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Control your entire life with a single plain text file (OBTF is back!)

After heaps of experience (and wasted time) with all sorts of productivity apps (Obsidian, Notion, Workflowy, Todoist, Google Tasks/Calendar/Keep, TickTick, Amazing Marvin, Joplin, Logseq, Dynalist, Habitica and more... oh I could go on and on), this is where my ADHD ended up with as a solution to ALL my problems. Well all my note taking and task management problems anyways.

No more overwhelm, no more bugs, no more performance issues, no more cluttered UI, no more clunky UX, no more sync issues, no more data loss, no more worries about privacy and security, no more need to contact customer support, no more subscriptions to be paid, no more dealing with enshitification.

This post is about the structure and workflow of my OBTF (One Big Text File). I'll get into more about it in future posts, such as how to sync with all my devices, what I do for automated encrypted backups, how I use it in conjuction with the bullet journal and more. But right now, we need to get to work. And here's how:

Disclaimer: This is the structure and workflow that works for my brain. Remember that this file can be as flexible as a piece of paper. Experiment. Keep what works, discard the rest.

So I use a bullet journal to run my day (Ryder Carroll style minimalist daily logs), but behind the scenes, this text file is the one doing all the heavy lifting.

Log

The log is the first thing I see, it's at the top of my file. The first line before it is a reference of the most common sections I need to plan my day. (fixing the "out of sight, out of mind" problem with ADHD).

I use the top part as a quick capture for bookmarks, tracking of challenges, and small inbox of todos (which are then moved to the ToDo section or to a specific day in the calendar).

Below are my daily logs, subdivided into their own sections. Timed events are at the top, then morning routine, todos, studies, evening routine and a space for long form journaling.

A lot of tasks/events are deleted when complete.

It takes me 65 seconds to plan a busy day. It involves referencing and copy pasting from sections like the Calendar, Todo / Projects, and the Routine. It takes another minute to write them on paper. Any quick capture of notes, tasks, appointments etc done on paper (bullet journal) gets digitized to the daily logs in this text file and thus I have an archive of everything.


Calendar

Subsections are Deadlines, the current month, the next month, and Future for anything further. Days of the 2 months are autofilled and copy pasted from Google Sheets.

It takes 15 seconds every 2 months to fill in the Calendar with 2 more months. Each passed day gets deleted, so the current day is always at the top of the Calendar section. 


 

Routine

All the recurring tasks and habits go here. For weeklies, I simply Ctrl + F and type " # mon " to see the recurring tasks for Monday for example. 


Other Sections

I never scroll to find something. I always do an instant search to get to where I want. I don't bother categorizing most of my notes and it doesn't matter in which order everything is in. I always find what I need in a blink of an eye. If something is forgotten, maybe it was meant to be. Speaking of which:

I keep an Index with all the sections I create... because ADHD and fibromyalgia sure come with a lot of memory issues. You'll find the Index at the end of this post.







 

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