Drafts Actions vs Shortcuts

I find myself in a cycle of:

Drafts + Actions → Drafts + Shortcuts → Shortcuts on the Desktop → Getting annoyed at the unreliability of Shortcuts → back to Drafts + Actions.

Am I the only one? And how do you choose Drafts + Actions vs Drafts + Shortcuts. Also for those doing contextual computing with shortcuts on the desktop. Do you find that to be reliable? I find Shortcuts becomes unresponsive a couple times a day to the point that I have to bounce my phone.

If I can do it in Drafts without Shortcuts I do. Then if I need to run it with something like Pushcut, I have a Shortcut run the action. I like to stay in one app as much as possible.

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Like Rose, I do pretty much everything I need to within Drafts itself rather than going out to Shortcuts.

Maybe there’s something we can do to help you with what you’re doing if you can share some specifics around where there are issues: though if it is inter-app communication, then Shortcuts may still be your best plumbing option.

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I’m not sure there is anything I haven’t been able to do (other than Drafts → Due → Drafts on the Mac but that isn’t solved with shortcuts either). Rather, I find myself thinking shortcuts is so much easier than javascript. I also end up writing shortcuts to be able to interact with voice and the dev in me wants to not repeat myself so I move all drafts to shortcuts. Once drafts itself gets replaced with a shortcut I know I’ve gone too far and I’m back at the beginning again :slight_smile:

Mostly I just noticed a cycle. I’m re-listening to the Nested Folders intro to GTD as well as GTD Nordic which is getting me excited about drafts for capture again. I’m realizing perhaps I’m using this cycle as a way to avoid clarifying which is leading to procrastination :slight_smile:

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The “stay in one place if you can” mantra is a good one. It’s best to minimise the “app boundary crossing” - to the extent you can. For two reasons:

  • Stuff gets lost in translation, or at any rate needs more marshalling.
  • Inevitably crossing an app boundary costs time.

Oh, a third one might be

  • Stuff flashing up in front of you gets old very quickly.

The “if you can” in my first sentence, though, is important; I wouldn’t sacrifice function for the other three considerations.

For me, whether I use a Drafts action or a Shortcut kind of depends on the context. For example, I’ve got an evening review Shortcut that does a bunch of things with Drafts, and in that one zI’m trying to use all Shortcuts actions since I hate flipping between Drafts and Shortcuts.

In the case where I almost always run the action from Drafts, well obviously I try not to use Shortcuts since again, I hate flipping between apps. My real problem tends to come from situations where I use the action a lot in both situations. For example, writing to my journal. Unfortunately then the only choices are to duplicate the functionality or just make a decision and be slightly annoyed some of the time, :relaxed: . For me at least that decision often turns out to be shortcuts since it’s faster to write in unless I already have a Drafts action that does almost everything I need that I can modify or whatever I’m trying to do is a pain in Shortcuts.

That really doesn’t answer anything, does it?

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Welcome to my world. :slight_smile:

Seriously, I think it’s a useful contribution as it illustrates the considerations.

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