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PLAIN TEXT. PAPER, LESS · 147

This Is Why You Might Want to Keep Multiple Daily Notes as Well as an OBTF

Plus how to hotkey-create uniquely named notes in Obsidian

Ellane W
4 min readMar 10, 2025

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A page with stylised lines (representing text) sits at an angle on the left of the image, with text overlaying it that reads Plain text. Paper, less
PTPL image by the Author

Daily notes in separate files, or one big text file? Steph Ango has a way of turning the world (my world, at least) upside down with the simplest of ideas. I’ve said it before-the man is a quiet genius.

Learning from someone else’s good idea

This week Steph referred to an article he’s written about how he writes and organised his daily notes. Using Obsidian’s unique note hotkey (see below) he writes one thought per file, rather than writing all the thoughts of the day into a single daily note. One day could potentially have hundreds of notes, differentiated from each other by a time stamp.

I love the way Steph randomly reviews notes and makes connections, and how notes naturally “bubble into bigger themes”, or become dormant for a time or even extinct.

As I read his post I was so taken by the idea that I considered throwing in the towel on my One Big Text File (OBTF), and diving back into daily notes! But I’m trying to follow the adage “Make haste slowly”, to make sure I keep the baby rather than the bathwater, an effort…

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Ellane W
Ellane W

Written by Ellane W

Designer and educational publisher for 30 years+. Plain-text advocate. Still using paper, but less of it. https://linktr.ee/miscellaneplans

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