Help with Creating Siri Shortcut to do Emotional Diary in Drafts and Day One

[I originally posted this on the Automators forum here: https://talk.automators.fm/t/help-with-creating-shortcut-to-do-an-emotional-diary/2705 I hope it’s okay to cross-post otherwise please let me know and I will take it down immediately]

Dear all

I am hoping that someone out there can help me out. I’m really not cut out for creating Siri Shortcuts myself, so I’m hoping that some friendly spirit out there will do it for me.

I’m starting an emotional diary, which is something that I have wanted to get into for quite a while and I think that it could be really awesome with Siri Shortcuts to do some fast emotional check-ins during the day.

This is what I’m hoping to have set up:

At the end of each day, I will go in and manually create a note in the app Drafts on my iPhone with this headline:

#Today’s Emotions:

The idea is then to have the app Due for iPhone go off at the following times the next day and each and every day of the week: 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 6 pm, 9 pm.

At each point during the day, I would love to have a Siri Shortcut that I could tap which would give me a multiple list of emotions that would correspond to how I’m feeling and then I could select one of them. It could be “Anxious” or “Satisfied” etc. etc.

Then, after I tap the emotion, the Shortcut would append that text (emotion) to afore-mentioned note in Drafts as a running list.

At the end of each day, I would have a clear overview of my emotions during each point of the day. Then I could manually go into that note in Drafts and send it to Day One and use that entry in Day One to write a more expanded and complete diary entry about how my day was.

The next day it would all be repeated.

I hope it makes sense of what I’m trying to set up. If there is anyone out there who has the skill to set this or something similar up in Siri Shortcuts then I would be really thankful.

Thank you for your time and your help :blush:

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There are several actions in the directory that can do the Day One portion.

The shortcut side could start out simple like:

HTH

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Thank you so much dchar. I will look into it when I have time to set it up and report back.

Thanks again :blush:

So I have been using this workflow for a day now. It is going well. Just a few things that I would like to hear if they could be improved upon.

This Due reminder goes off and I tap it on the Home Screen and open my phone and it opens the reminder in Due where I tap the link. That takes me to the Siri Shortcut where I select the emotion from the list, which quickly opens Drafts and inserts the text and then it goes back to Siri Shortcuts and I press OK and exit the Shortcuts app. However, I have still not completed the Due reminder so I have to go back in to Due and complete that reminder so it doesn’t go off again in 10 mins.

So it basically goes like this:

Home Screen -->

Due -->

Siri Shortcuts -->

Drafts -->

Siri Shortcuts -->

Due —> Finished.

So this workflow could be better if:

  1. The Due Reminder was completed by tapping the link… Impossible, I know. But that would be better.
  2. I didn’t have to exit the Siri Shortcuts app after coming back from Drafts. Basically if the Shortcuts quit itself after completion would be great. Or if it took me back to the Due app… is that possible?

Any thoughts out there on how to improve this?

Re: number 1

If you check off a task in Due that has a URL attached, it pops up a menu asking if you want to follow the URL. This way, you check off the task as done and don’t need to return.

However, you must check off the task with the Due app open. If you check it off as complete from a notification, this won’t happen. What I do is tap the notification to open Due, the check off the task. Yes, an extra tap, but better I think than needing to return to the app. Of course, if you have persistent reminders on, you could always just check it off the next time the notification fires.

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Thanks a lot for your reply. I will look into it :blush:

I’m still trying to perfect this workflow and the Due/Siri Shortcuts side is working flawlessly and perfectly. Thanks a lot to everyone who contributed.

However, once I put the listed emotions in Drafts into Day One at the end of the day, it becomes a little less streamlined.

I use a Drafts action to put everything into Day One which works well. But then I’m just left with a list in an otherwise blank Day One entry.

Then I use a TextExpander snippet to unfold the times during the day at which I entered the emotions using Shortcuts. But as you can see from the image that just puts the times below the emotions. The two are not in line with each other.

So ideally I’m looking for away to perfect the last stage here. I’m looking for a way to have the day’s emotions listed exactly in line with the time it was entered in Drafts. For example as below:

Kl. 07.00: Emotion X

Kl. 10.00: Emotion Y

Kl. 13.00: Emotion Z

Kl. 16.00: Emotion X

Kl. 19.00: Emotion Y

Kl. 21.00: Emotion Z

What I do then is to expand on each time and emotion in Day One by adding some details. This is why I would like to see realigned with each other.

I hope it all makes sense.

I’m thinking there is someone really clever out there who must know of some way to perfect this using Shortcuts, Drafts and TextExpander.

Thanks :blush:

See post above

For reference, I added my thoughts (as they weren’t really focussed on Drafts as such) over on the Automators forum where you asked this as well.

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You could include the timestamp with the emotion when you add it from the shortcut. Something like:

This would append something to the draft like:

10:05 AM Emotion X

If it was me, I’d try to simplify this by using only Shortcuts or only Drafts.

HTH

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Thanks Dchar. Just what I’m looking for. I set it up in the Shortcut (see image) and it comes out in Drafts with date and time.

Is there a way to just have the time go through to the Draft and not include the date?

See previous post

In the Shortcut, click on the current date variable and you’ll see options to format the date and time. For date, select none.

Perfect! Thanks!! Any way to have the time to display in bold text? :blush:

If Day One supports markdown, you could:

(a) Make the time/emotion a header by adding a #:

# (Current Date) (Chosen Item)

(b) Make it bold with two asteriks before and after the date variable in shortcuts:

**(Current Date)** (Chosen Item)

Final bit and nusisance on this workflow and I’m all set. Thanks again everyone for all your help and interest.

At the end of the day, after the final entry in Drafts, and having sent the draft to from Drafts to Day One, I’m left with an active populated note in Drafts (see image).

I would love it if there was a way, when sending the draft, to Day One to have the draft linked to the Siri Shortcut, automatically “empty” itself so that I the next day have a clean draft to start all over with.

I hope that all makes sense. I guess it’s something that has to be set up in the Drafts to Day One action. I just don’t know how to do that.

Thanks :blush:

Add some Javascript after the draft is successfully sent to Day One:

draft.content = "";
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I should add this to the Siri Shortcut? How exactly do I go about doing this? :blush:

It’s the same way as I posted about in the second part of the response to the same question on the Automators forum.

You add it to a script step in your Drafts action if it is a callback. But I went into more detail in that post. It isn’t something you add into a Shortcuts custom shortcut.

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Still don’t quite get it :confused: