One Big Text File, but not really

21 Mar, 2026

So I stumbled across this concept of One Big Text File (OBTF) last week: and I love the concept. I’ve been a user of plain-text notes (.md) since early 2024, mainly in Obsidian but also Notepad++, Notepad, VSC and WriteMonkey.

I won’t recount my whole journey here but I’ve ended up with individual week notes (with daily entries), month and six-month reviews, project notes and more ‘static’ notes across the many topics of life and work.

I like my system. And yet…

I can’t help myself, I enjoy tinkering! Something about OBTF resonated with me. I do find myself still opening Notepad and throwing text in there. Why not make that more intentional? After a week of reading around¹ I wanted to make some structural changes in my setup. I’ve so far toyed with just one note, combinations of work and personal notes, and appending vs prepending. I love the concept proposed by Karpathy (see footnote) but when I tried it for work stuff I just … couldn’t.

In the end, I’ve embraced some of the principles of OBTF but I’ve broken it out a bit to suit my way of working. I have a number of ‘components’ in my text (e.g. todos and agendas), which I’ve shuffled around and compiled into a OBTF-like files. The snippets below illustrate parts of my current setup: in TextEdit² and redacted. I’m still working this out and so I holding onto it loosely.

• TODO.md Top half are prepended tasks, bottom half is where O track delegations. (I decided a while back I would pull these out of my todo list for my sanity.)
• PLANNER.md My log: where I put my week notes, my daily agenda, my monthly reviews and goals. Also has an index of life events and achievements.
• OBTF.md This is my work ‘throw it on a page’ note. Some persistent notes at the top but mainly ad-hoc notes at the bottom under a subheading by week number (append method).
• PERSONAL.md Like the read-and-review note described by Karpathy (prepend method).
• STATIC_xxx.md I am still figuring this one out. The above files are mostly ephemeral, either as logs or a scratch-pad. Where I want to record a longer note for a topic or group of topics, I will save it in an overarching ‘static’ note. E.g. I will have one for each of my main projects.

TODO:

PLANNER:

PERSONAL:

I still primarily use a notebook and pen through the day, to capture thoughts, ideas, meetings, and todos. At the end of each day I try to transfer some of the the major items into the files above. For tasks, I generally process them the next morning. I do feel tension between analogue and digital, but this seems to be a fact of life.

Find what works for you! And don’t be afraid to experiment or change it up. More thinking and resources can be found in the footnote links.

<< Previous Next >>

#techy #work