Think Different

With the release of Drafts for macOS, I’ve reconsidered how I’ll store information across iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

I initially looked at Drafts as a way to replace apps like Notes or the Editorial > DropBox > SimpleNote flow I’d cobbled together for a while, but it was evident that this was not an app that you only use for simple note taking. It was a kind of processor of data, most typically in text format. Drafts, it seemed to me, wasn’t really a notes repository; rather, it was a starting point.

Honestly, I didn’t get it at first. Why would I enter text into a blank page and sent it to my notes app? Why not just start in my notes app?

But Drafts is different. Drafts is way different.

How is Drafts different?

In a word: Actions.

Action!

Classically, data doesn’t really stay in Drafts. Drafts can be used, for example, to record a list of to-do items that you want to send to OmniFocus or Things. You don’t have to think about fiddling with these apps’ particular UIs; rather, you can simply create a list of possible actions items, gathered under the rubric of a larger project, and fire them off into your to-do manager. It allows for immediate capture, but minimal reprocessing on the back end.

And that’s how you really need to think about Drafts. I have a to-do item; I’ll open Drafts. I need to email so-and-so; I’ll open Drafts. I have an appointment next Friday at 2 pm; I’ll open Drafts. I need to message Bob; I’ll open Drafts. Drafts parses your input into your favorite app and does so in a way that is scary-smart.

And once it’s done? It archives the input.

This means, if you used it religiously, that you could see the genesis of most of your digital undertakings inside of Drafts.

Does this lend to fiddliness? Sure, it can. You can find many different actions, for example, to take input from Drafts into OmniFocus. And you can spend a day caterogorizing actions. You can create workspaces that show drafts based on tag, status, or other criteria. But you can settle on about five Actions and be pretty damn happy with Drafts, reap the benefits, and catch up with Twitter, all in the same day.

To be clear, Actions aren’t included with Drafts for Mac today. The system-wide share sheet is the current alternative, and while that’s exciting to hard-core Drafts users over the long haul, having Drafts everywhere means a lot.

Do I really need another application in my life?

One of my main problems, as I’ve noted in posts prior, is finding One App to Rule Them All: digital shoebox, a la my beloved but abandoned Yojimbo, and now DEVONthink; and text-intensive, lightweight apps such as iA Writer and Bear. I don’t like writing in Yojimbo or DEVONThink, but I like having info there. I like writing in iA Writer and Bear, but they will require a considerable amount of review if you’re going to treat them as a place to park odd bits of data.

Drafts is perfect in this regard. You can easily start in Drafts, enjoy the low-chrome, text-only, Markdown-friendly writing environment, but then send the text off to a place where you can search for it. There’s nothing that keeps you from leaving notes in Drafts, even in the iOS-only days, except that the information isn’t available to you using Spotlight when you’re in front of your Mac. And let’s face it: when you’re getting work done, you’re often in front of your Mac.

Drafts, as an iOS-only application, mean that you would have to switch to your phone (or iPad) to find a snipped of information. But that’s no longer the cast; Drafts for the Mac syncs across all of your devices, so irrespective of which device you used to create the draft, it syncs to all of your devices.

So Drafts for the Mac allows me to quick-input text data using a quick input panel reminiscent of that used my OmniFocus or Things. This is perfect.

Unlike other apps, Drafts takes a kind of GTD-inbox approach to file organization; notes are created in the Inbox, and are sent, depending upon how you like to use the application, to an Archive. I like this very much, as it comports with how I use email: the inbox is for processing. I don’t leave email there that requires my attention. I either send it off to OmniFocus, act on it, or delete/archive it.

Archived input after an action has been applied means that you never lose anything. Like a good email system, you can easily go back and find an entry. Drafts supports Spotlight integration as well, so you don’t have to remember that you saved something in Drafts.

Drafts, therefore, will afford me the means to write in a text-centric environment that favors Markdown and Taskpaper, and then send those notes where I will: Taskpaper to OmniFocus and Markdown to a text file, or Bear, or DevonTHINK. MailMate makes it easy to send messages to DEVONthink, as does Safari.

Truth be told, though, with the elevation of Drafts to the Mac, there’s no reason that it can’t replace Bear, iA Writer, or Notes. I’ll leave active notes in the Inbox, but otherwise, the text goes elsewhere (ie OmniFocus or Fantastical) or exists as reference material in the Archive. I can tag each Draft, indeed; but I suspect I’ll let search handle retrieval for me.

Workspaces

Workspaces are a welcome addition to Drafts, as they add a feature that users of apps like Yojimbo, Bear and SimpleNote would be looking for: tag groups. You can tag drafts in Drafts, and then create a Workspace to show you just the drafts that meet your criteria.

You might, for example, tag drafts with the tag “draft,” and then another tag for a specific website you write for, or perhaps Twitter. So my “Blog Drafts” Workspace shows me drafts tagged “draft” and “uncorrected.net,” while I could create another Workspace for draft Tweets that shows me items tagged “draft” and “Twitter.”

You get the idea.

Wrapping it all up

Drafts, parked in your Dock, is the place to start: blog posts, emails, recipes, novels… you name it. Drafts will store text for you, but that’s not really the point. Drafts is the quick and easy place to start; its powerful features help you refine and send your writing to its next destination.