PTPL 100 · One Big Text File — Top Down, Or Bottom Up?

Why I changed my OBTF from one to the other

This week: Knowledge management practices in 19th C literature, dictionary and specimen notes in Obsidian, and why I’m glad I turned my 11-week-old OBTF on its head.

Cool texty tech finds

• Knowledge management practices on romantic display in George Eliot’s Middlemarch — Chris Aldrich (a cyberneticist) looks at the note taking and indexing practices in a 19th Century classic. I read it years ago and now have it bookmarked to read again — looking for PKM references, this time!
• Obsidian Dictionary Notes (Medium) — Nathan Dunn describes how he creates a new (linkable, obviously) note for each word he’d like to become more familiar with.
• Jake Mahr’s Obsidian/Specimen Template on GitHub, from his detailed Medium article on how he records and classifies scientific specimens

The One Big Text File: top down, or bottom up?

My One Big Text File is 11 weeks old, and going strong.

Quick summary if you’re new to the OBTF concept: rather than keeping separate daily note to capture ideas, thoughts, events, notes, and tasks, dump everything into one plain text file. Separate months and days with Markdown headers for ease of navigation if you like. Use letters instead of bullets if you’re following the Bullet Journal Method; I use T. for task, N. for note, and E. for event.

↑ Screenshot of the Author’s OBTF. Entries marked C. = Communication; things meant for other people to read

The first question for anyone wanting to keep One Big Text File is this: will it be top down, or bottom up? In other words, will you append or prepend new entries to the existing list?

I started off top down, but switched to bottom up a few weeks in because I thought that would simplify adding entries, and reviewing the past week.

It did, kind of, but those pros weren’t enough to counterbalance the annoying need to add today’s date at the end of the day, rather than the start. Or the backwards date list in the outline.

And so a few days ago I made the switch: new entries to my OBTF are now at the bottom of the file. Yes, I copied and pasted existing entries into the new top down order! Did a Save-As and worked my way through it in an afternoon.

OBTF Appending Pros:

• It feels more natural; gives a sense of how much time has already passed this year (a little like how holding a physical book gives your hands feedback about how far through it you are)
• Date list in the outline is in the expected order
• It’s easy to fold/unfold outline headers
• Command + down arrow makes it super quick (on a Mac) to jump to the bottom of the file and start typing
• Seeing the beginning of the file before using the shortcut to get to the end is a good thing: I’ve written my theme for the year at the top and love seeing it often

OBTF Appending Cons:

• Search results now display oldest entries first (I didn’t like this initially but am getting used to it)
• That’s about it; there’s no other negatives that come to mind

And that’s it for this 100th (!) edition of what started as an exercise in a) geeky self-expression, and b) becoming a better writer by consistently putting something out a minimum of once a week. Thanks for being part of the journey, no matter where along the path you joined in.

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