And how to properly use your Day-Runner before that (c1996). Productivity hacks sell because humans want silver bullets.

Yeah, but so does many other good things. Exercise is generally a good thing, so is decent quality food, meditation, philosophy, healthy relationships, etc. Those are things that also have a cottage industry of influencers who are selling their “thing” about how you should do it. The problem there is the influencers and their culture not the food or working out, etc.

It only becomes problematic if the “good” thing also indulges in the hubris of influencers because they view it as good marketing. Like when an egg farm leans in “orange yolk”

Yeah, after getting burnt out on Evernote I just use basic markdown files for my notes. I never bother with anymore features beyond "write to file" or "grep directory for keywords" because I know I'll personally not benefit from them. The act of writing notes is what is useful to me, retrieving the notes are hardly ever useful.