I've spent more time than I'd like to admit on trying to optimize my workflow. Zettelkasten in order to collect all the tidbits that I've read! Zotero highlighting and annotation extraction in order to keep quotes nice and tidy! Readwise and Pinboard to clip from the web and keep local copies! I could go on and on. If there's a way to download an add-on or a new piece of fancy software, I've probably tried it or at the very least read thousands of comments on the internet of people describing how to use and troubleshoot them. Is it compatible with Zotero? Can I avoid saving it in proprietary formats that are likely to change? Is there a local-first option but with the ability to sync seamlessly across multiple computers? How can I make sure to focus on content instead of futzing around with the formatting? What about online collaboration and version control? If I do all of the work up front and just decide and what I'm going to use, then I'll save myself from so much angst later. It's about saving time.
Cue what I thought was the most optimal workflow, both in terms of everyday use and in aligning with my general scholarly values: preference for open source software, non-proprietary file formats, local-first, endlessly configurable and able to juggle every conceivable format that I'd need something to be in (Word for the social scientists, LaTeX for the computer scientists). Markdown for completely stripped down, focused writing. Great online communities and documentation. Compatible with Zotero with easy ways to format and update citations. Strong version control. Ability to see and work with lots of different files simultaneously. The dream.
After ages swapping different options in and out, I'd settled on a bespoke, internet-approved workflow: Obsidian for collecting notes and maintaining Zettelkasten. Zotero, as usual, for everything citation-related and to organize the PDFs of all the articles I was using. GitHub for version control (probably overkill, but whatever -- the green GitHub commit calendar would also be a good way of keeping track of my progress). And then, of course, a Markdown editor with a clean, configurable, and beautiful UI that works with Pandoc and Zotero: Zettlr, the crown jewel. It's truly an incredible piece of software -- robust and well-designed.
I quickly put this system to use. I'm just like those tech and productivity gurus, if not better! Take that, Ali Abdaal!
Then came the little cracks. I needed to print out a new chapter for someone to read: yes, Pandoc works, but for me to adjust simple typesetting options like spacing and font, I needed to refer to an entire page of documentation on templates, which also included a long (and changing!) code block I needed to copy and paste to render the citations. I wanted to share the chapter for someone to comment on but who doesn't use Word: export to Word, upload to Google Docs, send email. I was typing in the document in my office where I have my work computer, and wanted to continue working on it after coming home to use my home laptop: the citation keys were off since the bib file that the document is referring to has a slightly different file path on the different computers, so I had to do quite a bit of tinkering to make sure that the citation keys worked even switching between computers.
Between exporting for printing, syncing, and collaborating -- all very normal, expected things to do with words that you've been tippy-tapping -- I felt like I'd already racked up more time futzing than I had been actually editing and writing the goddamned chapter. Sure, my stuff was saved in Markdown and not locked into an ecosystem where Google can pull the files at any time, but it was getting to be a pain in the ass to write and print out something that looked nice. Even Zotero was glitching because of the syncing issues. The promise of saving time and having an elegantly streamlined workflow was...really not working out.
And then I started working on a separate book chapter for an edited volume which needed to be submitted as a Word doc. I honestly hadn't used Microsoft Word to draft anything for close to a decade -- I've written almost everything in Overleaf / LaTeX or Google Docs -- so I was naturally curious what the experience would be like. I needed to download it onto my laptop from MIT but wasn't on campus, so I downloaded Open Office and then Libre Office to try things out. Might as well try the open source versions first, right? Whew. Maybe I'm a snob about this, but while Open Office and Libre Office functioned perfectly well, the interface was just...ugly. The toolbars looked like it hadn't changed since the 2000s, which would be Gen Z chic if not for the fact that everything just felt so clunky. I'm doing Very Important Work, ahem, not trudging through insurance documents on a public computer from 2004. Apple Pages looked nice enough, but didn't really work well with Zotero, and the program always saves whatever you're working on in its stupid Pages file format first, even if you'd opened a Word doc at the outset.
Okay, VPN on, Microsoft it is.
As I scrolled through the comments from the editors and then started making my changes, I marveled at the wave of nostalgia that percolated through the experience. I hadn't seen ribbons formatted like that in ages. To my surprise, inserting citations with Zotero was seamless, and the new paper I had just added to my Zotero library showed up immediately in the cite-while-you-write toolbar -- no waiting for Overleaf to update the bib file just to fill out a footnote. The "Focus" view wasn't revolutionary, but certainly looked nicer than anything from Libre or Open Office. No futzing around with formatting -- everything was just in the "body" format, and I'd already set it at the spacing and wrap for an image that I'd liked without sobbing into a LaTeX file. I inserted and edited a kind of complicated table (merged and colored cells, vertical text) without using a website to generate the code for me.
Was it nicer to write in Markdown in something like Zettlr? Sure. You can customize the CSS to make it look like whatever you want it to! You could typeset your document to look like a 16th century French Bible. You actually own your data and can take it wherever you want when you want. You can flexibly work with multiple files at the same time. You can feel like a Real Technologist™.
Sure, I could no longer make my chapter look like a Tufte book. My data is locked into a proprietary format that will likely become obsolete, even in just a few years. But it is something that most people, including my editor, have and know how to use, and they don't have to sign up for anything. To my knowledge, there's no good way to collaborate or track changes on a Markdown document. There is HackMD, but I don't know anyone who uses it and quite a few people I work with don't use Markdown or LaTeX. I miss the option to comment out sentences and easily flip between files within the same directory, and I do have to write from beginning to end in a completely linear way -- I can't swap out or reorder sections as easily. My files are now huge and it's certainly not an elegant solution. But, as much as I hate to hype something like Microsoft Word, it's a boring option that just...works. It'll be impossible for me to write papers (especially in computer science) in Word, but for an actual book that is mostly just words and the occasional picture, LaTeX is way overkill and Markdown isn't collaborative. The file paths and little code snippets need to be just so for everything to work seamlessly.
I think this reveals a lot of stuff about me: I'm not a strong programmer so I find having to work with code in order to just format a document with words, text, and tables unnecessary. I have 2 computers that are not perfectly synced and have different file paths for the same thing (in this case, the self-updating bib file with my entire Zotero library). I am snobby about having my writing environment be pretty. I want things to be seamless and technologically efficient.
But if exporting with customized templates with pandoc is so easy and time-saving, why is there a long doc with huge code snippets to teach you how to do it? Why am I using the command line to export to PDF? I guess word processors like MS Word and Google Docs are made for basic bitches like me who just want to type words onto a piece of paper that people can comment on without having to do anything with a terminal. I can live with the janky flavor of version control that is duplicating a document and calling it "chapter v4 final FINAL" (followed only by "chapter v5 final FOR REAL"). In exchange for the convenience, I have given up my data to the locked ecosystems whose keys are held by Microsoft and Google.
This saga trying to use mostly open source software that plans for obsolescence and flexibility reminds me of something that one of my colleagues, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, told me about computer security the first time we met. We were talking about how students were willing to trade their data for convenience and how ostensibly "good" options for better privacy or security protections often involve friction for the end user compared to the "bad" version. Tor Browser is slower than Chrome or Firefox. Signal only works if the other people you want to talk with also use it. Some merchants block credit card masking services like Privacy.com. This friction is precisely what makes it so difficult to opt out. For some people like sociologist Janet Vertesi, this friction is worth safeguarding your privacy and wellbeing, and it doesn't always have to be difficult or opaque. I agree with her. But Henry cogently pointed out to me that we shouldn't have to do these things -- it shouldn't be on the individual consumer who has neither the time nor the expertise to really dig into privacy or security issues. The average patient doesn't (and shouldn't have to) choose a surgeon or hospital based on reviewing their operating room sanitation procedures. You have some expectation that there is a process and that it's sufficient for a safe surgery. It's just not your job.
I suspect that Vertesi would agree with Henry in his point about consumer responsibility; I think the difference between them is that Vertesi would say that the expectation of privacy from Big Tech companies is unrealistic, so people have to take matters into their own hands to minimize harm. (For what it's worth, I don't think that Henry would say that we should take what we can get from convenient tech now, but that it's reasonable to prioritize convenience over privacy because of time restrictions and expertise.)
So too with word processing and productivity software: you want to fight against enshittification. Safeguard your data. Support open source software development. Use a system that offers you maximum flexibility. You want the system to work seamlessly and save you time -- why else would you go through all of this? Therein lies the crux of enshittification: it's just not profitable to make a better product and let your customer take their data where they want.
But customers should choose your product because it's simply better than everything else on the market! Competition breeds innovation, right? If a company corners the market and becomes a monopoly, it's because they were just better than everyone else, right? Right?
Sigh. This is what makes it so difficult to opt out: if you're the only person in an entire group working on something to use Markdown, then you incur the extra cost of exporting everything and then working outside the format that the majority of people are using (in most cases, Google Docs or Word), then converting everything back again. Companies like Microsoft win not because they've made a better word processor, but by inertia and subscription lock-in -- all of your data is stored in this format, so moving elsewhere would require you to completely rehaul your knowledge infrastructure. Why would Microsoft make it easy for you to leave their perfectly curated, subscription-based ecosystem?
I don't want to make the problem worse by doing the same to my entire book, especially when most of my academic work is already in LaTeX and not Word. But all of my writing for the book right now is scattershot -- a lot in Markdown because I wanted that smooth writing experience. The better stuff that I've shared with others is in Google Docs or saved as PDF. A lot of the earliest stuff is in Overleaf because I'm used to academic writing that way. But there needs to a One File Type To Rule Them All, and none of the options are perfect. At this point, I'm a begrudging Word user. I don't want to be locked into awful Microsoft 365, but it just does what I need it to without futzing too much, which is its primary benefit. I went to a writing workshop once led by one of the most prolific writers I know, and when asked about the writing programs he used, he simply said: "the answer is Word and nothing else. Your editor wants it in a Word doc anyways, so everything else is a distraction or excuse."
Damn, straight to the heart. I guess I better get back to real writing.