Ulysses is my dedicated writing app and long-term favourite Mac app. I absolutely adore this app. It doesn’t contain anything besides the content I intend to publish in some way.

I also use Obsidian, but that is only for my notes and ideas. I want to maintain separation between writing and notes, and leverage tools that are best in class for their specific purpose.

I have a relatively simple folder structure in Ulysses, with 8 parent groups.

Inbox

The inbox is for content ideas that I might or might not write. They should be just a working title, or might include a rough outline.

I’ll add ideas to this folder throughout the day as they pop into my idea. Often this is when I’m working on something else, and it feels like it is something I can share.

I also use the Mac Shortcuts app to quickly copy an Obsidian note to a Ulysses sheet with one command. This is super handy if I have made a note on something I am working on, and I decide that it could make a great article to share with the world.

When I’m ready to work on one of them, I’ll move it to the DRAFTS folder.

Drafts

The DRAFTS folder contains 4 sub folders, which represent my writing process.

  • Rough: this is where I write the rough first draft
  • Edited 1: this is where I take the rough first draft and start to edit and polish it
  • Edited 2: this is where I do my second round of editing and polishing
  • Fact check: sometimes I need to fact-check what I’m writing. This is especially true for the technical content I produce, where I need to check that each step is accurate
  • Edit: posts that are being checked and edited by my wife, Vaani. The editing process happens in WordPress (I’m going to write a separate post on how I’ve set that up)

When I’m finished in one stage for a particular piece, I simply drag the sheet to the next stage. That way, when I open each group, I can see exactly what is in each stage.

I do the fact check last because that allows me to be more creative in the earlier stages. If I fact-check too early, it completely slows me down and often derails my writing efforts. So I’d rather get the words down to the best of my knowledge, and then fact keep as the last stage before publishing. Because I’m writing from my own experiences and things I’ve already done, they are already accurate, and it is just a matter of doing final checks.

Having a folder specifically called “Rough” also does wonders for my creativity. It makes it clear that this is merely a rough draft. I just need to get the words down, and the editing and polishing comes later. If I edit or polish too early, again, it kills my creativity.

I have a goal set on the DRAFTS folder of 500 words a day. This simply means that I want to write at least 500 words each day. Sometimes it’s more, but I want 500 to be the minimum.

Publishing

When a piece has been through the whole process, it’s time to publish.

I use WordPress for my 2 main websites, and this is another place where Ulysses shines. Its integration with WordPress is the best I’ve seen. With one click of a button and a few settings, I can publish it directly to the blog. No need to go to WordPress to create a post, copy and paste content and add the images. It’s all taken care of. It may not sound like much work to do it manually, but it’s just enough friction to put me off doing other. So Ulysses’s WordPress integration is a game changer for me.

Published

After a piece is published, I’ll move it to the PUBLISHED group. In this group, I have a subgroup for each of my publications.

  • AS Articles: articles on Automation Sprints
  • AS Case Studies: case studies on Automation Sprints
  • BW Blog: this very blog
  • BeFused: tutorials on my technical web development blog

Newsletter

If a piece is a newsletter email, I’ll drag it to this folder instead of the Published folder.

Courses

Courses for me are email courses or sequences, and I keep them housed in this folder. There is a sub folder for each email course.

If I develop paid video courses in the future, I’ll keep them in this folder.

Website Pages

This is for pages on the website that are not blog posts, such as the home page, about page, service pages, enquiry page.

Templates

This is for sheets that I want to reuse as a template. I may end up moving this to Raycast, which is where I keep most of my templates.

Archive

I move anything here that I’m done with and don’t need any more. I don’t move published articles here, as they live in the PUBLISHED folder. In reality, this folder is full of sheets from previous years when I was using Ulysses for more than I should have been (there was a time when I used it as my main note-taking app as well). Like the boxes you might have in a spare room, I need to sort this folder out.

The overall process

The first 4 groups cover my day to day writing process, and post move down through the groups until they are either published or sent as an email newsletter.

Because the DRAFTS sub folders represent stages in my writing process, I can easily keep track of the stage an article is at. It also allows me to keep pieces moving forwards. Each day when I sit down to write, I aim to write 1 new rough draft, edit one piece (either from Edit 1 or Edit 2) and fact check another. That’s 3 items I’m touching per day. And that is enough to maintain a regular publishing cadence.

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