Apple Company • Page 5

I've written notes in Sublime Text 2/3. It wasn't a great experience, but you can customize the colors for everything I believe.

 

Sublime is my text editor of choice but I'm looking for a more dedicated note taking app.

 

Hm, that's the best I can think of at the moment that serves both purposes.

 

iOS or Mac note taking?

 

Mac! Sorry should have specified.

 

I actually haven't seen anything in the "note" category that's not more of a full blown text editor. I use TextMate 2 for basically all my little notes even, save them to a folder on Dropbox, and have Hazel organize them into folders by date.

I had heard a few people recommend Codebox and Quiver, but I've never used them.

 

'Blockhead' Plug Provides Space Saving Solution for Apple Wall Adapters

interesting O_o

 

So this just started happening...

 

@Jason Tate how do you handle notes on iOS if you save them to Dropbox?

 

So I keep everything in dated folders, in Dropbox, for basically everything I write that I may need again. Basic Markdown text files. Then I have a folder that I call "common notes" where I store basically the notes I need on a regular basis, or are "active" notes / in progress. I can edit these, or check them, with Editorial on any iOS device. I have that as the default folder, so I can open the app, check my notes, and get out if needed. (Search also works great.) On the Desktop, Alfred, or Textmate, can search in any of the files or by filename as well to quickly find the one I'm looking for if I need to reference it.

However, basically everything goes into Drafts if I'm on iOS. If I have a thought at all that's not a task (which goes into Omnifocus), it goes into Drafts. Be it Tweet ideas, random thoughts, notes to self, movies I like, anything like that. I use Drafts as basically a brain dump. Then from Drafts I have quick actions set up to append to files. So, for example, someone recommends a book to me — I type the book name in Drafts, hit the "add to books to read" action, and it appends that text onto the end of my text file in Dropbox. I have those set up for basically all my common notes. Then I have a specific day, usually Friday, where I do a review of all my stuff. I go through my Omnifocus to check if there are any tasks that I need to move to projects from the inbox, I look at stalled projects and make decisions on what to do with them next, and then I check my Drafts inbox to decide what to do with anything that's in there. Is it a Tweet to save for later or post? Is it some random idea to myself I should move to Omnifocus and make a task? Is it how I was feeling on a certain day that I should move to my journal? Or is it something that gets added to a common note or a more permanent location? Then I do a review of my "common notes" folder to check in on each of them and see if anything needs an actionable task, like moving an idea into a podcast document, adding some music to my iTunes queue, or preparing a new article. Plus then I can archive/delete little things like "parked car at street X and Y" that I don't need at all anymore. Basically I want to start each week with each thing in the right place so I don't just have a bunch of random notes all over the place and no idea what they relate to or why I've even written them. Let alone unrelated or old notes hanging out everywhere. Then I can reference them when I need them most. Birthday comes up for my sister? Omnifocus puts that task on the right day I want to start thinking about it every year (about three weeks before her birthday), it's linked to my "gift ideas" note, and on that day I can double click and look at all the ideas I've accumulated over the past year for things I should buy her for her birthday (apparently she told me she wanted a new jewelry box sometime in the past year that I totally would have forgot except it's in my note about it), and then I can decide what to get her and order it.

I dunno, this is the system that works for me and how I think about things. Before I was using apps that ended up just leading to dozens, if not hundreds, of little one off notes about things. Everything from reminders (which would be forgotten and lost), to long term plans (that I never acted on), to where I parked my car three weeks ago and I never cleaned it out. And if that app ended up sucking, or going away, I didn't have access to any of those things anymore, or had to go through the process of moving them over to a new app.

Now I don't have to ask myself too many questions when I think of something:

Is it a task? Omnifocus inbox.
Event I need to be at on a date? Fantastical.
Thing I'll need an actual alert/reminder about at a time: Due.
Everything else: Drafts.

And if I'm out and don't have time to think about any of that and just need to get something down, I know if I get it into Drafts I will be reviewing it, at the very least, a few days later and making a decision on it — so I just need to get it down. Open app, new blank draft is right there there, type and don't worry about fiddling around with anything else.

(And yes, I've been trying to tone my waist so that's why I have a note about waist circumference in there, fuck it!)

 

This is all super helpful. I've yet to see a way to save something to a specific note in the Notes app via Drafts, but you can get to it through the share sheet and pick the note you want it to go in. Might consider trying what you mentioned by using it as a brain dump. I've been bad at getting ideas down because I haven't found out exactly where I want them. So that's definitely a possibility and then trying to review once or twice a week. In my notes app I do have things like TV to watch, 2016 releases, etc that are easy enough names to remember when I use the share sheet.

Thanks for the info! Hoping I can make Drafts work out for me for sure.

 

Of course! I think about this stuff more than any (sane) person probably does and am always trying different things or trying to find something that fits just right. I think that's what's most important about any of it: it being right for you. Nothing matters if you can't replicate it on a constant basis or remember what you're supposed to do. It just has to feel like second nature. For me a review system really helps, and that combined with the "brain dump" stuff (which I try to do as well on a regular basis) really has helped with my anxiety over always feeling like I've forgotten something. Instead I know I haven't — I know I have it out somewhere and then I get to make a decision about it. It's dramatically reduced any feeling of "overwhelm" for me. Before I was doing stuff like writing a new to-do list every day or putting tasks on my calendar and getting all kinds of messed up. A lot of how I work is based on David Allen's Getting Things Done, and this quick guide is sometimes helpful for people:

GTD in 15 minutes – A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done

 

Yeah I read the GTD book, but I'll keep that guide handy. I'm always forgetting stuff even when I try to toss a bunch of tasks into Todoist. I'm thinking the brain dump will help. I also write stuff out in notebooks but that's obviously not easy to search haha. I currently have plenty of time to try new things while I search for a job so I have no excuse to not work on this now. Drafts isn't on my home screen but "New Draft" is a quick action I have in Launch Center Pro, but may have to move it to my homescreen to remember to use it more.

 

Love me some LCP as well.!

My dock is just: Drafts - LCP - Ominifocus.

 

That's another app I definitely underuse. Same with Workflow, which I've started using to log water, but sadly that's about it.

 

My most used workflow is either my tip calculator, or I have one set up to download files to Dropbox that I use a lot. Since from the share sheet it makes it easy to send things to Dropbox folders — where I have Hazel watching to do things with them — like a specific folder to toss the file onto my Desktop so I see it when I get home, or start a download, things like that. It's so powerful and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what it can do or how I should be using it.

 

Yeah for sure. I try to read all of Viticci's articles on it to see what all it can be used for. But he's the iOS power user that destroys everyone else haha. I need to give Hazel a shot again to help clean up files on my Mac. I feel like these things really just take a lot of time to learn/set up and then save you a ton of time.

 

Cheers, I tried Quiver and Write but neither are really suiting my needs. I saw this though, Boostnote Official Homepage and it might be worth keeping an eye on from my point of view.

 

The Nylas email client keeps getting better and better. Really loving dark mode on my laptop.

N1 - The extensible, open source mail client.

 

Really been enjoying Zdziarski's blogs on crypto/Apple:

We, as everyday Americans, should also encourage the idea of warrant proof places. The DOJ believes, quite erroneously, that the Fourth Amendment gives them the right to any evidence or information they desire with a warrant. The Bill of Rights did not grant rights to the government; it protected the rights of Americans from the overreach that was expected to come from government. Our most intimate thoughts, our private conversations, our ideas, our intent are all things our phone tracks. These are concepts that must remain private (if we choose to protect them) for any functioning free society. In today’s technological landscape, we are no longer giving up just our current or future activity under warrant, but for the first time in history, making potentially years of our life retroactively searchable by law enforcement. Things are recorded in ways today that no one would have imagined, even when CALEA was passed. The capability that DOJ is asserting is that our very lives and identities — going back across years — are subject to search. The Constitution never permitted this.

 

Just picked up GTD this week. Excited to finally read it.

 

Been trying out Safari instead of Chrome for the first time the past week on Mac. I like how clean the interface is and a handful of other features, but I'm not sure if I'll stay with it or not. Little things like having icons on tabs in the toolbar were handy on Chrome.

 

I just switched to do the same this morning. I've been using Polymail on my Mac and for whatever reason my Wordpress permalink for posts wouldn't hyperlink when I wanted to email them. Working perfectly on Safari, which seems weird, but I might have to stick with it just for that. Icons were nice though. Only get them on Safari with pinned tabs.

 

I've been using Safari since I got my macbook. I don't really like how Chrome looks on os x. Weird reason I know.

 

Maybe worth giving a look:

Add favicons to Safari 8 (and 9) tabs