My Lab Notebook Is a Folder of Text Files
For years my research notes lived in a paper notebook, two note-taking apps and a pile of sticky notes. Finding anything took longer than redoing the experiment. Two years ago I moved everything into a single folder of Markdown files, and I have not looked back.
The rules
- One file per day, named by date:
2026-07-22.md. - One file per project for anything that lasts longer than a week.
- Everything is plain text, so any editor on any computer can open it, today and in twenty years.
A typical day
Each daily file starts with the same checklist:
- Check overnight simulation results
- Write down today’s single most important question
- Run the experiment
- Record what surprised me
The last item matters most. Surprises are where the interesting research hides, and they are the first thing you forget.
Finding things again
Because the notes are plain text, ordinary tools work on them. Searching every note I have ever written for a sensor name takes a fraction of a second:
grep -rn "lidar" ~/notebook
Backups for free
The whole folder is a Git repository. Every evening one command saves the day’s work, with a full history of every change:
git add -A && git commit -m "Notes for $(date +%F)" && git push
What I gave up
Plain text has no handwriting, no drawings and no fancy tables. For sketches I take a photo and drop it next to the note. It is a small price for notes I can always find, read and trust.