Drafts as a central notes repository

#1

Apologies if this topic has been covered before - I just havent located a similar thread…

I’d be interested in others workflows/set up to have Drafts as a central notes repository - utilising the power of Drafts capture, linking and actions.

I gave Roam Research a go but it just didn’t work for me - whilst the bi-directional linking at a block level was interesting it just got overwhelming. I prefer the more deliberate linking that is offered through Drafts and to some extent Bear Notes.

What I’m trying to do is to capture (input), process (e.g. build out a draft blog post), Output (push out eg to Medium) - then I want to use the linking to create a usable ‘archive’.

I have managed to find many actions from the generous Drafts community and am finding many possible solutions.

Interested if others have tried or have implemented similar?

(I’m not a programmer of any sort so I have to stand on the shoulders of others hard work for actions, shortcuts etc.)

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#2

one of the one most important things I would suggest to decide on your flavour of notes.

Long form or short form (Zettelkasten)

Most of the note-repository-use-cases aggregate the wiki style links in Drafts.

Stephen Millers Drafts: Exploded Markdown Preview | ThoughtAsylum makes a great case for the shoe form too.

If you want to have a great repository of actions and even learn a bit about programming the TADpole library was my starting point.

For specific tasks of coding I am always eager to find little tasks to implement to get back a virtual hug.

Andreas

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#3

My first suggestion is, just start. This sounds stupid until you think about it, but it’s not. You can spend all day reading forums and downloading actions and reading about different note taking systems and Workflows, but that’s not doing.

Start out with the default action groups that come with Drafts and whatever else you already have and start working. Cut and paste between apps, do things by hand, whatever you need to.

Keep notes as you go though. What would make things easier? What do you need an action or shortcut to do that’s a pain with what you have. Then you can search for or ask about that.

Did you come up with a great tagging scheme that turned into a mess? You can fix it. Same goes with most things in your system, but you’ll never know until you try it.

My system’s an unholy mix of a bunch of different things, but it’s getting there.

Sorry, got on my soapbox there, :slight_smile:

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#4

That’s good advice.
I redid my system two or three times on the way.

If you are willing to hear it from me.

Try out the small notes with cross linking (there is an action group for that).

And plan to look at the TADpole action groups in the upcoming future before you start to cobble your own actions together.

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#5

Thanks both

That makes a lot of sense - I’ve started logging this week each note and the type of treatment it needs to have based on whether it’s transitioning out of Drafts or has a place in Drafts longer term. The existing actions. action groups including TADpole are very comprehensive.

So my goal is to create an initial keyboard shortcuts list for key actions and see how that works for me.

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#6

It might be an idea for us to compile a definitive thread for this, though I appreciate that different people have overlapping but different ways of approaching this. I think it’s coming up as a query more and more as people experiment with Roam and Roam-likes (Logseq, Supernotes, Obsidian etc etc…) but come away looking for something else.

Some solid suggestions in this thread already. And your workflow (capture, author/process, output, archive) sounds workable. As @Andreas_Haberle suggests, it’s probably worth considering whether you’d benefit from atomic note-taking (one idea per note) or more long-form note-taking. That will also likely have a huge impact on the way your archive works and how you’ll interact with it.

Here are a few links from the forum that might offer some further food for thought:

Beyond the forum, you might be interested in having a quick browse of Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes for transferable methodologies/principles for working with your notes in Drafts, if you haven’t already seen it.

And finally, some thoughts on how your personal note-taking might connect with your blogging or other published writing:

Hope that helps.

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#7

Thank you for the tips and the links they look very interesting and will follow up.

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#8

this is great advice

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