There's a certain kind of productivity trap where you spend more time evaluating tools than actually using them. I fell into it for years — Notion, Obsidian, Roam, Bear, Craft, back to Notion.
The problem wasn't the apps. They're all genuinely good. The problem was that each one had opinions about structure, and I kept fighting those opinions.
The simplest stack that works
Now everything lives in .md files in a single folder synced with Syncthing. My editor is micro. My search is rg (ripgrep). My file manager is the terminal.
# Find any note containing a phrase
rg "quiet web" ~/notes/
# List recent notes
ls -lt ~/notes/ | head -20
That's it. That's the whole system.
What you gain
Portability. Open any note in any editor, on any OS, in 10 years. The files will still be readable. I can't say the same about my Notion exports from 2021.
Speed. Ripgrep searching 4,000 notes is faster than any app's built-in search. Meaningfully faster. You stop hesitating before searching.
Ownership. The files are on my machine. They sync to two other machines I own. There is no company that can shut down my notes.
What you lose
Honestly? Not much. The visual polish of a nice app, sure. But I've noticed I spend more time writing and less time reorganizing when everything is flat files.
The urge to restructure your system goes away when there's nothing to restructure.
Starting small
If you're curious, don't move everything at once. Pick one category — meeting notes, or reading notes — and keep them as plain .md files for a month. See if you miss the app.
Most people don't.