shortcuts

  • Automatically Sending Tasks in Bear Notes to Todoist

    There were two notable things I did this weekend: spend it with my kids, as it was my wife’s weekend to work (she’s a nurse and must work one weekend per month), and build a series of clever automations using Apple’s Shortcuts app.

    I love using the Bear Notes app for most things, like quickly logging tasks. This includes my 5 Critical Actions for the week, and any open threads I have at the end of the day*.

    But Todoist is my main task manager, with reminders, subtasks, and the whole 9 yards.

    So I ended up building 3 Shortcuts to send tasks from Bear to Todoist:

    1. Process tasks specifically in the 5 Critical Actions note. I did this so I can properly label the tasks as such…Todoist doesn’t let you create create labels on the fly.
    2. Process any note via the Share Sheet
    3. Process every note, looking for tasks in all of them, and creating the tasks plus a link back to the original note for context.

    I’ll share the first one with you here…the other two are reserved for members.

  • How I’m Experimenting with Automation (Spring 2022)

    Back in the summer of 2018, I talked about how I was going to dedicate more time to automation. Since then, I’ve automated significant parts of my business, including guest outreach and booking, project creation, and even workspace configuration.

    Now that Shortcuts has reasonably good Mac support, and I have an Apple Silicon Mac, I’m re-evaluating my automation strategy and exploring what more I can do with these tools.