Personal Workflow: 2Do, DEVONthink, Fantastical

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Hi,

I wanted to take a moment to go over some of the ways in which I use Drafts 5. A lot of this was likely possible with Drafts 4, but I’m just now digging into Drafts more and trying to make it work for me in many different ways. I have quite a few workflows that I still want to create for myself, but this should give you a basic idea for how I’m working with it and maybe help you along as well. :slight_smile:

Primary Action Group: GTD (2Do, DEVONthink, & Fantastical)

There are 10 actions contained within this group.

  • Jump to… – Quickly jump to a list in 2Do
  • Paste to 2Do – This uses the paste URL scheme that supports indented lists for quickly mocking out an idea to send over.
  • 2Do NLP – This is using a rudimentary adaptation of the original Things workflow from Viticci. 2Do’s URL scheme doesn’t support fuzzy matching, so I have a few helper keyboard actions to facilitate quickly attaching a List, or Tags, that I frequently use. This requires a companion Workflow action.
  • Shopping List – I use Reminders for my grocery lists so this just dumps directly into a Shopping list in Reminders
  • Prayer Requests – This uses DEVONthink’s append URL scheme to paste any new prayer requests I need to remember into a running document in DEVONthink To Go.
  • Gift Ideas – This is still a WIP, but the idea is to facilitate a group of append actions to add items I see at the store or as I’m thinking to running lists for each one of my family members.
  • Send to DEVONthink – Pretty straightforward, just pastes the document into DEVONthink
  • Event in Fantastical – Sends text to Fantastical to create a new event
  • FantastiTasks – Since I use Reminders-sync with 2Do, I can make use of it’s NLP when I don’t have anything complex that I need to get into 2Do. This way I can write a task just like “Pick up package from FedEx tomorrow 4pm” and be done.
  • 2Do URL Schemes – Quick-link to get to 2Do’s documentation.

Companion Action Group: Taskpaper Lite

I run this one primarily as a keyboard row only. The actions contained in this group:

  • Tab – For indented lists
  • Project (#) – Shows a prompt of some frequently used lists
  • Due (\) – Add a date/time
  • Note (++) – Add a Note
  • Tags (@) – Shows a prompt of some frequently used tags

Examples of Paste to 2Do & 2Do NLP

  1. Paste to 2Do

The format for this is multi-line tasks with indented sub-tasks. For example:

Update computer to macOS High Sierra
    Repair permissions
    Download installer
    Run installer
    Update any incompatible apps

This will turn into a project titled: “Update computer to macOS High Sierra” with 4 sub-tasks.

  1. 2Do NLP

This one loosely follows the conventions that Viticci setup with his Things Workflow action with the actions that 2Do supports. The syntax is:

  • #List
  • \\Due dateTime
  • @Tags
  • ++Notes
Something to do #Home \\tomorrow at 5pm @email ++Required additional information.

This will turn into a task titled: “Something to do” in the list “Home” due “tomorrow at 5pm” with a tag of “email” and a “note” that says, “Required additional information.”

Anyway, hopefully some of you might get some use out of seeing this. :slight_smile:

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One thing you’ve made me consider is creating a GTD action set.

I have an OmniFocus taskpaper set that Rosemary Orchard made for me (ok, not specifically for me, but it’s definitely for me). But I could certainly group a bunch of stuff together for GTD in general.

I suspect I’ll end up using DEVONthink as my reference store. It’s very good at finding stuff. And for a guy who can’t file to save his life, tags and powerful search is a must.

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