Shawn Blanc’s Ulysses Setup

This video is from our Learn Ulysses course, which is on sale for 50% off right now.

I’ve been using Ulysses as pretty much my one and only writing app since about 2017. In some of the other videos in the Learn Ulysses course, I share with you how Ulysses compares to other apps and why I use Ulysses versus different notes apps and things like that.

In this video, I want to take you through a complete walkthrough of my whole Ulysses setup and workflow. I’ll show you what’s in the app, all the different things that I’ve done in the app. I used to have my writing scattered all over the place. Several years ago, I consolidated all of it within Ulysses, and it’s been a huge game changer for me.

I want be able to help you as well, give you some ideas, show you some features of the app that will help bring you into that same freedom of having all your ideas and stuff centralized in Ulysses. Which means the more I use Ulysses, the better it becomes. Since I use it for all of my writing, it’s like my writingOS — my operating system. It all just lives here. The more articles that I write, the more quotes that I put in here, the more book notes that I have, all of that stuff as I put it in here, it stays centralized within Ulysses. It makes it easier for me to find it, to use it, to reference it, etc.

Shawn’s Setup

In the video, you’re going to see I’ve got three main groups of folders. On the right side is basically all of my folders. First thing you’ll see here is the Library view, and I actually never use this. I wish I could just turn it off. But these are the default folders here in Ulysses – All, the Last 7 Days, Favorites and Trash.

Next is Today, which is one that I created. Last 7 Days is basically just a smart folder that Ulysses creates for you, and you can change some of this if you go to the Settings, then go to Library. I can turn off Favorites, which is one that I never use. You can also turn on External Files. There’s an Introduction, which if you’re brand new to using Ulysses, you’ll see this in your Library view when you open the app for the first time. Basically, they give you kind of a walkthrough some of the features as well. I obviously don’t use that anymore.

This is as simple as I can get it up here on the top right.

Now let’s look at iCloud. This is where I keep all my documents. It’s all synced in iCloud, so it’s on my iPad, it’s on my iPhone as well as on my Mac, and it’s always in sync. I’ve been using it for years, and I’ve never had any hiccups or trouble whatsoever.

Here’s the Inbox, which is just where everything goes. If there’s not a specific folder assigned to something, it just gets dropped into the Inbox and I’ll leave stuff in there.

There is just so much stuff in this Inbox folder, and you know what? You’re going to see as we go through here, some of this stuff may seem redundant, or it may feel like it’s a little bit cluttered. But I’m cool with that. If you’ve ever seen some of those videos or pictures of famous creative folks, you look at their desk, and there’s just papers piled high. Like Steve Jobs, his office and his basement was just messy. Sometimes it’s okay to be messy.

I’ve got the same thing here in my Inbox — in my Ulysses or my digital desk, so to speak. It’s a little bit messy, and I’m okay with that. Because everything that’s important to me is here, and I can find it when I need it. I never have trouble finding the thing that I’m looking for.

Today View

The Today view is everything that’s happened in the last 24 hours inside of Ulysses. Every article or document that I’ve created and every one that I’ve modified. Next is Ideas, Editing, Ready and Published. I’ve gone through these before, and I’ve got an entire video that really goes in depth (inside of the Learn Ulysses course), but this is the structure of my writing workflow. All my ideas that are just kind of ugly or rough or whatever kind of get tossed in Ideas.

Here’s an example. Here is a Fantastic Friday email that I sent out recently, and it’s actually been published already but never made it through. So I’m just gonna move it, I can just click and drag it, drop it into Publish because that’s done. Next, here’s an idea that I’m working on. I’ve been thinking about the Gmail app on iOS and I’ve got a few ideas in here, but this is nowhere near ready to be published. So it actually needs to be moved into the Editing folder once it’s kind of been fleshed out. All the stuff in here are things that I’ve been working on, that are ready just need to be kind of cleaned up a little bit, or polished before they are ready to be published. And then stuff that’s ready to be published is something that maybe just hasn’t been scheduled yet. Then, once it’s done, it’s published.

Next is Quick Links. These are things that I come across just on Twitter, on the internet, or in real life that I would love to share or link to. I can just grab them and begin to share them from here.

I also have Notes, Ideas and Thoughts, Personal, and Misc. I’ve got down here Thoughts On… as well, which I’ll get to that in a second. And some of this stuff overlaps. So Notes, Ideas and Thoughts is kind of the same as Personal and Miscellaneous. It’s just notes, ideas and thoughts — stuff that I don’t know where it goes yet. And it’s maybe not going to be something that I write and publish. Maybe it’s backup material or just notes.

Book Notes, I’ll expand this out. We share this in the other video about how to take notes and how to make action on those notes. As I read books, I basically create an alternate index of ideas. As I’m going through a book, I’ll highlight stuff in the paperback book, and all of that goes into these Book Notes where I’ll just write down all my notes and thoughts on those books. And then I’ll tag them and things like that.

Smart Filters

You can do some really cool stuff with that as well. Down here at the bottom. I’ve got this smart filter that basically pulls up every keyword match of the words “business” or “creativity,” or if the text created has the word “focus” in it. Then I get this smart filter that has all the things on creativity and business together. So just some different stuff from different chapters. And as you’re going through these smart folders, you might be like, “where is this? What exists here?” You can tap on this triple dot and then you can see Reveal in Group, and that way you’ll know where it’s pulling it from.

The Thoughts On… folder is basically something that I learned from Derek Sivers, and is just sort of journal entry stuff on different things, like Product Development, Writing, Marketing, Networking, Productivity, our Work Cycles are sabbatical work cycles, Leadership, Profit Sharing, Finances, etc. Just different things that I’m collecting notes, ideas, and thoughts on. Stuff that I care about. And I can just put it in here and have it as reference material for the future. Or sometimes I just want to write it down and then forget about it, and that helps me just get it out of my head.

Quotes is just where I put quotes about different things that I’m inspired by, things that I think are cool, things that I like, whatever. I can tag them or keyword them so that they’re easier to find. The Templates is where a lot of our marketing templates go. We have certain sequences that we do for course launches, course development, different things like that. This means that we’re not rewriting things from scratch over and over and over. We can come in here reference those.

Next is Blanc Media: Courses and Training. I do all my writing here in Ulysses, including, this Ulysses course, or our Focus Course or our Digital Planner. This is where I keep all my archive of course contents, the marketing stuff that we did, and behind the scenes stuff. A lot of times when you sign up for one of our courses, you’ll continue to get a series of emails that we’ve written, sort of welcome you to the course and introduce you to some different things. And so all of that stuff lives here inside Ulysses under this for Blanc Media: Courses and Training. I’ve got this one here for Money Ideas, which is basically ideas I’ve got related to the business and different things that I’ve considered doing. Some of them are terrible, terrible ideas. Some of them are pretty cool, like this Learn Ulysses update that we’re working on right now.

And then there’s Learning Notes. As I go through courses and classes myself I’ll put notes in here. I’ve put my notes from different things I’ve been through, different retreats, different workshops that have been part of.

Next is Anna Edits. This is from when my wife was using Ulysses on her iPad for a while, but it was still synced to my library. So some of her stuff is in here. I have a Leadership filter here, which is just something I’ve been playing with recently, and then Archives, which has a lot of stuff. When I’m done with something, I’ll just toss into the Archives to get it out of the way.

That’s a big overview of my entire Ulysses setup, all the folders and different things. Again, some of its clean and tidy. Some of it’s a little bit messy. And that’s fine. What’s cool about Ulysses is that if hit Command + O you can search for anything in your library. The search feature is really great. And then you’ve got the keyword stuff you can set up too, which is really great.

Notes

And I’m gonna show you one more thing with you that I like about Ulysses, and it’s the the Notes. So let me jump back in to Blanc Media: Courses and Training, Ulysses, writing coaching. So here is this complete walkthrough we’re working on this right now, and what I like about this is that over here on the attachment side, you can add keywords if you want. I can add a keyword like, “Ulysses.” And then you can also tap on this little icon and you can add notes. And I’ll do this a lot of times where maybe I’m working on something and I’m like, “you know what, this is no good. I’m not gonna use this anymore.” I’m cutting this out, I’ll just bring it over here. I’ll just drop it in the notes. And I’ll call it like Burnt Ends. That’s a barbecue reference. But also this is the stuff kind of on the edge that I ended up not using. Which ironically, with barbecue Burn Ends, is like some of the best part, but that’s okay. And so I’ll toss up in here, just extra content that I no longer need in my final draft, but maybe I still want to hang on to it.

That’s the main way that I use Ulysses and structure everything in here. Hopefully this gave you some ideas for how you can structure your Ulysses so that’s it’s gonna help you be more efficient, a little bit more organized so you can just get to the writing and enjoy.