PTPL 128 · Keep Your Content Separate From the Container in Which It Lives

And a review of my updated plain text flashcards

Content, containers, files, and apps. Don’t unnecessarily limit or complicate the choices your future self can make. Metadata changes that are making my text-based flashcards more useful.

Productivity Inspiration

In Jorge Arango’s podcast 151, Karen McGrane says that

Thinking of the content that you produce as being distinct from the container in which it will live is a fundamental principle.

(She’s leading in to talking about generative AI. It’s good to see conversations on the topic that acknowledge the potential it has to cause harm as well as to do good.)

This is the underlying principle behind the “files first, apps second” philosophy, and the foundation of Rule One: Keep your data portable.

I often see people holding back from making notes because they don’t know which app to use. They all seem to be wooing us, don’t they! But this isn’t about monogamy or relationships. It’s about using tools to view and work with your content, your creations. Shackling those to a specific app will unnecessarily limit or complicate the choices your future self can make.

​More on keeping what you make separate from where it lives

Adventures in Plain Text, and a Little Paper

I’m still enjoying using flashcards in Obsidian. The way I structure each card has changed a little since writing about it in September last year. This is what my cards looked like then:

And this is what their metadata looks like now:

The same flashcard in source mode, showing changed metadata

The changes are subtle but significant.

• Each flashcard begins with the date it was last reviewed. This makes it easy to review cards that haven’t been done for a while.
• I can see how much time has elapsed between reviews
• There’s a code in the file name to identify it as a flashcard (F), that the topic is French (84), the language partner who will be checking it (40), and whether it’s unchecked (0), or I found it hard (1), good (2), or easy (3). This kind of metadata could be in the YAML of each card, but I like the simplicity of sorting and searching by file names. Saved searches work in many apps, so I’m not tied to Obsidian to use these cards.
• Creation date is for my reference. I’ve learned not to rely on the inbuilt creation date of a file; there are some circumstances that can cause that to change/reset.

Advantages of fully manual flashcards:

• There’s no pressure to get through a certain number of cards each day
• Manually entering today’s date lets me repeat the text of the flashcard a few more times (out loud or in my head). This is the kind of multi-tasking I really like!

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