Alfredtricks Weekly #1: The basics.
Hi there! I'm François-Albert Gandon, the founder of Alfredtricks Weekly. You are receiving this email because you signed up to Alfredtricks Weekly, a weekly newsletter about Alfred and productivity. Thank you for being here! If this email was forwarded to you, get your own.
Paris. Sunday 6th, 2020. 12 am.
A friendly and productive “Bonjour”, a French version for “Hi”, from cold and grey Paris 🥐🥖☕ !
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the first issue of Alfredtricks Weekly, your weekly dose of Alfred that makes you more productive!
As this is the first issue of Alfredtricks Weekly, I first would like to answer a few basic questions : Why? What? Who?
Why Alfredtricks Weekly?
In short: Alfred is a wonderful Mac application that can make you more productive by helping you spare a lot of time and/or making your life easier by sparing you a few clicks.
But, as for many productivity applications, yes, I am looking at you Keyboard Maestro, as awesome as they are, you need to invest a huge amount of time, you often do not have, to get the most of them.
“Investing time to spare time ?” They said. No more more need to invest time with Alfredtricks Weekly as curated content is delivered to your inbox every week.
You can see Alfredtricks Weekly as the newsletter I wish I had when I started using Alfred around 9 years ago.
What will you find Alfredtricks Weekly?
In short: mostly but not only Alfred related content!
Alfredtricks Weekly will mostly, but not only, be about the awesome Alfred Mac application, I also will share with you productivity but not Alfred related content.
I want to make this newsletter as actionable as possible. Which means keeping it relatively short in the number of subjects covered.
“Fast and easy to read. Fast and easy to digest. Fast and easy to become more productive.”
Let's start with the following format: one workflow, one tip and one productivity resource per week. I am sure time will help find the perfect format.
Who is Alfredtricks Weekly for?
In short: any Mac user willing to become more productive.
If there was one thing to remember, this newsletter has only only goal: make you more productive.
So, if you have any idea to share, questions to ask about Alfredtricks Weekly, I am all ears open.
Feel free to drop a comment below or reach me on Twitter @alfredtricks.
Note: While any Alfred user would take advantage of reading this newsletter, as Alfred workflows are a key part of Alfred and require buying the Powerpack, you will definitely make the most of this newsletter if you have the Alfred Powerpack already installed on your Mac.
You can get more information about the Alfred Powerpack here.
Now that this is being said, let’ talk about Alfred workflows.
Alfred’s workflow of the week:
For this Alfredtricks Weekly#1: The basics issue, I wanted to share with you one Alfred workflow I created quite a long time ago to help me better use Alfred.
It is a “DAT” workflow. “DAT” stands for “Direct Access To”.
One of the key learnings I got for using Alfred is there are two ways to improve your productivity: spare minutes/hours when accomplishing a complex task that you perform one time or save a few seconds/milliseconds when accomplishing a task you perform hundreds/thousands or more times.
DAT workflows (Direct Access To) do fall in the second category. I created dozens if not more of them and happily use them every single day.
But what are Alfred DAT (Direct Access To) workflows precisely about? They are Alfred workflows that help you stay in a flow state by letting you spare a few clicks.
In other words, they reduce to almost zero the time between you think “I need to access this (a web page, a document, … )” and the moment you actually access this web page, this document, …
For example, if you simply want to update one Google Docs document with one single line of content, you usually have to go through these steps:
Open a new browser tab, and if not already opened, open your browser first,
Once a new tab is loaded, select the browser’s address bar, type the url of Google Docs (“https://docs.google.com/”), hit enter, then once the Google Docs web page finished loading, click to open the document you want to update, wait for it to finish loading.
It is only after these few steps, that take around a few secs each or less, that you are finally able to perform the task you want to accomplish, a simple update on a Google Docs document with a single line of content.
What a waste of time, attention and focus!
Thanks to my Alfred DAT Google Docs workflow, I would have launched Alfred search bar, typed a keyword (I previously set in my workflow settings), select the name of the document I want to edit, hit Enter and voilà, I have the document I want to edit in front of my eyes!
Let me introduce you to “Alfred Tutorials DAT”, the Alfred workflow that will help you work with the Alfred Help and support pages.
Whether you are an advanced Alfred user or just a newbie, having a convenient and fast way to access Alfred Help and support pages is always a good things as it provides you, most of the time and in no time, with the answer you were looking for.
If not, it helps you reframe the question you want an answer to. A great prerequisite before asking your question in Alfred “Discussion & Help” forum.
And sometimes, while looking for an answer to question A, you will find newly published content in the Alfred Help and support pages answering questions B, C, D you previously had. Happened to me a few weeks ago when reading about the tutorial about the “List Filter” action.
But, let’s go back to our “Alfred Tutorials DAT” workflow, you get here.
(To download the workflow, click on “Downloads”. Then, when the download is completed, as for a Mac application, double-click on the .alfredworkflow file to open it and add it to your collection of workflows).
This workflow works this way. You type a keyword (“sat” for search Alfred tutorials but you can change it to any keyword you want), then type a space, then the name of the tutorial you want to access to, hit enter and voilà!
Simple yet effective way to spare a few clicks and a few seconds. The great things about “DAT workflows” is they are very easy to create and can be created for an almost unlimited number of cases (websites/documents).
Note: the goal of this paragraph was more about introducing a use case (“DAT workflows”) with an example, rather than showing a very simple workflow. If you find this workflow too simple, be sure, we will cover more complex ones in the future.
Alfred’s tip of the week:
While you can access to Alfred preferences by typing “Alfred preferences” in Alfred’s search bar, a faster way would be by creating a simple Alfred workflow that you would trigger with a keyboard shortcut.
I personally use the keyboard shortcut “Alt+N” to launch Alfred preferences every time I need to create, update, or delete one of my workflows.
The problem is Alfred search bar doesn’t show Alfred nor Alfred preferences as an application. Try typing “Alfred” in Alfred search bar will not give you Alfred or Alfred preferences as a result.
In this context, how can I make Alfred open Alfred’s preferences via a keyboard shortcut?
As often with Alfred, the answer is simple.
In Finder.app, go to your /Applications folder (Shift+Cmd+A), select, then right-click on Alfred 4.app. Select the “Show Package Contents” menu item. From there, go to Contents/Preferences/Alfred Preferences.app. Copy the path of Alfred Preferences.app to your clipboard.
In Alfred preferences, create a simple workflow with a Hotkey trigger action (in Workflows > Right-click Triggers > Hotkey) linked to a Launch Apps/Files action (Right-click Actions>Launch Apps/Files).
Double-click on the Launch Apps/Files action, go back to Finder.app, drag and drop Alfred Preferences.app to your Launch Apps/Files action pane.
And voilà, you can now launch Alfred preferences with a simple keyboard shortcut!
Productivity’s resource of the week:
As Alfred is not the only way to make a Mac user more productive, I have decided to share one useful productivity but not Alfred related content with you every week.
This week, for the Alfredtricks’s Weekly#1: The basics issue, I wanted to share with you this short, yet informative article, from Time Management Ninja called “10 Productivity Questions to Ask Yourself Every Day” showing how asking yourself 10 simple questions every single morning can make you get your day in order before going to work, therefore make your day more productive.
Being productive is often mostly about creating the right state of thought. This article shows you how you can simply achieve this.
Happy reading!
And do not forget to share via Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp or simply by email with this link https://alfredtricks.substack.com/p/issue-1-basics
Thank you!
Until next week, have a productive one!
François-Albert.
DAT Download link to github broken