Scientific discovery can be aided when data is shared following the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, reusability (FAIR) data (Wilkinson et al., 2016). Recent discussions in the palaeoclimate literature have focussed on defining the ideal database format for storing data and associated metadata. Here, we highlight an often overlooked primary process in widespread adoption of FAIR data, namely the systematic creation of machine readable data at source (i.e. at the field and laboratory level). We detail a file naming and structuring method that was used at LSCE to store data in text file format in a way that is machine-readable, and also human-friendly to persons of all levels of computer proficiency, thus encouraging the adoption of a machine-readable ethos at the very start of a project. Thanks to the relative simplicity of downcore palaeoclimate data, we demonstrate the power of this simple but powerful file format to function as a basic database in itself: we provide a Matlab-based GUI tool that allows users to search and visualise data by sediment core location, proxy type and species type. The adoption of similarily accessible, machine-readable file formats at other laboratories will promote data sharing within projects, while also allowing for the automation of submission of data to online database repositories with particular formatting and/or metadata requirements, thus reducing post-hoc workload.