To say I’m a power user of Bear would be an understatement.I use it a lot —for all of my university classes, my work at Iris Health, general tasks, blog posts and more. With every update, the app becomes more and more reliable; and given how much i use (and love it), I thought it would be a good idea to share how I use it on a day to day basis. I’ve been using it since it came out on the App Store. I gave it a try and many things stood out to me.
Writing using @BearNotesApp is such a fantastic experience. With every update the app becomes more & more reliable.
— Agis Tsaraboulidis (@agisilaosts) May 20, 2018
Simplicity
Many apps promote a simple interface and that the experience using the product is fluent, but in many cases, that’s not what happens. You can see that judging time you spend trying to understand how the app works. If it takes you a lot of time to figure things out, odds are high the app has issues related to UI/UX.
Using Bear has always been such a fantastic experience. It’s really easy to use and you can understand how the app works in a few minutes. Getting set up to start writing is solely based on your level of customization and what you want to use it for, so as with all things productivity, everyone is different. However, the learning curve is non-existent and getting started was a breeze.
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| My Library in Bear |
Organization - tags system
The tags system for organizing notes is pure magic. You don’t have to worry about how you’re gonna organize your notes. At the end of a note, you simply type #name-of-your-tag and you’re good to go. There is no need to manually create folders or put them in iCloud so they can sync up. Bear handles all of that on its own for you.
You can also use nested tags, so If you work on a project and you want to separate your notes into sections you can definitely do that by typing #name-of-the-tag/name-of-the-nested-tag.
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| Nested tags in Bear |
Bear on the go
Bear is perfect for capturing ideas on the go. Using Bear’s Apple Watch app I can capture every idea that I have around any topic in seconds, the watch app is easy to use and even though English is not my first language the transcription inside the app works really well.
Illustrations
Last but not least on my list of the things I absolutely love about the app is the illustrations. They’re just gorgeous and made by the amazing Vic Bell. 😍
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| Illustration when user selects multiple notes |
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| Illustration when trash folder is empty |
How I use Bear on a day to day basis
Since I started tweeting about how much I like Bear, many people asked how I use it. Like I mentioned earlier, I use it for everything at home or on the go, from kicking off a to-do list and jotting down quick thoughts, to writing a blog post or tech spec.
A couple of months ago I was in University, all the while building Iris Health, working on a few side projects and also conference Call for Proposals, so I had to make sure my organization system was solid to handle all of this stuff and remain sane all at once.
I use the structure below for all the things I care about and from there I use nested tags to organize my notes into sections. This structure helps me and keeps me in focus while working on a bunch of different stuff.
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| My organizational system in Bear |
To-Do Lists
One of the things I hate the most while working on a computer is having to switch between a bazillion apps to get stuff done. That’s the reason why I use a note as my todo list for every single day. It works extremely well and usually, I break down the list into sections like: Iris, University, Personal, Errands, Could. That list is my daily driver for the day. Kudos to Cat Noone for sharing that idea with me.
The fewer apps I use, the better!
Stand-ups & long messages in Slack
Every Monday at Iris Health, we have our Weekly Stand-Up. Team members share what we worked on last week, what we’re planning to tackle the week ahead and if there’s anything (or one) blocking us from achieving our goals. I create my list for the standup so I don’t have to worry about sending the message early and before I finish sharing all of my thoughts there. Since Bear is using markdown, I just export the note to .md and pass the info to our slack channel.
One crucial thing about distributed teams is communication. So when it comes to sharing an idea with the team or a possible solution to an engineering problem we’re currently working on, I use bear to compose a message with my thoughts. I take my time to make sure the message has all the info that’s needed and from there I share it – helping me keep the message as clear as possible without the worry that it gets sent early. As someone who is not a native English speaker, this helps a ton and in the end, actually helps improve my writing and english communication skills.
Non-Bear Tip: Creating long messages in Slack that require discussion? Encourage the team to create a thread out of them so you can have a more focused conversation.
Tech Specs - Documentation
Being a software engineer is so much more than just ‘coding’. Engineers also write documentation for their code, tech specs for upcoming features, etc. Because I like to take my time with writing, Bear makes me feel calm and encourages me to write more.
When I’m done with a spec or documentation, I share it with the team through a post on Github Discussions or a Pull Request on Github. From there, we iterate on it until we’re satisfied with the result and merge it into the master branch or our Wiki. By the time it makes it there though, I’m genuinely confident in the writing I’m done and no longer have a fear when seeing changes made.
University
One of the things I learned early while I was at University was that organization is important otherwise you fall behind.
Before Bear I used the not-so-cutting edge and very tradition notebook to “capture” notes and ideas, and Microsoft Word to write papers and essays. Since I started using Bear it became a hub for all my University work.
I could write anything in .md format and then export it to many different formats such as .docx. A brief organization of my notes there was something like: Semester/class-of-the-semester.
During my years at University I had a lot of writing to do and Bear helped me to be productive and to not lose focus when I needed it the most.
Maybe Bear will work for you, maybe it won’t. I hope I brought some clarity why I prefer Bear over other writing apps and how I use it on a day to day basis. Find out what works best for you and stick with it.
What’s your favourite writing tool and why? I would love to know what you think, so feel free to tweet me @agisilaosts
Thanks to Cat Noone