FEATURED APP
#WritingGoals
Ulysses: Writing App
Write a novel, story, book
Coming up with a good idea isn’t the hardest part of writing a book or a script. Neither is thinking of a great ending. The real challenge lies in the middle: All. Those. Words. The secret to making it to the finish line? Setting goals and completing them every day.
The seemingly sparse text editor Ulysses was designed to assist with just that. It’s packed with writer-centric productivity features—like a Goal tool that keeps you accountable.
“Goals allow for habitual targets,” says Ulysses cofounder and development lead Max Seelemann. “Setting a smaller target for each day helps build motivation, as your goal is manageable.”
With Ulysses,you can attach a goal to a single document (called a Sheet) or a collection of them (known as a Group).
In a Sheet, click Edit > Attach > Goal, then enter the number of words, paragraphs, or pages you’re aiming for. Then set a due date. As you type, you’ll see your progress on a meter (very satisfying). With iCloud, your goals and progress are synced across devices.
It gets even more fun with Groups. Control-click on a Group and select Goal; here you can set a daily target across multiple Sheets. The History section recaps your stats, like your daily average, daily best, and weekly total. Check out the fun graph of all this data to see where you dipped and soared.
And there’s more on the way. “Our users keep coming up with fresh ideas, like success notifications or an Apple Watch complication to track their progress,” he says. “Goals might look like a bland feature, but they introduce some fun into the chore that, truth be told, writing oftentimes can be.”