I’m intrigued by NotePlan and I’m willing to give it a shot. My goal is to make final decisions by the end of the month and then stick to it for a year.
Question, how do you perform a weekly review of all of your tasks/projects in a program like NP and how do you send emails to the program so they become todos? I do this all the time and its an important part of my workflow.
EDIT: I doubt that I’ll change. I depend on the ability to bcc or forward emails to OF. I also benefit from the Quick Entry and Review features. Nevertheless, I appreciate the suggestion!
I you run a search you can then filter the scope you need (“Current book”, “All Books”). Also, you can hit the little home Icon and run the search, it will run across your books, per content or per title.
I think this will be how I use AN going forward. Up to now, I have put all of my meeting and project notes in AN but, unfortunately, I can no longer trust it for that use.
I look at alternatives to AN every so often. At work I use Windows and have used OneNote extensively over the years. It’s fair to say I have not taken to OneNote at home on Mac / iOS as I am primarily using AN. I previously used Evernote and have also used many of the iPad handwriting notetaking apps.
I don’t object to subscriptions for MS Office and Photoshop / Lightroom for photographers, but I do have a problem paying a similar amount for a notetaking app.
My primary concern with notetaking PKM apps is whether data is stored outside my country of residence. Some apps seem to go to lengths to conceal this. For example, in the case of Day One: “Your data is stored on your device. If you sign in with a free Day One account, your data is also backed up to your account, just in case anything happens to your device.” Fine, but we get these apps to sync across devices, so where is my account backup?
For a current project, I am looking to take notes on a calendar view but linked to data in folders on my Mac. Ideally I’d like a note in each folder. I have considered Obsidian, Day One, Craft and Agenda and it looks like the next step is to try out one of them for this project and see what works.
I must be doing something wrong then, because I can’t find a string of text inside the only document in the notebooks. It can find the string in the currently selected document, but not if I don’t have that document selected.
For emails, I write the task and link to the email, but I only figured that out a few weeks ago. Before that I wasn’t linking to the email.
For a weekly review, I have to date not done a proper weekly review. I move forward all my outstanding tasks from daily notes and the weekly note, and then skim my list of all open tasks.
However, I want to be more structured with this in 2023 so earlier this week I set up a template for a weekly review which I will hopefully commit to in 2023. That’s a weekly note template that asks me a couple of questions, prompts me to review tasks, etc.
(@Bmosbacker re: weekly review) NotePlan has four built-in filters: All Tasks, Tasks in Notes (excludes tasks in Daily Notes), Overdue Tasks, Tasks Coming Up. These filters are great for review and will not allow any tasks to get lost.
I agree with this. Since I gave up using Evernote, I use two apps (in different ways)
Upnote - I like the amazing sync, I use it on Mac and mobile , sync is almost instantenous. I use this mainly to store information that i need to access no matter where I am, medication information, driving license, certificates, important pdfs, etc. Also convert photos to notes. The secret link sharing is wonderful, even works with others not having Upnote. I have asked the developer to enable a folder sharing mechanism so that I do not have to create a separate share link for each note. if this is available, this will enhance the sharing features tremendously. It also has web clipper but this is another area for improvement,
Notebooks - I like the fact that it uses standard folder structure, which is good and bad, ie. I have to rely on iCloud sync to get the files to other devices, which is at the mercy of Apple, when they feel like syncing the files. I use this for more structured notes, folders. I set up a family shared Notebook and I can keep adding nested folders and filles.
The short answer is “yes”. But it works best from iOS/iPadOS.
I currently use Notebooks as more of a filing cabinet, and my meeting and project notes (which generate a lot of tasks for me) reside in Craft. I use one of the Craft extensions to send either a single task, or a block of tasks to OF, which includes a link back to the specific Craft block). If you have a bunch of tasks in a Craft note, there is an excellent extension on the Omni Automation site (Recreating Structured Craft Content in OmniFocus) which can create a new OF project with sub-tasks.
According to Notebooks feature overview (Feature Overview • Notebooks), it can “Send tasks to OmniFocus, Things, Firetask, Ideabook or Appigo Todo (the applications need to be installed)”. The caveat is “Some of the features listed above are not yet available in Notebooks for Mac and Windows, but they will follow step by step.”. The feature IS available in the iOS app using the share menu. It will either share the note itself or if you selected a specific task it will share just that task to OF, with a link to the Notebooks note in the OF note. On the Mac it the share menu will share the entire note to OF which is not that useful.
A workaround if you’re a Hookmarks user (which I also highly recommend): you can “hook to new…” and select OmniFocus, which will create a new task in the OF inbox with a link to whichever item you hooked (for Notebooks this will be a link to the Notebooks note/document). You can then also create a new Hookmark link for the OF task and paste it wherever as well.
Another Mac workaround is to use the OF Popclip extension to create a new OF task using the highlighted text in Notebooks. It won’t incl a link back to the note however. I’m sure one could quite easily create a Shortcut to get tasks into OF as well.
I think we all have done similar - you’ve just shared your experiences more than some which I’m sure we all appreciate. I sincerely doubt anyone feels mislead. What’s so useful about a forum like this is we can all learn from one another’s experiences. You’ve probably saved a whole bunch of us the hassle of going through this ourselves!
My own “trick” is to use SimpleNote for any note that I know has no use beyond at most a week or two. Essentially scratch paper.
And then I use AN for things that I want to keep more “permanently”. This simple binary “division” of notes is all the organizing that I do. In AN I simply search for what I am looking for. With my “basic” life and just a couple hundred Apple Notes that is all I need to do. If you try and be compulsively organized and create a bunch of buckets/folders where things “go” my problem is that there are borderline situations and it is later unclear to me just which bucket I would have put some item in.
I know that everything in SimpleNotes is disposable/“not precious”. For me it syncs just fine between iOS and a couple of computers.
@Bmosbacker I love working in Craft – it’s a beautiful environment and I enjoy working with the documents I can easily create in it. But, I also love a lot of the features in DevonThink that you can’t find anywhere else in 1 neat package:
OCR
Fantastic web clipper
Converts files from one format to another
Edits stored documents in the app they were created in
Easy drag-and-drop input and export
Takes and works with every type of file I’ve ever thrown at it – photos, pdfs, MindNode mind maps, whatever. (A major limitation with Obsidian that for me rules it out of consideration)
I’ve been using Craft for my PKM notes, project files, and lots of beautiful and functional documents (like my weekly and quarterly review checklists, lists of pdf and web resources, etc.) But I’m also still using DT for things Craft can’t handle (like MindNode files).
So, I’m thinking of going all-in with DT for PKM notes and file storage, but continue to use Craft for what it’s best at – creating beautiful and functional, web-shareable documents. I’d use Hookmark or the native URL schemes to link files in the two apps together when helpful.
I’m not sure where I’ll wind up with this, but those are my thoughts right now.
Best wishes to you as you work through all of this!
