The first step I took when I revamped my GTD system was how I was capturing and managing my tasks and ideas. In a previous post, I gave an overview of my new GTD system and found the number one problem I had was dumping everything into OmniFocus. OmniFocus became my place for collecting and doing, which caused a drag on my overall system. By allowing myself to mix the two steps together I made a mess of doing a weekly review because I had to think if an OmniFocus entry was an action or an idea that needed further processing on. I’ve changed my habit to collect into Drafts first and defer notes to either OmniFocus, Evernote, Fantastical, or the delete bucket.

Here are some of the steps I’ve taken to automate or streamline my Collection phase.

Drafts setup

The first thing I’ve done is standardize on the tabs I’ve got setup in Drafts. This way I have the same action, on the same tab, regardless of what device I’m using.

• I - Actions Tab: Any action that would use or manipulate the content of the note. This is where I keep actions like adding an event to Fantastical or a task to OmniFocus.
• II - Communication Tab: Any action that may be used for dedicated communication actions. This is where I have a dedicated task to email my wife, my Markdown email action, etc.
• III - Dropbox Tab: Any action that uses a Dropbox type of action. I have actions like dedicated running log files on Dropbox, create a new text file in my overall system notes folder, etc.
• IIII - Evernote & Send To: Any action that uses Evernote type of action or sending a note to a dedicated app (e.g. Byword or Editorial)
• Hidden: This is where I’ll keep iterative actions that can’t be run directly. For example, if an action goes out to app, returns some text, and then runs another action. That second action isn’t one I’d run directly, so it stays on the Hidden tab.

If you’re a multiple iOS device user, I have a quick tip on getting multiple iOS devices setup with the same actions and tab settings.

Collecting in iOS

There are several tools I use with Drafts as part of my collection steps in iOS. Listed below is a summary of how each one is set up.

Safari Fav Bar: I’m doing a lot more of my work on my iPad lately and the screen space allows Safari to have a toolbar visible.[1] This means that some of my custom book marklets are now available while browsing.

Web Clipper: One of my regular tools is a book marklet in Safari to call on a Pythonista script to return information back to Drafts. This is useful

Book marklet:

javascript:window.location='pythonista://ImportToDrafts?action=run&argv='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)%20+'&argv='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)

Pythonista script:

import webbrowser
import clipboard
import urllib
import sys

title = sys.argv[1]
url = sys.argv[2]
note = clipboard.get()

full_note = ''.join([title,'\n\n', url, '\n\n', note])
full_note = urllib.quote(full_note.encode('utf-8'))

webbrowser.open('drafts://x-callback-url/create?text=' + full_note)

So now when I’m on a web page in Safari, I can highlight some portion of text I want to keep, click my Drafts book marklet, and poof… the clipped text and URL are in Drafts.

Here’s an example of a webpage I’m clipping:

And here’s the corresponding note in Drafts:

Key Drafts Actions

I’ve shared most of my key Drafts actions before, but here are my essential Drafts actions.

Fantastical: I enter all my calendar and reminder events through Fantastical, even though the iPad doesn’t have a native Fantastical app. The natural language processing with Fantastical makes this one of the easiest ways to enter events.

fantastical2://x-callback-url/parse/?sentence=[[line|1]]&notes=[[line|2..]]&add=1&x-source=Drafts&x-success={{drafts://}}&x-cancel={{drafts://}}

Click here to install Drafts Action: Fantastical

OmniFocus: OmniFocus is still my default task/action list management app. The only downside I still have with OmniFocus is that it doesn’t support a full x-callback-url action, so when a note is added to OmniFocus I stay in OmniFocus.

Click here to install Drafts Action: OmniFocus

Evernote: Evernote is has become my idea and digital reference file box. This action uses Drafts [[line|n]] tag to use the first line as the title of the note, line two for the tags I want to apply to the note, and the rest of the Drafts note as the document to be saved in Evernote.

Click here to install Drafts Action: Add to Evernote

Note Management

The next step I took was to turn on note syncing in Drafts. This allows a note created on my iPhone to be available for processing on my iPad later in the day. In addition to note syncing, I turned on the badge count. Now I have a clear way to see if I still have unprocessed information in Drafts when I sit down to do my weekly review. If Drafts shows any unprocessed notes, I know I need to clean that up before doing a my full weekly review.

Next step

The next post will explore some of the ways I’ve automated my task management processes in OmniFocus.

Got any questions? Feel free to hit me up on Twitter at @MyGeekDaddy.