My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

I've experienced a big productivity boost by using the desktop background of my 43" monitor as a whiteboard (blackboard actually). I have an jpg the size of my monitor that I jot things down on as text on the image. I can store meaningful small images the trigger my memory to do something. I've become so used to visually thinking about what I'm doing that I switched my text file todo list to markdown so I could store images in it.

It's surprisingly quick to keep my large jpg open in paint and jot or paste things to it and then reset it as the desktop background. I learned later this is called a "vision board"

Still, I'm so bad at spacing out that I need more than looking at my vision board monitor all day, so I use the Windows system scheduler to bring up a daily, weekly and monthly html file that reminds me to do things.

I ended up releasing the note-taking/reminder app as a subscription service [0], for reasons most obvious. Over time I wanted more from these notes...

I wanted a way to separate notes of different clients -- folders. I wanted a way to categorize all notes related to different topics of interest -- tags. I wanted an email to send me a summary of notes in a folder to submit my invoice or produce a weekend reading list -- email summaries. I wanted to do all my bookkeeping in my notes, and on..

I ended up releasing the parser for the notes as an open source lib [1]. Which could add a nice layer on top of any plain-text note system running locally.

0. https://www.tatatap.com 1. https://github.com/tatatap-com/sowhat

I've also been using a plain "todo.txt" for 20+ years and also use UltraEdit. So far, it's been better than alternatives such as Borland Sidekick, PalmPilot gadgets, Evernote.

I agree with all the positives the author laid out but I also recognize there are serious limitations with my reliance on "todo.txt".

- no "live" schedule of upcoming events because there's no runtime that turns the text file into active reminders and a countdown of when things are due. A lot of people have a "inner clock" in their head and don't need countdowns but my brain seems to to lack this. E.g. the author has example of "11:30am meet with student Enya" and when I write entries like that, the 11:30am time comes and goes because I got distracted.

- not editable by others. Sometimes, important people in my life remind me I need to do X,Y,Z but I often don't get around to the tedious data entry of adding it to to the text so it gets overlooked.

The issues above are solved better by a cloud or smartphone app but I'd miss the instant access speed and flexibility of the text file. That's why I'm working on some tools to create a runtime that converts my "todo.txt" into something that pings me on my smartphone and gives me a better live dashboard for activities.