There is a new action in Shortcuts that uses an on-device AI model that I am curious about this morning. There are many tasks in my reminders app. Some are interesting that I love to think on and daydream about. Come up with next actions and move towards a goal.

But then there are those other tasks that make you sigh and want to skip. Those ones need a little robot love for coming up with some quick, obvious next steps.

I set up a shortcut to run for those using the new "Use Model" action set to on-device, a couple of Ask for Input actions, and a New Reminder action.

The first Ask for Input prompt asks me what the task is. The second prompt asks me what success looks like. Then the Use Modal action has its request set to take the task and give me the next actions to get to success in four steps or less. I also added to the request to only include the steps. If you don’t, it includes messages like "Certainly! Here are the steps..." which I don't need for the task.

The new reminder uses the task as the title and puts the outcome and next actions in the notes. I ran it on a simple task like "Take out the trash" with success looking like "The trash bin will be empty". I got this reminder...

Take out the trash
## Outcome: The trash bin will be empty.
## Next Actions
- Empty the trash bin into a waste bag.
- Seal the waste bag securely.
- Place the waste bag in the recycling or waste collection bin.
- Ensure the trash bin is closed and locked.

A simple example for sure, but this rules. It is nice to have some next actions for the monotonous daily life tasks and ideas.

Are they always going to be the right next steps? Nope.
Will an incorrect list of next actions ping my brain to come up with the correct ones? Yep.

Would I run this on a long list of tasks and fill up the Reminders app with tasks? No way. One by one. Review them and tidy them. Don't give yourself a future task of tidying an overgrown inbox full of tasks with incorrect next actions.

Slight adjustment to the blog today. A couple of things were starting to bug me, so I did a little course correction this morning.

The moon phase posting schedule is really fun, but I need to adjust it a bit. There have been a couple of times I was excited to post, and it was in between the quarters. So what do I do then? Should I wait to post on the quarter? That is too much thinking for me. I should post when there is something to post.

So I added a moon phase selector to blog posts. That way, I can note when in the moon cycle the post was posted at least. That also means there I can use the full range of moon phases. I'll be losing the "moon as post trigger," but I think later on it might be fun to see if there are any trends with the phases and my posts.

The second thing this will do is remove some visual clutter in the post titles. I was including the moon phases in the post title. It was cool for a while. As more and more posts had them, the titles were starting to get more difficult to look at, I think. So back to the normal titles and then add the moon phase emoji is fine.

I've folded in tidying up my reminders and events in to my morning writing. It's turning out to be a thing that I look forward to which rules while the brain is halfway awake. Basically I've been adding why and how to tasks as a writing exercise.

With each task I have, I am supposed to be including what the outcome will look like and the next action(s). I can through about five to seven of them done within the 200 word goal. It is extra work for task creation for sure.

As I slowly get through them all, each task is becoming like a mini-story. It reads like...

• Do this
• Because you need things to be like this
• So do this first

I don't know why but reading the first two lines build up momentum. Then when I get to the third one, I have some speed built up and seem to do the thing more then when I don't include the "why" and "how". It's like every time my brain wants to act like a misbehaving child, the retort is in the next line.

Reminders: "Do this task"

Brain: "Why the eff should I?"

Reminders: "Because this is what success will look like."

Brain: "I don't know how."

Reminders: "Do this first."

New moon time coming up and that means a fresh cycle for the blog posts. Originally, I was going to be strict using the moon as a writing prompt. I had themes for each one, but that waned a bit. I do use the moon as the trigger to write the post still, but it is more fun to write about things exciting or interesting instead of the rigid schedule.

Using the moon as the schedule has made me more interested in the less famous phases of it as well. So, this is still a good way to blog for me.

The new moon is the recent phase, and that was supposed to be writing about things I am starting in on. Probably the most recent thing is that I am practicing drawing from a book called The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. There is a drawing practice schedule in it that I am following loosely.

I bring some random paper in some form with me and do the exercise while killing time somewhere. Cafe time is good. Waiting for someone shopping or whatever is good. Waiting for some band to start is good.

Also, my favorite thing so far with the book is that the author is s.｡oO particular about pencils. I laughed out loud when the first exercise called for a 3B pencil on newsprint-level paper. I proudly have those on my desk.

I use an application I love called Hazel on my Mac. It watches files and folders for almost anything you want and then applies rules to them that you set up.

One thing I use the most is rules that react to tags. When I tag files in Downloads, they magically move themselves where they need to be. You can burn through a long list of files, tag them up, and then move on while they sort themselves.

This rules except suddenly the keyboard shortcut I had set up for tagging files and folders stopped working. I seriously couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for a couple of weeks. I switched to right-clicking on files and tagging that way.

This morning I did a little more digging and finally figured out what was wrong with the shortcut. It is kind of maddening.

For my shortcut's menu title, I had "Tags...". I was using three periods. This is incorrect. It needs to be an actual ellipsis, which is made by pressing Option-semicolon.

After that, you might need to relaunch Finder, then tagging with a keyboard shortcut should be back.