The Scrappy Second Brain (Part 1): Why Plain Text Files Beat Fancy Apps

The first article in the Scrappy Second Brain series, because building your digital mind shouldn’t require a second mortgage.

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Last week, I watched in horror as my favorite note-taking app crashed, taking three years of digital notes with it. The backup was corrupted. The cloud sync had failed. And there I sat, staring at my screen, realizing I’d trusted my entire external brain to a system as reliable as my teenage promises to clean my room.

But here’s the plot twist: my most important notes were safe. Not because I’m some backup wizard, but because two years ago, I started keeping them in plain text files. Boring, unsexy, been-around-since-the-dawn-of-computers text files.

Before I explain why this might be the best decision you’ll make for your digital life, let’s talk about what a second brain actually is (because it’s not as sci-fi as it sounds).

Think of your second brain as your personal knowledge bank. It’s where you store everything you want to remember: ideas, notes, articles, research, random thoughts at 3 AM that might be genius or might be sleep deprivation. It’s like…