Tech Tip - Drafts - Easily Capture Your Thoughts and Then Do Something With Them
Drafts is a simple, yet powerful app for iOS devices. It can work equally as well on the small screen of an iPhone or the bigger iPads. It is always nice to have different options for how to get things done. I have several apps I use for writing or taking notes, some just fit the specific need better than others. Drafts is one of those apps that fills a unique niche for me.
Capture Your Thoughts Quickly
What does Drafts do best? It is best used for quick capture, free form notes. I use the application when I need to quickly capture a thought or an idea for a future project or article. The application opens quickly and allows you to begin writing immediately. That is what makes it great. You can type, or trigger its dictation engine and start talking.
It syncs beautifully and seamlessly across all of the iOS devices, so you never have to worry about which device you have. If you want to pick up where you left off later on a different device - it will be there. Drafts also offers an Apple Watch app that allows easy dictation into the app. Open the Drafts app on the watch, click the microphone button and begin speaking. As with the other versions, it syncs right to the app on all devices so it ready when and where you are. I tend to use this in the car when I have an idea. I can begin dictating my thoughts with two taps on my wrist.Because of the power behind Drafts, I frequently use Drafts to type emails in a distraction-free environment. Inevitably, when I am typing emails in Outlook (or any other mail application), new emails come in, and I can't always help but look at them or at a minimum be distracted by them. Writing an email in Drafts keeps me focused on the task at hand and not the noise around it on the screen.
Format Your Text
Drafts allows you to format your text in almost every way possible and will easily carry over to other word processing applications without issue. In fact, it makes it extremely simple to do that. The toolbar is always available for quick actions - formatting and otherwise. It is just as usable on the iPhone as it is the iPad. I tend to use the iPhone for quick capture notes or dictation and do editing and longer form writing on the iPad just for the sake of using a bigger keyboard (onscreen or external).
Drafts is versatile enough to allow people to write in whatever way makes it most comfortable for them. One of the things that I appreciate is it allows for markdown syntax. In the screenshot below, you can see the raw form of this article before it received its formatting. In the header above this section, you can see multiple hashtags and two asterisks in front of the text. Those symbols tell the application that I want to use a Level 4 header (font size) and bold the text. Without getting into a lot of detail about Markdown, it is a way that allows you to format text directly from the keyboard instead of having to select text and then format by clicking or tapping somewhere else.
Doing Something With Your Text
I mentioned Drafts lets you do a lot with your text when you are done writing. Once you capture your thoughts, ideas, or even longer form writing, you can choose where and how you want to send it someplace else. Drafts creates a lot of automated solutions that can work with many different applications and processes. Using my email example, I can write my email and with a simple tap send that information directly to the mail app within iOS. The first line becomes the subject line of the email, from there you can enter the address of whom you want to send to, then just as you would in your mail app, press send. Done.
You can take many different actions on your text within Drafts. A powerful feature of the application is allowing your to string multiple actions together. In the screenshot above, you could see in addition to Mail there were other apps that with one touch I could send my text directly to for additional editing or storage. Any of those could be combined as well.One specific use I have for Drafts and using it with different apps or process is an agenda I create each week for my Team Update Meeting. I write the agenda in Drafts, then with one tap I can send the email to the team and Drafts moves my formatted text to Bear. Bear is the application I use to store and reference notes. It is a time saver and allows me to combine the complete action in one step.Drafts is an application produced by Agile Tortoise. It is simple to use in its basic format, yet has so many powerful options as you dig into it. While I do not usually use Drafts for writing my full articles (I use Ulysses - I will cover that in the future), I did write this article in Drafts and will then send the full text to Ulysses where I will connect all of the screenshots and finalize everything before sending to be published on the website. I was also able to bounce seamlessly between my iPhone, a separate iPad, and the iPad I typed this on. Productivity and ease at its finest.This only scratches the surface of what Drafts can do and what it may mean for you. I encourage you to give it a try today.Join other retail leaders in continuing their development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com. SUBSCRIBE today to receive leadership tips directly to your inbox and monthly newsletters that provide many tools to help further develop your leadership skills. JOIN NOW!No spam ever - just leadership goodness.