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This week — how the top of my OBTF reinforces my values and motivates me to live up to them (with screenshots of it in 6 different apps), plus my first physical book buy of the year (Bob Doto’s A System For Writing).
No AI here; all words, ideas, and faults 100% human made. While paid subscribers are enormously encouraging and help me to keep writing, non-subscribers are always welcome to read for free.
I’m not the first and won’t be the last to use one text file as a continuous inbox of thoughts and ideas. A quick internet search of One Big Text File (OBTF) will net you a nice chunk of reading material!
In the past few weeks I’ve started adding inspirational sayings to the top of the file. The default behaviour is for a file to open at the top—something I used to find frustrating—so in the spirit of Michael Caine’s Use The Difficulty, I’m leveraging that to show me things I actually want to see on a daily basis.
Yes, I could activate a plugin to always focus on the last line, ready to enter a new note, but I’m choosing not to. Instead I add quotes and statements that support my most deeply held values right there at the top.
Now, whenever I open the file I have the opportunity to review sayings and concepts that reflect and strengthen who I am and who I want to become. Every few weeks I add new quotes to the top of the list, pushing the older ones further down. New entries are what I see upon opening the file, while the old ones remain for times I feel like scrolling down and reviewing them.
I use Obsidian, but you can use any app you like to keep an OBTF. A quick ⌘↓ teleports the cursor to the end of the file when I want to write a note, and ⌘↑ zips me back to the top. The Page Scroll plugin makes this easy to do on mobile devices.
Just for fun, and to demonstrate some of the options when you work in Markdown, here’s the beginning of my OBTF in Obsidian (Mac and iPhone), iA Writer, Typora, and Text Edit with Marked and TableFlip as helpers:
Remember, when you’re working in One Big Text File you don’t have to worry about running out of room, or making the file too big!
My OBTF contains over 40,000 words and is only 254 KB. It’s version controlled, and easily navigable with Markdown headings. It’s a fleeting note inbox, a timeline of my life, a messy but beautiful field of flowers, seedlings, and the occasional gem.
Nerd-zone: Mike Grindle, my original inspiration for entering the OBTF world, shares the bash script he uses to edit his, here.
There’s a lot of information around about what a Zettelkasten is and how to build one, but none with a headline like this: “how an unconventional approach to note-making can help you capture ideas, think wildly, and write constantly”. Now doesn’t that paint an attractive picture! I ordered A System For Writing by Bob Doto on the strength of that headline, a beautifully designed cover, and this review.
Something about the book asked to enter my home as a thing rather than a series of digits, making it the first physical book I’ve bought this year. I’ll be skimming through it over the next week or two, saving a deeper dive for my next 10-hour interstate train trip and subsequent week away from usual responsibilities.
Johnny Decimal is teaching me the command line. He welcomes input on the way he’s demystifying this baffling super power, so feel free to follow #LearnCLI and join the conversation on the Fediverse.
Continuing from last week — I asked the Fediverse to help me choose between Org-Mode and Vim, specifically to give me a reason to choose their preference, and a reason not to choose the other one. Lots of interesting responses here that I shall refer to when ready to proceed down either or both paths.
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