Text Files Are Still the Answer

I used Evernote for more than ten years. It was my external brain. Meeting notes, project ideas, recipes, travel plans, random thoughts I wanted to capture—all of it went into Evernote. And for a while, it was great. Fast capture, decent sync, available everywhere. The promise was simple: put your stuff here, we’ll keep it safe, you’ll have it forever. Forever turned out to be about a decade. ## The slow realization It wasn’t one thing. No dramatic failure, no lost notes, no sudden shutdown. Just a gradual accumulation of friction.