Consume online content (articles, podcasts, videos) later with RTM, a browser extension, and the iOS Share Sheet
There are many great people out there creating excellent blog articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts. Sometimes I discover them on my own, and sometimes friends send them my way via WhatsApp or other messengers.
I love this, because it’s well-curated content in a time when there’s simply too much of it. However, I often don’t have the time or motivation to consume it right away. So I use the following workflow to collect articles, videos, and podcasts to consume later:
• I have one RTM list called “Read/Watch/Listen”.
• Each link I want to consume becomes one task in this list:
• For articles and blog posts, I name the task ‘Read “Blog article title“’
• For videos, I name the task ‘Watch “Video title“’
• For podcasts, I name the task ‘Listen to “Podcast title“’
• I add a matching tag: “read”, “watch”, or “listen”.
When I’m in the mood, I pick an item and consume it (e.g., videos in the evening on the TV, podcasts while gardening).
While this isn’t “pure” Getting Things Done (these aren’t really tasks to do), it works perfectly for me, and I get to stick with one system I already use every day.
After a while, adding these items manually became tedious, because I receive links on different devices (desktop and mobile) and through different channels (browser, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, ...).
So I built “Später” (https://github.com/andygrunwald/spaeter) to make saving content for later easier.
Später (German for “later”) comes in two flavors:
1) A browser extension
2) An iOS Shortcut that hooks into the Share Sheet
Now, with a single click in Google Chrome or a tap on my iPhone, the link is detected and automatically added to my Remember the Milk list with the right settings.
Screenshots are available here: https://github.com/andygrunwald/spaeter#what-it-does
The project is open source, works with Google Chrome and iPhone, and requires an RTM API key (which you can get for free). If you’re interested, feel free to install it or modify it however you like.
That’s the workflow that works great for me. What do you think?
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Bonus: Age tags for your Read/Watch/Listen list with MilkScript
Whenever I go through my RTM tasks to clean them up (similar to a weekly review, though I don’t do it every week), I sometimes delete items from my “Read/Watch/Listen” list because I’m no longer as interested in them as I was when I added them. To make this easier, I wrote a MilkScript that automatically assigns one of four tags to each item, based on when I added it to the list:
• Less than 1 month ago → tag “quite-new”
• 1 to 2 months ago → tag “1+month-old”
• 2 to 3 months ago → tag “2+months-old”
• More than 3 months ago → tag “3+months-old”
The tag colors range from light blue to strong red, depending on the task’s age.
The basic assumption: if I haven’t consumed an item in over 3 months, it’s probably not that important to me.
You can find the MilkScript here: https://github.com/andygrunwald/spaeter/blob/main/docs/bonus-milkscript-age-tags.md
=====
Happy consuming!
I love this, because it’s well-curated content in a time when there’s simply too much of it. However, I often don’t have the time or motivation to consume it right away. So I use the following workflow to collect articles, videos, and podcasts to consume later:
• I have one RTM list called “Read/Watch/Listen”.
• Each link I want to consume becomes one task in this list:
• For articles and blog posts, I name the task ‘Read “Blog article title“’
• For videos, I name the task ‘Watch “Video title“’
• For podcasts, I name the task ‘Listen to “Podcast title“’
• I add a matching tag: “read”, “watch”, or “listen”.
When I’m in the mood, I pick an item and consume it (e.g., videos in the evening on the TV, podcasts while gardening).
While this isn’t “pure” Getting Things Done (these aren’t really tasks to do), it works perfectly for me, and I get to stick with one system I already use every day.
After a while, adding these items manually became tedious, because I receive links on different devices (desktop and mobile) and through different channels (browser, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, ...).
So I built “Später” (https://github.com/andygrunwald/spaeter) to make saving content for later easier.
Später (German for “later”) comes in two flavors:
1) A browser extension
2) An iOS Shortcut that hooks into the Share Sheet
Now, with a single click in Google Chrome or a tap on my iPhone, the link is detected and automatically added to my Remember the Milk list with the right settings.
Screenshots are available here: https://github.com/andygrunwald/spaeter#what-it-does
The project is open source, works with Google Chrome and iPhone, and requires an RTM API key (which you can get for free). If you’re interested, feel free to install it or modify it however you like.
That’s the workflow that works great for me. What do you think?
=====
Bonus: Age tags for your Read/Watch/Listen list with MilkScript
Whenever I go through my RTM tasks to clean them up (similar to a weekly review, though I don’t do it every week), I sometimes delete items from my “Read/Watch/Listen” list because I’m no longer as interested in them as I was when I added them. To make this easier, I wrote a MilkScript that automatically assigns one of four tags to each item, based on when I added it to the list:
• Less than 1 month ago → tag “quite-new”
• 1 to 2 months ago → tag “1+month-old”
• 2 to 3 months ago → tag “2+months-old”
• More than 3 months ago → tag “3+months-old”
The tag colors range from light blue to strong red, depending on the task’s age.
The basic assumption: if I haven’t consumed an item in over 3 months, it’s probably not that important to me.
You can find the MilkScript here: https://github.com/andygrunwald/spaeter/blob/main/docs/bonus-milkscript-age-tags.md
=====
Happy consuming!
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