Naming Notes So You Can Actually Find Them

Sep 21, 2026

Plainpad keeps one flat list of notes. There are no folders, no tags, no nested notebooks. The first reaction to that is usually “how do I organise anything?”

The answer is that you organise in the title. It sounds primitive. In practice it outlasts every folder tree you have ever abandoned.

Why folders rot

A folder forces a decision at the moment you create a note, which is exactly the moment you know least about it. Does this belong in Work, in Clients, or in Clients/Acme? You pick one, and six months later you look in the other two.

Tags are worse in a different way: they multiply. You end up with invoice, invoices and billing all meaning the same thing, and no tag ever gets retired.

A title, by contrast, is one field you have to fill in anyway.

The convention

Put the most stable part of the name first and the most specific part last:

work — acme — kickoff meeting
work — acme — invoice log
work — internal — hiring notes
home — renovation — kitchen quotes

Sort the list by name and every related note lands next to its siblings. Search for acme and you get that client’s notes and nothing else. The prefix is doing the work a folder would do, except you can change it by renaming one field, and a note can sit in two places at once if you repeat the keyword:

work — acme — invoice log (finance)

Dates in front when the order matters

For anything sequential — journals, meeting notes, releases — lead with an ISO date instead:

2026-09-21 — standup
2026-09-28 — standup
2026-10-05 — standup

YYYY-MM-DD sorts chronologically as plain text, so the newest note sits at one end of the list with no sorting feature required. Never use 21/09/2026. It sorts by day of the month, which is meaningless.

Pick words you would actually type

The convention only pays off if search finds it. When you name a note, ask what you would type in six months when you have forgotten the note exists. That word goes in the title.

Q3 planning is a worse name than 2026 Q3 planning — roadmap and budget, because roadmap and budget are the words your future self will search for.

Three rules, and that is the whole system

1. Prefix with the stable category, or with an ISO date when order matters.
2. Separate parts with the same character every time, so search stays predictable.
3. Include the word you would search for, not the word that reads best.

No migration, no plugin, no maintenance. Rename a note and the system updates itself.