I have been, at various points, a heavy user of Notion, Roam, Obsidian, Bear, Apple Notes, and a system of physical notebooks. I now use a folder of plain .md files synced with iCloud.
This isn't a hot take about simplicity being virtuous. It's just what I found actually works.
The Problem With Elaborate Systems
Every sophisticated note-taking system requires maintenance. You have to tag things correctly, put them in the right database, link them to the right nodes. This overhead isn't free. On low-energy days — which are often the days when capturing something matters most — the friction wins and nothing gets written down.
A plain text file has no friction.
The Structure
One folder. Inside it: a daily note (2026-03-09.md), a handful of evergreen topic files (writing.md, dev.md, books.md), and an inbox file for things I haven't sorted yet.
That's the whole system. When I want to find something, I use search.
Why Markdown
It renders nicely if I ever want to publish something. It's readable without rendering. It'll open in anything. It'll still be openable in 20 years.
Proprietary formats are a bet on the continued existence and benevolence of a particular company. Plain text is a bet on text files, which is extremely safe.
The One Thing That Matters
The system doesn't matter much. The habit of writing things down does. The best note-taking setup is the one you'll actually use every day. If that's an elaborate Obsidian graph, great. If it's a notes app on your phone, also great.
The notes that exist beat the perfectly-organised notes that don't.