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by surprisetalk·3y ago·view on hn ↗
On iOS, there's a shortcuts app that enables you to automate things.

I have a shortcut for the following:

  Receive Any input from Share Sheet, Quick Actions
    If there's no input Ask For Text
      |
  Append Shortcut input to Documents/inbox.txt (make new line)
Every morning I sort lines from my inbox file into todo.txt, ideas.txt, calendar, etc. It's pretty much a modified version of GTD:

[1] https://hamberg.no/gtd

I have one idea per line in my ideas.txt file, so I use the following to pick some random ideas:

  cat ideas.txt | shuf | head -n 20
Reviewing old ideas is all about cross-pollination. With fresh eyes, I'll sometimes append a small insight to the line, or delete ideas that have lost their magic.

When ideas get too large to fit on a single line, I break them out into unpublished essays. And if I work on them long enough, eventually I publish them :)

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Whoa, what a coincidence! I just checked my ideas file, and I'm exactly at 3333 lines.

    cat ideas.txt | wc -l
    3333