Day Automation: Agenda Daily Log

I thought it would be good to do a series about how I automate my days as a means of keeping myself on track and conserving energy. The first part of this is in how I set up my day using the Agenda app.

I have been using the Shortcut I'll describe here for a while now, but have been inspired to improve it and make it shareable so that everyone can benefit from it. I think the features this creates in my Agenda experience are super cool.

This Shortcut creates a new note titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. "Saturday September 3, 2022") in the project of your choosing. The note contains a list of all-day events from your calendar under the heading “Today”, as well as a list of timed calendar events under the heading of “Events”.

Here's the coolest part, though: next to each event is a linked arrow which, when clicked, creates a new note linked to that calendar event and pre-populated with that event’s name, location, organizer, and attendees (taken from the calendar). This makes it easy to generate relevant notes for the day. The Shortcut builds Agenda URLs for each of those events.

All calendar items in the note are preceded by a designated emoji, defined in a dictionary at the top of the Shortcut.

Next in the note, under the heading of “Tasks” is a checkmark list of Reminders from a designated list that are either due today or overdue (designated by the emoji 🚨), flagged (designated by 🔶), or tagged with a particular tag (and designated with an emoji, both of which have text actions to let you customize). Each item is linked back to the actual Reminder to update as needed.

Lastly, a horizontal rule is added with a heading of “Rapid log”, where logging of notes for the day can be added as they occur.

I chose to do this with Reminders so that everyone can benefit, but this could be modified easily enough to be used with OmniFocus, or any other task management system that allows either Shortcuts or URL access to its content.

What do you think? Is this useful for you?

HeyScottyJ @heyscottyj