The experiment for the day is to use the Reminders app to remind me of random stuff in the future. When I stumble across some quote or cool thought, I am scheduling them in Reminders for random dates in the future.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

The other thing I am scheduling are things like "One year ago you were thinking [thought here]" or "One year ago you wanted to ". It maybe cool to get reminded of where I was at a year ago to see how far I've moved pieces.

When I am out and about, I get ideas for drum patterns. Sometimes I am without pen(cil) and paper, but I always have a device (phone, watch, etc.).

I could draw music notation in a sketch app; I can't do that on the watch. I could record the beat doing some sort of beatbox with a voice memo app, but I am not going to be doing that on a crowded train.

This means I need some way to get drum ideas out of the brain and into the inbox with plain text. Using R's and L's and any other characters to get them somewhere.

The patterns will live on their own page and there might be an RSS feed in the future. I am still trying to decide how to handle that.

Patterns

My watch has an action button. You can set it to do things like "turn on the flashlight" and many other things. One of them is to "run a shortcut".

I finally got around to making a shortcut where I can dictate (or type) into Drafts and make a quick note. I set the action button to run that shortcut.

It rules. I can get a thought out my head and captured in seconds. I can do it on a crowded train without pulling out a phone. I can whisper the idea and it can still understand me.

Steps

1. Make a shortcut called "Action Button"
2. Add the "Get Device Details (Extended)" action and set it to "Device Is Watch"
3. Add the Dictate Text action
4. Add the Set Variable action, give the variable a name, and have it accept Dictate Text
5. Add the "Create Draft" action and have it accept your variable
6. Set you watches Action button to use your Action Button shortcut.

The only way I could get it to work was by using a variable. I tried to create a a Draft by accepting the dictated text directly and nothing would happen. Adding the variable step made it work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After watching a video about iterative thinking, it made me feel less bummed about trying ways to organize projects in my to-do system. The video reminded me to enjoy a failure because you get to try the next idea. Each attempt is a chance to level-up the skills.

I am currently working on a website that has a couple hundred music releases. Each release has a list of songs. Unfortunately the song lists aren't formated correctly. They all have a number at the beginning and a time at the end and they aren't in a proper html ol list element.

ex: 1. song name 2:34

I need the "1." gone and the "2:34" wrapped in parenthesis for each song in each release. Shortcuts has an Ask ChatGPT action that is perfect for this scenario.

Shortcut

1. Get Clipboard
2. Ask ChatGPT to "Convert these song names into html <ol> and put parenthesis around the times at the end of the song name. If it has no time, ignore that step. Remove the numbers at the beginning. Give me only the <ol>: "
3. Copy AskGPT results to Clipboard

There is a few extra find/replace actions I didn't include because they are project specific. I just need to copy the list and run the shortcut and I get a nice, tidy ol list of all song names formated like this...

song name (2:34)

If you have to do a thing more than 3-4 times, there is an automation. The beauty of Shortcuts is you can make one quick, use it, and then delete it. I don't save them because creating them is great practice. Over time you start to level up your building skills.

Sidenote: I did hit a limit with ChatGPT after a while..."You've reached our limit of messages per hour. Please try again later."

Finally got the Things 3 app set up for GTD using the setup guide the David Allen GTD website provides. The setup was easy and intuitive but I ran into one tiny snag for my tasks.

I get a task from work that has multiple steps to it. According to the GTD philosophy, the title of the task would be the project. All the steps are next actions that go in the various contexts separately.

Example

Project: Add the image to the website

Next Actions: 1. Get the image from server 2. Upload the image to the site

So that part is easy. The project goes on the Projects list and those next actions go on the Computer list. All three get tagged with the Work tag as well as the acronym of the client.

Problem

The snag I was running into is when I click on the client’s tag in Things to get into Focus mode for the client, I got every Project and Next Action for the client.

That was unacceptable because it switched me from Focus mode to Sky Falling mode. I needed to find a simple way to focus on just the current task.

Solution

If SKU numbers work for record labels around the world, they should work in a to-do app. I tried giving a Project and its Next Actions a SKU number with the client acronym and a number like mpls–001.

It totally worked. I went into the Anytime section, clicked the tag for mpls–001, and I got just the Project and Next Actions for that tag. Totally blissful.

While rethinking how to dictate things into Drafts, I had an a-ha moment. I really just need to get a noun into the system quickly while I am out doing stuff. The nouns are the things that change the most in my tasks. The verbs are more or less kinda constant.

I set up a quick capture system using Drafts on the watch (dictation or typing), an Apple Shortcut to add a verb to the captured noun, and then the "sentence" gets sent to my to-do list inbox.

It isn't hard to type a verb for sure but this makes it so I don't have to type out hundreds and hundreds of verbs.

Very cool. ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

Shift-option-command-V is the shortcut for pasting text as Plain Text. If I was less lazy, I'd go change the keyboard shortcuts so that Command-V would paste as Plain Text.

Mac OS should have a game mode for Trash. The way trash is now, you get the pleasing sound but you don't get the thrill of making a basket. If there was a game mode for Trash, you could have random mini-games popup from time-to-time when you trash a file.

It would be set up so the game would only pop-up for files older than a certain date to prevent people from making new files and trashing them just to play the game. Gaming the Trash might also encourage people to clear out digital clutter too.

By the way, I have done zero searches to see if this already exists. ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

The activities app that comes with the Apple Watch was recording when I play drums as an Outdoor Run. That was good enough for me to get some credit for the effort and didn't think any more of it.

I noticed the other day that a fitness tracker app I started using had "drumming" as a workout choice. That blew my mind because it was the first time I have ever seen that in any fitness related app.

Last night at rehearsal I hit the Drumming button for the first time. Today when I look back at yesterday's info, it's very cool to see the drummer icon.