" is currently TriliumNotes with three work spaces as 1) Planner with sub notes for year, month, day 2) Brain Dump with subnotes for year and month 3) Projects with sub notes for each project. I manage tasks with Vikunja and then my time with Google Calendar.

It's an absolute mess, but it's the closest I've gotten to a solution that works the way my brain does.

I've had a similar system for a while, but the primary pain point is the lack of access on iPhone / iPad. Giant text files are laggy, dropbox integration is poor, etc. A custom app that interacts with the text file might be the best bet :D

Once I realised I rarely read my notes, I now put them in a single note and prepend it when I add something new. It’s weird but I think the value I get from notes is in the writing of them, it’s a way of thinking rather than for recall.

I use a google spreadsheet. Shortcut on my phone home screen so I can add items any time easily.

I log all my lab work and how many hours I've worked in a day and it calculates my hours in a separate tab automatically. Items I need to follow up on are in bold, and get unbolded when I've followed up on them. When I have to write a report, everything is there in chronological order and it is super easy to take the relevant lines and write out the path of my work. When I get into the lab, I open my sheet and bam! I'm right where I left off before I can have the first sip of coffee.

This has been a complete game changer for me.

I've never been so organized in my life.

Have used this approach for 8 years. Only improvement I can recommend is creating a new txt every quarter (or so) and manually adding everything back to the list to declutter. Works better than any todo app I’ve used (dozens).

I do something similar - I create a "2025December.md" file each month (with proper year/month obviously) and have a bullet list of everything I'm working on/trying to keep track of. I also use it as a scratchpad for whatever, and writing down notes for projects. Each day I insert a "#### 11 Dec 2025" heading at the bottom of the file, then just copy over everything relevant from the previous entry.

It's stored in my Dropbox so it is always backed up, though it is not VCS'd. It's worked for me for years, far better than any app. Too, I have full control over it, and years of the data, free for processing by any tools/LLMs that I might want (I haven't wanted such a thing so far, but maybe I will).

I use tasks.org android app (I use my smartphone for everything (except programming or server administration) as I love cellphones and portability)

Tasks.org has cool filter system, which alongside it's widget makes me list of everything that's important to me just on home screen of my smartphone. For example, I can make a filter "tasks starting today, priority yellow or higher, lists "personal" or "projects", sorr by due date). And make corresponding widget.

Samsung OneUI has widget carousel feature, so I make multiple widgets with different filters and switch by swiping. Very convinent.

Also tasks.org support syncing to nextcloud, but I keep it disabled due to tons of bugs in nextcloud itself.

I make separate list for everything not important at current period of my life, so I can review it later (usually once a week or once a month, my life is very unstable and unpredictable to tell more exactly)

I use this for about a year, so it's not so well tested workflow, but for now it works better than other variants I tried.

I use sheets of junk paper (e.g. stuff I got in the mail that is only printed on one side). I keep an "active" one that I cross stuff out from, etc. When I start a new one (about once a week) I go through the old one and port over any remaining items; most of the time I discard the whole thing since it's no longer relevant. If there are important items that are just too big to handle I'll transcribe it to my Calendar, Linear, Reminders app, etc.

To me this is a good balance of: - Writing things down is the major benefit for me, writing down on physical paper is even more helpful. - Forces me to garbage collect irrelevant stuff. - I don't need an app or even to buy paper really.

Effectively the same, but with Joplin and separated notes for separated context.

big ol git repo of text files here, It's always been this way, for over a decade now.

I use Google Calendar as my todo list. Syncs across devices. Notifications. Share with Family & Work. Repeating tasks. Supports notes and attachments. Multiple Lists (calendars). Free.

Earlier, I had a simpler todo system using pen and paper. There was a weekly list which exchanged tasks with daily list. The daily tasks were prioritized in three categories immediately, today, and this week.

Now since I am managing multiple teams, this is not longer scalable. Also majority of work revolves around Slack. People post stuff that I need to follow up at a later stage. I copy these posts and put them into the todo list file.

1. As text files get longer you lose view of things unlike paper. I still feel limited and strong difficulty in fully adopting an online todo system.

2. Many other stuff like Slack threads are difficult to get into todo files. They also lose context. This I would say is a modern problem.

What do you guys think?