When I sit to write I don’t want to be put in the position to make any premature decisions. I often experienced that thinking about filename, title, where to place a file constrains and sometimes stifles the writing process or causes writer’s block. Faced with this often enough within a timespan, I reduce my writing frequency: Friction reduces the likelihood of a behavior persisting.

I set up my text editor to name new files by default at creation time following the pattern YYYY-MM-DD-HHmm. This note was 2023-03-15-2332, for example. Once I’m done writing, and feel like I have a good grasp of what I said, I name the note: Note titles should be a tiny summary of their content.

For the same reason of avoiding decision fatigue I Keep all notes in a single flat-structured folder.