How To Write Without Thinking
My productivity and note-taking set up
If you’ve read any of my previous stories you’ll know that I’m interested in productivity and automation, and putting the two together.
This time I have some more real-life examples about how I use Drafts as my main note-taking app.
SPOILER: It’s not my main repository of notes
I wrote a story about Drafts; once described as the Swiss Army knife of writing.
I treat it as a transitional stage of my note-taking.
Simply, there are so many integrations that can happen with Drafts, I don’t need to think about where to write, just what to write?
Drafts makes writing extremely versatile.
To help you see the real-world applications, here are some examples of how Drafts helps me to get things down.
Meeting Notes
I have templates set up within Drafts, and I call them via an Apple Shortcut.
Actually, it’s run via a button on my Stream Deck… just a single click.
The Shortcut requests some basic info, which then populates into the draft.
Once I have completed working with the note, I have an Action that takes the note and saves it to Google Drive, as a Google Doc.
The Draft is then archived.
My Journal
Each day, I write my journal entry in Drafts. I simply bring up the empty screen, type away and then… … I run an Action that posts it to Day One.
The beauty here is that Day One accepts markdown, so I can do all the formatting in Drafts then it’s published beautifully in Day One.
Creating Tasks
If I want to create a task in Todoist, all I need to do is write it in Drafts, along with any description and then, you guessed it, run an Action to create it in Todoist.
Sending Messages or Emails
Need to send a message? It doesn’t matter whether it’s an email, WhatsApp, or Message. I can do that in Drafts too.
Simply write the text, run the action, and ‘hey presto’ it’s done.
It won’t send it, but it does launch the app and populate the text for you to then send it.
Twitter Threads
The last example is that of Twitter threads.
I can write the entire thread in Drafts, using separators between each tweet.
The Action will split them into separate tweets and then post them.
It saves having to click the + button on the Twitter app to write each post.
Frictionless Writing
These are just a few examples, but I think you can see how it just needs to be open and ready for any text input.
Drafts makes writing frictionless.
I don’t need to think about where to put something.
More and more, it’s become my number one place to write. Then I can decide what to do with it.
Drafts Pro
The basic version of Drafts is completely free to download and use. However, Drafts Pro gives you the ability to:
- Create and edit Actions
- Custom themes and icons
- Workspaces : Apply preferred tag, query and sort settings for drafts
- Extra widgets and better share extensions
- Enhanced automation
To my mind it’s a no-brainer!
It’s only £17.50 per year (yes, per year!) It might be another subscription; but there are constant updates and new additions and it won’t break the bank. It does give you full control.
I am not an affiliate for Drafts, I just like to talk about products and services that I believe in, and where I think you might benefit too.
Have you/Do you use Drafts? Do you have any other use cases that might be useful.
How do you capture your thoughts?
Before you go, check out this story from Laurel Vespi about problem solving.
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