> This allows me to work as a 10x or 100x developer

What do you mean here? That this note taking method makes you 10 to 100 times better at your job?

I do something very similar except different files. But unstructured and rely on search to find things. Optimizes for writing. But this one trick makes you a 100x developer?

I think they mean 100x better than they'd be without it, not 100x better than a "1x developer" (whatever that means anyway).

It's still hard to believe that a note-taking trick makes you 10-100x better as a dev, for any definition of better.

Think of it as journaling...

If I was a good note-taker and had a rich, deep journal which was searchable - I'd be 100X more than the 1X me right now.

Not journaling is a big regret of mine.

Maybe not 10x but even just noting stuff means that picking up an older task that you had to shelve before could go from a 15 minute thing to a 30 second thing depending on what context you put down/how accessible it is.

Ultimately a lot of this stuff is commingled with comfort with tools and general ability to juggle things though, so hard to isolate the effects

Ya sorry, poor wording on my part. What I meant was, if I use every trick in my arsenal, I can effectively go around a problem entirely and maybe reach 100x faster than when I was a fresh grad writing my own data structures by hand. Lately I've been dragging so badly though that I'm probably at 10% or even 1% productivity, negating my experience and putting me on par with my original inexperienced self, albeit with reduced effort.

Edit: my actual point was that if a person works along their natural tendencies, they'll probably be faster than if they have to fight their instincts (and take time to organize in this case), mainly because they might fall out of the zone

Hah, i'll be honest I thought you were kidding about the notes.txt - are you following some kind of standard? Or just spill everything into one big document?

I do something similar and just dump everything into a giant chaotic document. It works well because I intuitively understand my own personal brand of chaos, so I know how to easily find everything.

Have you ever considered going for Markdown? # is used for defining headers in markdown.

I think they're essentially using "hashtags", so they could have many for one note.

a private notes text file is completely different content, let alone UX, from a visual board that everyone uses

You might like Obsidian. It fits this mental model very well, and is all local. I used to do exactly what you mention, and having a better interface now, but without lock in to a company has worked very well for me.