I’ve been using Craft for a couple of years now, much more so since last summer. I was initially attracted to Craft because it is a beautiful environment to work in, and enables me to easily create attractive and functional documents.
As I’ve worked more with Craft I’ve found myself using it for a number of purposes. It’s a part of some of my most essential and often-used workflows.
My experience has also taught me about the limitations of the app. Over the past 8 months, I’ve made a number of adjustments to how I use the app, and where it best fits in my workflows.
1. Project Folders
All of my project folders reside in Craft. Typically, I’ll start with a copy of my New Project Checklist, in which I record the purpose of the project and my thinking about it. I use the checklist to guide my searches of material I might already have.
As I collect material or links to articles, I’ll add it to the project folder. If some of the material I’ll need to complete the project are in another location (DevonThink, a file or folder in iCloud, a website), I’ll use the Hookmark app to easily create bidirectional links between the two files. See my post, Unlock the Benefits of Linking with Hookmark: Save Time, Avoid Distraction & Work Efficiently.
If a project suggests associated tasks, I open a new task in my task manager, Things. I’ll typically create a bidirectional link between the project file in Craft and the task in Things using Hookmark, so that I can easily jump back and forth between the two.
If the project is associated with a date, I’ll note it in Fantastical (to be replaced with either BusyCal or the Apple Calendar when the current subscription ends). I’ll also use Hookmark to create bidirectional links between Craft and Fantastical.
2. Blog Post Idea Development
All my blog ideas go into my “Blog Post Ideas” folder in Craft. I use a shortcut to jot down the title of the idea and my initial thoughts about what I might include in the blog post and open a new document in the Blog Post Ideas folder. If I run across a Readwise highlight that is relevant, I’ll save it to the same document.
After I’ve collected sufficient materials, I’ll cut and paste my thoughts into a new MindNode document under the outline section. This populates a mind map with my initial thoughts and gives me a foundation to work from. See my post, Everything I Do Starts With Mind Mapping.
I’ll typically return to the mind map several times as new thoughts come to me about the topic, to experiment with the post organization, and look for gaps in my thinking that need to be filled in. When my mind map is complete and I’m ready to write the post, I use a Keyboard Maestro macro to open Ulysses on the left side of my screen, and the mind map on the right.
I use Ulysses because it is a clean, simple Markdown editor. It allows me to publish directly to my WordPress blog. See my post, How I Use Ulysses, Craft & MindNode to Write & Publish Blog Posts.
3. My Secondary Personal Knowledge Management System
If I save or write materials in Craft that I want to keep as a part of my PKM system, I will export these files to DevonThink. Last year my intention was to make Craft the primary repository for all of my PKM materials, but in December I decided to make DevonThink my primary PKM system, and Craft secondary.
I found that I was duplicating my work by using DevonThink to collect materials and then importing material into Craft from DevonThink. I was using DevonThink because it has many valuable features that Craft did not have (which are also missing from such popular apps as Obsidian, Roam Research, and Notion).
DevonThink has an excellent web clipper feature that lets me import web materials into DevonThink in multiple formats. DevonThink also automatically OCRs imported documents. DevonThink can easily convert documents to different file formats.
Two features that weighed heavily in my decision to use DevonThink for my PKM were:
– It easily takes just about any file format I throw at it. I can drag and drop files from the finder or desktop into it without having to go through an import process (and export them the same way). It takes PDFs, MindNode files, photos, whatever.
– It has a killer AI-assisted search function.
4. Using Craft for What It’s Great At
With increasing experience, I’m learning what Craft is really great at for me, and what it’s not so great at. When another app does a better job performing a function than Craft does, I use that app.
What I am using Craft for:
– It’s a beautiful writing environment. I used to start out writing thoughts, emails, etc. in Drafts — I’m now doing all of this in Craft. I enjoy writing in Craft. When I finish creating a document in Craft, I’ll store it there, export it or cut and paste it into another app I need it in.
– It’s an easy way to produce documents that look great and have great functionality. I enjoy working from a beautiful and functional template in Craft for recurring tasks. For examples see my blog post, The Power of Quarterly and Weekly Reviews.
– I create documents in Craft that I want to make accessible to others through the web-sharing system in Craft.
– I enjoy putting all or almost all of my initial thoughts, Readwise quotations, links, etc. in one Craft document in a project folder instead of having it spread out in 3-5 different documents. The formatting in Craft makes it easy to organize and present this information in a way that graphically works much better than just chunks of text.
5. Experiment with Craft
If you haven’t explored Craft before, I encourage you to take a look at it. It does some things that no other app I’m aware of can do.
If you have worked with Craft, I encourage you to experiment with different ways in which it might improve your workflow and make your work more enjoyable.