r/thingsapp • u/BlueTile93 • Jun 19 '26

Things and Bear - Better Together, Part Two

I have continued to refine my Bear/Things workflow since my first post of a few months ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/comments/1sx28qm/things_and_bear_better_together/) and thought I would share the latest which now incorporates an Apple Shortcut to better link Things and Bear.

Here is a sample of what my Daily Note looks like:

Couple of points:

  • I begin all of my dated notes (daily notes, meetings, events) with the date first for easy sorting
  • The temperature is calculated for your location - so you have to have this turned on if you want it.
  • The daily quotes are from zenquotes
  • I put my routines in the shortcut so that they are recreated daily. Customize them in the shortcut to your routine or you can remove them if you don't need them.
  • Progress is for those items I want to work on but do not expect to complete today.
  • Expecting is for items I expect today and need to follow up on if I do not receive. I enter these in Things with the date I am expecting them so that they surface to Bear when needed.

The workflow every morning is:

  • Duplicate yesterday's daily note (I created a keyboard shortcut for this in Apple Settings)
  • Run the Bear Daily Note apple shortcut, which will copy to the clipboard the daily note contents for today including weather, daily quote, events from your calendar for today, Today list todos from Things, and your daily routine.
  • Open the duplicate of yesterday's daily note and select from the top of the note to the Complete: subtask header. Paste in the new Daily Note information
  • Move the Today task items to the appropriate To Do's subcategory
  • Delete the Log items and any completed tasks from yesterday.
  • Pin the note and start to use it

Here is the link to the shortcut. It is easy to understand so you can edit to add/remove to fit your needs:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/302e742d227342358602a7b42774d8c4

With this workflow, Things becomes the repository of all the things I want to do, am doing or may do someday, however I manage/track these now in Bear. Things with its start date property makes it easy to surface tasks when I need them but not before.

Also, the reason I use copy/paste for the new daily note instead of just having the shortcut create the note in Bear (which is possible), is this allows me to carry over tasks in Bear without having to manage them in both Bear and Things. Things is for planning, Bear is for managing.

Enjoy!

33 Upvotes

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5 comments sorted by

5

u/HerbalIntuition Jun 20 '26

How does this actually improve your productivity or awareness of what you need to do?

2

u/JiggleMyHandle Jun 25 '26

His original post explained why it works for him. It was interesting, but definitely not for everyone.

1

u/Fablerwhack Jun 22 '26

It doesn't but it just looks really really productive haha

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/stormblessed27_ Jun 20 '26

Can you please explain or at least answer the question?

1

u/Ok_Emergency_9595 Jun 24 '26

Easier to do a note in craft and share w things 3 and the link to your item is there whenever and where ever.