Author: Doug Warren

Arc – Browse for me
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Arc – Browse for me

The Browser Company released this week’s update to Arc browser with several interesting features: Arc Sync, Tidy Tabs, and Instant Links. With these automatic tab groups, you can easily save them in Pinned Tabs, move selected folders to another Arc space, or copy all its tabs as Markdown links for an Obsidian note or map.

Arc Sync

The new Arc Sync feature provides end-to-end encryption for your sidebar across your devices that is fast and doesn’t depend on iCloud. This cross-platform capability is a step towards Arc, anywhere (iCloud sync to be phased out soon).

Click “Turn On” in the Arc Max tab of Arc > Settings (Cmd + comma), just below the Sync Sidebar with iCloud setting.

Tidy Tabs

Now you have a browser that tidies for you. It automatically makes sense of all those links that you collected while reading your email, feeds, or social media; or maybe you were just browsing interesting stuff for your efforts, or researching a topic that you’re working on. This is especially handy during the Add phase of your PKM workflow.

Previously, you would have clustered related tabs together and then selected multiple related tabs into a tab group and assigned a folder name. Now your browser helps you get this done with Arc Max AI. Then you might drag selected folders into your Pinned Tabs, maybe under a dated folder within Calendar, or perhaps move them to another space for further Relate work, perhaps for Efforts.

Press the broomstick 🧹 icon at the top of your Today Tabs in the sidebar, and let your Sidebar organize itself whenever you have over six Today tabs. Tidy Tabs only organizes Today Tabs, which appears below the + New Tab button. Your other tabs will not be affected. You can turn on Today Tabs by CMD + T > Settings > Max.

In my Web space I use for browsing, I had 33 Today tabs in my sidebar; Arc analyzed them with AI and grouped them into the following 6 folders.

  • Javascript
  • Cooking
  • Obsidian
  • Apple
  • Diabetes
  • Other

For example, I had clicked some email links on Medium about Apple Vision Pro and Apple Watch, as well as another one on Pickle (pkl) that Apple introduced as a new open source programming language for configuration. Arc automatically grouped them together in a tab folder named Apple.

Instant Links

What if you could just tell your browser exactly what you wanted, and it understood you? Well, today you get a glimpse into the future of what browsing the web might look like.

Turn on the new Instant Links feature with Arc > Settings > Arc Max > Instant Links, and let Arc browse for you.

  • Press Shift + Enter after entering a web search into Command-T, which instantly opens the top result.
  • You can also search multiple queries – try experimenting with your searches.
  • To create a folder of tabs, use “Folder of” before your search query; for example, “Folder of the cutest cat breeds”

Try this:

  • Press CMD +
  • Enter this search: Folder of the cutest cat breeds
  • Press Shift + Enter
  • Arc will search the web and immediately open the top results with the web page from the SprucePets site.
  • But it also automatically creates a tab folder in your sidebar with the name “Cutest Cat Breeds” that will contain these 5 tabs:
    • 23 Cutest Cat Breeds Anyone Will Love
    • 20 Cutest Cat Breeds of 2024 | Picture…
    • Cutest Cat Breeds | Petfinder
    • What are the cutest and rarest breeds…
    • The Cutest Cat Breeds: 14 Cats You’ll…

You might enjoy last week’s announcement that shows “A browser that browses for you”: Meet Act II of Arc Browser – YouTube video (15 min).

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Obsidian Integration

My PKM environment comprises many apps, including Obsidian (notes), Arc (browser/internet), Airmail (mail), Drafts (text), OmniFocus (tasks), Fantastical (calendar), DEVONthink (reference/support), and Finder (folders/files). I focus on Apple technologies on macOS, iOS, and watchOS, as well as open source technologies like JavaScript, Swift, and Java.

Also, I use support apps that help me link and integrate actions from the other apps, such as Markdown (headings, lists, links), URL Schemes (deep links), Hookmark (mail / file links), Shortcuts (workflows / actions), Actions for Obsidian (Shortcut actions), Actions URI (Obsidian actions), Hazel (automation), Alfred (workflows), and Keyboard Maestro (automation).

I think that Obsidian is the best app for notes in my PKM system. Sometimes, there is a tendency to make it do more, like manage your tasks and calendars. There are some features available in Markdown, such as bullet, numbered, or even checkbox items that can mark items completed. Also, there are many plugins that add calendar features like daily notes and some that even incorporate tasks into your Obsidian notes, and they are quite sophisticated, such as Periodic Notes and Obsidian Tasks.

However, I don’t like the idea of making my note system into a task manager or calendar. I believe it’s better to use multiple apps that are each great in their area, rather than trying to making Obsidian do everything. I know it can be tempting, but I think it leads to unnecessary complications as you try to extend this further. I think the better solution is to integrate these other apps with Obsidian, so you have the best of them all together without diluting each one by making it something else.

I’m actively working on several efforts that help me integrate Obsidian with these apps:

  • Arc
  • Airmail
  • Drafts
  • Shortcuts
  • URL Schemes
  • Actions URI
  • Actions for Obsidian
  • OmniFocus
  • Fantastical
  • DEVONthink
  • Hookmark
  • Hazel

As I make progress, I will share my discoveries, tips & techniques, suggestions, and guidelines to help you with your own systems. This will be an incremental process, but I plan to focus on it quite a bit during LYT Workshop 13 throughout February 2024.

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Generating dates for Obsidian periodic notes

Nick Milo’s weekly newsletter mentioned using a base template when creating a new note that contains related and created properties. He properly shows <% tp.file.creation_date() %>, but it made me realize that sometimes I use tp.file.creation_date, but elsewhere I use tp.date.now.

However, the latter will not generate the correct date when it’s created on a different day). So I reviewed my usage across my existing periodic note templates, and need to make them consistent and correct.

Be careful how you create dates using templates with the Templater plugin. This is critical when creating new periodic notes in Obsidian.

Templater dates

There is a subtle difference between two ways to create dates—tp.date() uses the current date, whereas tp.file.creation_date() uses the file date.

Let’s consider what would happen if today were 2024-01-19 (Fri) and I clicked on a future day like tomorrow (2024-01-20) in the calendar pane of the inspector. It would create a new Daily Note with a Markdown document with the name 2024-01-20.md under Calendar/Notes/2024/01 folder. However, if you click on Get Info for this file in Finder, it shows the Created date as January 19, 2024 at 2:13 PM, and the Modified date is the same.

YAML Properties

Looking at the YAML front matter, the created property appears like this:

---
up:
  - '[[2024-W03]]`
related:
created: "2023/01/2024-01-20"
tags:
  - note/periodic/daily
---

Note Title

However, the generated note title like this, which creates a Markdown header 1 (without the hash format prefix):

# Daily Note - Fri, Jan 19.

Back/Forward Links

Also, currently my existing template shows the previous/next days (or maybe back/forward) like this:

<< [[2024-01-18|Yesterday]] | [[2024-01-20|Tomorrow]] >>

Although the created property is correct, my note title and the previous/next days are wrong!

They were using tp.date.yesterday() and tp.date.tomorrow(), which seemed to make sense when I first created my daily template. That worked fine when creating this daily on that same day, like I do with my Daily Startup shortcut that runs automatically every morning at 6 am.

But when I create a Daily Note for some other day in the past or future, this approach generates an incorrect date since the current date is being used instead of the target date for the new file being created.

Solution

For that to work properly, I must use tp.file.creation_date() instead of tp.date.now().

So I should use the following for the note title:

<% tp.file.creation_date("DDD MMM D")%>

so I get “Sat Jan 20”, not “Fri Jan 19”.

Likewise, I need to be using this snippet in the template to generate the proper previous and next days around the new daily note.

<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", -1, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD")%>

<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 1, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD")%>

So that might appear something like this:

[[2024-01-19]] < Today > [[2024-01-21]]

or maybe:

<< [[2024-01-19]] | [[2024-01-21]] >>

If I wanted to see these displayed in relative terms, I could use this variation:

<< [[2024-01-19]]|Yesterday | [[2024-01-21]]|Tomorrow >>

These MUST be based on the name of the periodic note file itself, regardless of when it’s created (for back/forward links), instead of the current date.

Daily Reviews

This is especially important when creating my plan for tomorrow during my review at the end of each day since I will want to create a new daily note for tomorrow which I would initialize with stuff that I need or want to do tomorrow. Although it would be created on today for tomorrow, it has to be generated so it uses tomorrow’s date (not today).

Perhaps, during my Daily Startup when creating the Daily Note, I should also create one for the following date as well. However, that would still require that the template being used generates the dates properly.

Weekly Reviews

The same approach needs to be followed for other periodic notes: weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. In the weekly case, calendar week numbers get especially tricky, since the standard week starts on Sunday, whereas ISO week number begins on Monday. I know I have to account for this in my Shortcuts that create my weekly notes.

I prefer to use Monday to start my weeks, so the weekends appear at the end. Therefore, you need to use the correct week number if generating weekly notes such as 2024-W03 for Jan 15–21 (starting on Mon).

Summary

Remember, there are subtle differences that are signficant:

  • Current date: <% tp.date.now() %>
  • File date: <% tp.file.creation_date() %>

In the meantime, I’m going through my periodic templates to get them cleaned up, consistent, and correct.

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Arc: Copy Folder as Markdown Links to Obsidian

Did you realize you can actually copy all tabs within a folder in the Arc sidebar Pinned Tabs to an Obsidian note as Markdown links? This is so powerful, convenient, and easy to do in a few simple steps.

Consider the following scenario, where you are browsing the web and find a bunch of interesting related links. Just follow these steps to collect and cluster these links so you can create a new Obsidian note or, even better, add a heading group in a Map of Content (MOC, or simply “Map”).

This means that you now easily add related web links in your notes and maps, just like other Obsidian note links within your Obsidian vault. For example, this might be something you currently do for other internal note Wiki links (double square-bracket) that you have selected in the Explorer or maybe even dragged from Search results based on a name, tag, or keyword.

Collect

If you have Arc set as your default browser, every time you click on any link in any app, such as Arc, Airmail (or Mail), OmniFocus (or Things), DEVONthink, Drafts, etc., it will open a new tab in the Arc browser in the Today Tabs section of your sidebar.

In traditional browsers, this would have resulted in tons of tabs that you would then have to save in Safari tab groups or a bookmark manager so you could revisit them, and then you can to copy/paste each individual URL to an Obsidian note and add the page title so it’s saved as a Markdown link.

Cluster

When you have gathered multiple links during a browsing session, simply cluster them together in a group. You select multiple tabs in the Today Tabs section of your Arc sidebar, using right-click and select each one you want to be included.

Sometimes it might help to use drag & drop to move individual tabs next to other related ones, so it’s easier to move the group all at once.

If they are all together, you can just select the first and last ones in the collection rather than having to select each one individually using the Shift key. Choose the menu option to New folder with n items.

That will create a new folder in the Pinned Tabs section of your sidebar and allow you to assign a name to that new group folder, which will now contain all the selected links.

Nested folders

If you want to organize several folders together under a parent folder, the easiest way is move the folder is simply to drag it on top of the target parent folder.

Note: If you to Copy All Links as Markdown for a parent folder that contains sub-folders, it will copy all links across all these sub-folders with no identification of the sub-folders using headings. So it’s probably best that you copy only the sub-folders and assign headings, and work your way back up the directory tree.

I suggest inserting the folder name (wrapped with double-asterisk for bold font) before each folder’s list. It would be nice if Arc did this automatically, and I have submitted that suggestion to them hoping that they might had that capability.

Shared folders

You also have an option that enables you to send this folder to anyone, on any browser. Just select Share Folder… on the folder context menu, and click the Copy Link to Folder button. Note that anyone with this link can view your Folder.

Viewers won’t receive future updates and this permalink cannot be deleted. You have a checkbox called “Never show me this again” that you can check if you want to bypass this notice pop-up in the future and just copy the folder link. When you hover over the folder, a “share” icon appears to the right with only one option to click as Share Folder.

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ACE Calendar: Horizons

With the new year, I have thought about the periodic practices and workflows in my PKM system.

Periodic Notes

I use the ACE organizational framework for Atlas, Calendar, and Efforts in my Obsidian Ideaverse vault. I place all time-based information within the Calendar folder, which includes all my periodic notes (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly).

I also have corresponding periodic templates in my Atlas folder under Utilities/Templates/Periodic, and I create these notes with a consistent structure that provides an appropriate scaffolding for use during each period.

Time Horizons

Marie Poulin describes in her email newsletter and [X] messages how she does annual planning based on intentions and themes across multiple periodic horizons: day, week, month, quarter, year, and lifetime.

This is interesting because it reminds me of the emphasis on values, touchstone, and intentions that Karen Hume addressed in your TION (shun) expert sessions during LYT Workshop: Intention, Attention, Reflection, and Incubation, as well as Meaningful Connections in the LYT Conference 2023.

These are related as represented in this sequence:

Values ➡️ Intention ➡️ Goals  ➡️ Workflow

Also, it reminded me of Nick Milo’s recent session on You in Review, where he stressed using themes rather than traditional goals for yearly planning.

Although Marie uses Notion, I thought it might be helpful to explore how I might include some of these ideas into the key apps of my PKM system environment: Obsidian (notes), OmniFocus (tasks), and Fantastical (calendar).

Shortcuts with Actions for Obsidian

I have been exploring integration between these apps with the help of Shortcuts and Actions for Obsidian. Also, I keep revisiting my periodic practices and workflows to refine how I can provide a better foundation. For example, it’s extremely important to have solid planning and review habits for each day, week, month, month, quarter, and year; so this fits nicely within that same framework, and it seems worthwhile to see if I can provide a similar “horizons” perspective for myself.

Action Steps

These are my initial ideas about what steps I need to take to make this approach work for me.

1. Periodic Templates: First, I need to work on my templates (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly) so they provide the structural framework for each period.

2. Planing & Review Process: Next, it’s necessary to standardize my habits for my planning and review processes for each period, which are needed at each level.

3. Workflow Shortcuts Then, it’s very important to establish workflows and shortcuts that transition between these periods. For example, how do I leverage daily notes for my weekly notes, and likewise with weekly to monthly, monthly to quarterly, quarterly to yearly, and yearly to lifetime?

4. Horizon Summary: I would like to embed my planning and review practices for each period, since these are important for every level with a different focus and perspective. Each periodic template should include planning and review sections. It might be helpful to have these planning and review highlights reflected in the horizons summary.

So this appears somewhat like a table, with the major columns being Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year, Life. There are rows across them that include Plan and Review, as well as Focus, and Highlights. In fact, it’s actually a three-dimensional “cube” since there are multiple instances of each period: 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, 4 quarters, and 78 years (current lifetime).

6. Horizon Dashboard: Finally, there needs to be an effective way to summarize and highlight these time horizons in a dashboard style. This will enable me to see at a glance the highlights for each period every day.

Horizon Note

Initially, I think I will focus on showing this in a single Horizons note with H2 headings for the main time horizons containing links for highlights of each period. This shows her example, but I need to adjust this based on my approach. Then I can try using it to see how this works, determine whether it’s effective, and refine for incremental improvements.

Monday, Jan 15, 2024

– Single most important task of the day
– Daily practices
– Moods
– Gratitude
– Wins/Challenges

Week 3, Jan 15–21

– One most important outcome of the week (task)

Jan 2024

– Project focus
– One most important outcome for the month (goal)

Q1, Jan–Mar 2024

– Skill focus
– Main goal

2024

– Theme
– Intention
– Vision

Lifetime

– TBD

She displays these side-by-side in a multi-column format, using nice image backgrounds at the top of each horizon overlaid with a white title. Underneath, she shows the list of links for each horizon. This is very nice, and I might see how it might develop to have a similar dashboard view after I work out the details for each horizon.

Horizon Process

In her X thread, she described the following process that she also covers in her course.

– Yearly
– Set intentions, themes, etc.

– Quarterly
– Identify 1-3 goals per quarter
– Break them down into projects
– Assign them to months
– REVIEW

– Month:
– Choose focus project(s)
– REVIEW

– Weekly:
– Decide on the most important project tasks
– REVIEW

– Daily:
– Do the important work each day
– REVIEW

This also relates to my health logs, which need to be integrated into this workflow with these horizons. Of course, I would focus on efforts, rather than projects.

OmniFocus tasks

Recently, I began revamping my OmniFocus 4 system based on the same ACE framework: Atlas, Calendar, Efforts. For example, all my periodic routines, rituals, and reviews are now under the Calendar folder. All my templates and checklists are under Atlas. And my efforts (projects), tasks, and action lists are inside my Efforts folder.

Having a consistent ACE framework across my key PKM application environments offers a common mental model for working in each space. Also, it enables more effective connections and workflow transitions between them.

Arc browser & website

As I have described briefly before, I organize my Arc browser spaces based on the same ACE organization framework, including my efforts, as well as ARC ideation workflow.

I reorganized my website around my major efforts, and this similar framework helps when creating outputs from my PKM system.

Shortcuts

Also, I have now organized my shortcuts into a folder structure that also reflects my ACE framework and efforts. For example, I organize by Atlas, Calendar, and Efforts and that helps me develop and manage shortcuts that support each area of my PKM system. Since the Shortcuts app doesn’t provide nested folders, I use capital folder names for the major spaces, and place those folders under them (pseudo-nesting).

For example, I have shortcuts in CALENDAR for Morning (like Daily Startup), Periodic Notes (like Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly), Journals (like General, Morning Thoughts, LYT Gong), Logs (like Diabetes, Meals, Glucose, Insulin, Exercise), and Evening. There are shortcuts for EFFORTS like Health, Photos, Music, Blog, etc.

Note

These are just my preliminary thoughts, so I need to develop this idea further to see where it goes. However, I think it offers a lot of promise. Any feedback or suggestions would be helpful.

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My Top Songs – 2023

Listen to the top songs that I played on Spotify in 2023. I love a wide variety of music from many genres and artists, but you probably already knew that, if you have followed my blog over the past 9 years.

Playlists

My Top Songs (2023) – 100 songs, 6 hr 27 min

Top Genres

I listened to 10 genres with these at the top.

  1. New Age Piano
  2. Neo-Classical
  3. Indie Folk
  4. Contemporary Country
  5. Compositional Ambient

Top songs

I played 1,040 songs during the year on Spotify. I listened for 4,362 minutes (peak 204 minutes on Oct 15). I played my top song 8 times.

  1. Lost in Familiar Surroundings – Lynn Tredeau
  2. Letting People Down – Lori McKenna
  3. Beautiful (with Wouter Kellerman) – Lynn Yew Evers
  4. On the Surface – Thomas Hewitt Jones
  5. Procession of Moon and Stars – Kathyrn Kaye

Top Artists

I listened to 636 artists with Josh Ritter being at the top with 144 minutes altogether. Apparently, I listen to emotional, atmospheric music more than most.

  1. Josh Ritter
  2. Lynn Tredeau
  3. Ola Gjeilo
  4. Christine Brown
  5. Lori McKenna

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Weekly Mix: 2023-W47

Listen to songs in my weekly mix for Nov 20–26, 2023 (week 47).

Playlist

Weekly Mix: 2023-W47 – 54 songs, 3 hr

See my Weekly Mix Playlists page for more playlists from other weeks.

Photo credit: Spotify playlist

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Creating Obsidian Notes with Drafts

I developed more than 40 pages with all you need to know about Drafts.

Add to Obsidian

It’s easy to capture (or dictate) your ideas, thoughts, and notes you want to Add to Obsidian using Drafts with these simple steps.

  1. Download Drafts from the Mac or iOS App Store, if you don’t already have it.
  2. Download Obsidian for your platform, if you need it.
  3. Install my Add to Obsidian action from a private unlisted link in the Drafts Directory.
  4. Create a new note in Drafts and tap Add to Obsidian.

Folder Bookmark

If you have not already defined a folder bookmark in Drafts Settings when you first run the action, you will be prompted to assign the folder in your Obsidian vault to the Add bookmark, where you want to save your draft notes. For example, this might be your + folder if using a vault based on the Ideaverse for Obsidian starter kit.

Windows or Android

If you have Windows PC or Android devices, you can use Web Capture for Drafts users to add content to their iCloud library from any web browser.

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Weekly Mix: 2023-W46

Listen to country songs in my weekly mix for Nov 13–19, 2023 (week 46).

Playlist

Weekly Mix: 2023-W46  – 33 songs, 1 hr 53 min

See my Weekly Mix Playlists page for more playlists from other weeks.

Photo credit: Spotify playlist

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Weekly Mix: 2023-W45

Listen to songs in my weekly mix for Nov 6–12, 2023 (week 45).

Playlist

Weekly Mix: 2023-W45  – 17 songs, 58 min

See my Weekly Mix Playlists page for more playlists from other weeks.

Photo credit: Spotify playlist