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Are your essentials (notes, possessions) at your fingertips? Could you live out of your car? One way to handle dot-point notes when using the Dash-Plus system.
Tom Wheeler lives out of his car — from choice, not necessity. His reasons are well thought out, but the thing that really stands out is the sheer joy he gets from this lifestyle!
Tom makes the point that living out of a car is not the same as living in a car. The “living” part is the focus. The car is just a home base until he meets a specific financial goal.
Tom has everything he needs to live a happy and healthy life right there with him in his compact car. The sheer freedom of this struck me strongly when I read about it, even before drawing the inevitable analogies with keeping digital and analog notes separate from the containers they’re currently living in. I spent a couple of days unable to stop thinking about what it would take to live in my car, and looking around at all my stuff, wondering why I had it! I’m over that now, but the desire to simplify remains.
Even when Tom goes back to more traditional accommodation, I have no doubt he will continue to live in such a way that he can be ready at a moment’s notice to move into another another living space; house, car, or otherwise. There’s an exit plan built into the very fabric of his day to day life.
To paraphrase Tom (source):
I’ve been surprised at how I can organise the most important things in my life in plain text files, with relative comfort. It’s not a barely viable way of making notes and managaing tasks that you often see portrayed in mainstream circles. It’s been much more fun and exciting than subscribing to a money-draining app that makes it hard to leave. I’m no longer distracted by shiny new productivity apps. I’m not pining after what they tell me I’m missing out on. I’m living my best life. I’m thriving. Who knew?
Now I’m not actually suggesting you drop everything and live out of your notes the same way Tom lives out of his car, but I believe there’s a message here we can use to improve the way we store our important information.
You can find Tom Wheeler on Substack, Medium, and Instagram.
Using the Dash-Plus system to process notes made in my Paper Saver scratchpad is as close to analog-note-nirvana as I think I will ever come. I feel very at home with it.
A sample page from the Author’s notebook (that’s 120 gsm paper, in case you were wondering)
Some Dash-Plus notes (on paper) are just notes. They are consecutive dot points on a theme, and don’t warrant having individual dashes altered to match their status. These I encase inside a large, curved, single bracket on the left hand side of their dashes; like a sideways umbrella tying them together. There’s always a title entry to notes like this, and that’s what gets processed with a Dash-Plus symbol addition.
Digital notes that are just notes have the paired square brackets removed and use a sole - dash, just like regular Markdown unordered lists.
Next week I’ll be covering how rapid logging in my One Big Text File is continuing to evolve.
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