How I Use Drafts as my Second Brain
Getting into the habit of note-taking is key
Thank you Tiago Forte, for writing “Building a Second Brain”.
This is a book that, if you’re looking to build and improve on note-taking and personal knowledge management (PKM), you should really invest in.
The tools I use for my Second Brain are not actually called out in his book, but they work for me, in my workflow.
That’s an important point to note (pun intended).
However you do this, it must work for you.
There are three main apps that I use:
1. Pocket I use this to capture pretty much anything I want to read later. Whether that’s a page on the internet, a tweet, or even a YouTube video, it’s a single place to capture, tag, and store for later.
With Pocket, you can also highlight what you need, to find them again easily, when you need to.
2. Drafts I use Drafts for capturing quick, medium, and long-form material.
In fact, I write everything first in Drafts.
3. Google Drive This is where I store my media, documents, scanned images, photos, etc.
In other words, anything that is not pure text.
In his book, Tiago Forte talks about the CODE of personal knowledge management.
Capture, Organise, Distill, and Express.
I’m going to walk through how my tools work with this system.
First of all, a very quick look at what each part of the CODE framework means, to me.
You should be warned that this is my interpretation.
You’d be better placed to read the actual book to see how these all fit together.
Capturing is just the first part of Building a Second Brain.
Capturing means that it’s out of your head, or you’ve found something you want to refer to later; whether physical or digital.
This is the crucial first step to creating a PKM.
Organise the second part is to organise your notes
I'll start straight out by saying I am not a big advocate of folders. This is far too restricting. Notes can only belong in one folder at a time. Tags are a different matter.
You can add any number of tags to a note, then create various searches to surface the information.
I’ll look at this more, later in this story.
Distill
Once you’ve Captured and Organised, then you need to distill the information you’ve found. This is referred to as finding the ‘essence’. - What are your notes about? - What are the main points? - What will you do with this information?
By highlighting points that resonate, you will be able to see the links.
Maybe add some additional, supporting notes, to firm up your thoughts.
Express
The last part is about sharing.
This could be sharing with others, or just sharing with yourself.
The key point here is that you must share.
Holding onto the information you’ve captured means it’s actually worthless. What was the point of capturing the information or image if you’re not going to do anything with it?
There is a whole lot more to the CODE framework than I have mentioned.
This is only a very light look, and if you’re interested in knowing more then I urge you to read the book.
Where does Drafts fit in?
This story is about how I use Drafts to help me. How I take the inertia out of capturing information.
There are numerous note-taking apps, and I’ve tried a few:
- Apple Notes
- Notion
- OneNote
- Craft
- Evernote
- Obsidian
- Bear
Bear is the closest to Drafts in the way it works, but the ‘killer’ part of the Drafts application is the Actions that you can run to do more with your words.
The other apps mentioned are too cluttered or confusing (in my opinion)!
I was an Evernote user for about 11 years, but it finally became too bloated.
Notion, in my opinion, almost requires a degree and a whole lot of time to make it work they way you want! Time I don’t want to waste!
So, Drafts it is.
It has been part of my toolset for a couple of years but it has, quite literally, taken until the last six months to realise how powerful it actually is.
My workflow, for anything note related, is Drafts first.
It is in the dock on my iPhone and on my MacBook.
When the app is opened, it is to a beautiful, clear, screen. There’s no need to create a new document. It’s there, ready and waiting.
If I want to dictate, just hit the microphone symbol and start talking. It’s quick and remarkably accurate.
Every new note is automatically added to the Inbox.
That’s the default. It means that you can find these quickly and take action on them when the time is right.
You don’t need to do anything else right away. You don’t need to think about where to put them.
Organisation
When you’re ready to organise and take action, this is where Drafts really excels.
Tags are the order of the day when it comes to organisation. I know that not everyone will agree with this, but we’re all individual and we have our own ways of working.
I like that I don’t have to worry about which folder to use. Just add a tag. Any number of them.
Then, it’s all about Workspaces, which are like souped-up filters that you can use to surface your notes. The configuration capabilities for workspaces is, quite frankly, insane!
- Select the tags
- Select a time-frame (if relevant)
- Set up the sort options
- Even select a theme
Each workspace can be unique in the look and feel, which makes this such a versatile part of the app.
As an example, I have a theme specifically for work related workspaces; i.e. the colours I use.
It’s also possible to add links to other notes within Drafts, so they can be referenced to each other.
Uncluttered
The other great thing about Drafts is being able to work without sidebars cluttering up the window.
Drafts has 3 sidebars, 2 on the left, and 1 on the right.
Each can be hidden or displayed as needed.
On the left, there is the tag list, I almost always keep that hidden and then there’s the of notes in the current Workspaces.
On the right is the Action groups list. This is where the power lives.
Actions
Talking of Actions, there are a ton of them.
- Write a document and send to Google Docs
- Use markdown to create tasks and automatically send to Todoist (with all the relevant attributes).
- Write a journal entry and automatically publish it in Day One
- Write a message and send via WhatsApp or iMessage
- The Twitter actions are great. Write threads, or single tweets, and post them all from Drafts.
Now you can begin to see how this is central to my workflow, and as a note-taking app it’s also the start of my Second Brain
Markdown
Drafts is a markdown editor, which does mean that there is no media element available.
It’s not possible to store images, or scanned documents or anything that’s not text.
If I had to call out one negative of Drafts, this would be it.
However, when you choose to use a tool like this, then it’s an accepted ‘short-coming’ and since I’ve introduced Google Drive as the repository for scanned documents (using Scanner Pro on my phone to capture them) and other media, then I can add a link to the Google doc in Drafts, so it’s accessible, via a click!
Originally, I was using Apple Notes for this, but creating links to them is a real pain in the behind!
With the shortcuts I’ve developed for myself, especially in using the Stream Deck to initiate certain templates, as well as the actions to save to Google Drive and Todoist, then this is a relatively small price to pay.
Habit Building
Taking notes of everything you want is a habit that needs to be built and cultivated.
I have gotten into the habit of capturing 99% of what I need and managing it later. It’s a flow I’m happy with.
It works for me.
And that’s the crux of it.
As I wrote at the beginning, your workflow needs to work for you.
There is no point reading about other peoples’ workflow and trying to adopt it wholesale. The chances are it will fail.
You need to discover your flow.
Get into the habit and it will all come together.
If you want to know more about Drafts, then check out their website.
Finally, before you click away, check out this story by Will J Murphy about note-taking.
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