My notes app graveyard

I have used, in rough chronological order: paper, Evernote, more paper, Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, a folder of markdown files, and a group chat with myself. Each one was going to be the system. Each one is now a graveyard.

Here is what I eventually figured out: the app was never the problem. The problem was that I was filing things instead of thinking about them. A note you never revisit is just a guilt object with a timestamp.

What actually works for me now is embarrassingly simple:

1. One inbox file. Everything lands there.
2. A weekly sweep where most of it gets deleted without ceremony.
3. Anything that survives two sweeps gets written up properly, sometimes here.

The deleting is the important part. It turns out my memory is fine; it was my hoarding that needed a system.