If you’re a writer, heck, if you write anything, you should probably use Ulysses.
Yes, if you write emails, social media posts, video scripts, proposals, documents, anything, Ulysses will make you at least 3x more productive.
And it will make you dump your Microsoft Word too.
Who cares about shoddy Microsoft when you can have Ulysses?
The problem with most word processors today
If you look at the broad swath of work today, you would realise that almost every piece of work requires some form of writing.
If you were a marketer, copy would need to be written. If you were a consultant, you would need to produce analyses, and write them up on a document.
If you were a programmer, you would have to write code.
But if you look at Word processors like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, they have a few problems, especially when you’re trying to do productive work.
A quick comparison
| Microsoft Word | Google Docs | Ulysses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Functionality (what you can do on the software) | High, because you’re able to include Excel tables, and many other functions into the document | High | Medium, with the focus on helping you write faster and better |
| Speed of loading | Slower, at around 3 seconds to boot, especially on a Mac | Fast, depending on Internet connection | Faster, as it is built natively for Mac |
| Ability to distract you | Medium | High, because you’re working off your browser, and it is easier to quickly switch to your email client | Low, because you’re working on an app |
Here’s why and how you might use Ulysses as your productivity app of choice.
No more OCD-ing about different fonts
No more bothering about font size, font family, and font color.
If you’re a little OCD like me, you might quickly realise just how irritating different font sizes can feel. And if you’ve ever been in the place where you find yourself adjusting the fonts after you copy and paste something, be free!
With Ulysses, you no longer have to worry.
The beauty of Ulysses is that every time you copy and paste something, it will remove the formatting automatically.
No fluff, just stuff
If you’ve ever gotten lost in the Microsoft Word ribbon, you might know just how frustrating it is to try and find how to adjust the spacing between the paragraphs.
Ulysses is simpler. Much simpler.
It just has what you need for pure writing, and nothing else.
Yes, you might not be able to do fancy Excel tables in your Word document, but you will find yourself focused just on the writing, and everything you need for it.
Lightning fast loading with Native Mac interface
If you’re familiar with working with longer texts, you would experience the lag time on your normal Microsoft Word documents.
There’s no such lag with the Ulysses interface. I’m not sure how they make the backend so quick, but just think about it.
If you interact with documents most days, a 2 second lag time might not seem a lot. But multiply that by the 15 odd times you might open a document, and that’s 30 seconds a day.
Multiply that by 20 working days a month, and that’s 10 minutes, just waiting for documents to load.
Sure, you might say,
it’s just 30 seconds!
No biggie!
But when you’re working, you would hate for friction in loading to frustrate you. You would want flow. From document to thought, thought to document, and document to value created in the company you work with.
Waiting for documents to load, might just be the worst waste of your time.
Native keyboard shortcuts
One of the best things about Ulysses is that it uses the Markdown format, which is a fancy way for saying that you don’t have to use your mouse to click to the styles and then change a particular segment to a header.
All you need to do is to place hashtags.
It may initially be difficult to get used to, but after a while, you might find yourself growing in how intuitive this process is.
It makes the whole writing process a lot faster.
If you want to italicise a portion, you can also use the underscore.
Organised for long, long documents
One of the biggest painpoints of using Microsoft Word, or any other Word processing document, is how difficult it might be to see how the document is laid out.
But with Ulysses, the menu that pops out on the right gives you a quick idea of how the text is sorted.
Check your progress
You would also be able to see the progress you’re making on your document. You might be hitting a deadline for a proposal for the boss, and the boss wants it under 1500 words.
That’s where Ulysses can help too.
In a book I was writing, I had to discipline myself to write a certain number of words each day. With Ulysses, I could easily see how many words I was writing, and how far off I was to the goal.
And whilst you might think that writers write according to a stroke of inspiration, the reality is that it is a lot more of a discipline, than a matter of feeling.
Ulysses can also keep you on track with deadlines.
Best for long documents
If you’ve seen the previous screenshot – that was 41k words. Find another software that can process this amount of words that quickly, and I would definitely switch over. But I suspect that you can’t.
That’s why we are still sticking with Ulysses.
Distractions removed to drive greater productivity
Using Ulysses for emails can be another key driver for your productivity. If you’re honest with yourself, you probably spend too much time on email.
But crafting your emails on Ulysses, rather than going into your email client, and finding yourself distracted with notifications at every moment, can really help to focus your attention.
This is what Cal Newport, argues in his book ‘A World Without Email’, which may seem like an impossible ask. He observed about how there was the hyperactive hive mind today, where our workflows centred around conversations delivered by unstructured, and unscheduled messages such as Slack, Whatsapp, Teams messaging, and emails.
If you’ve ever worked with your Whatsapp, Teams, and Outlook client simultaneously open, and getting ‘dings’ every other minute, you would realise how disruptive that can be for your flow.
You quickly forget what you were working on, and attend to the most immediate message you got. You might quickly find yourself just attending to messages, rather than truly delivering value.
Today, I use Ulysses for everything I need to write, from emails, to work Whatsapp messages (that are more than 100 words, or are substantive updates).
This is a much healthier style of working that is predicated on you pre-determining your priorities, rather than letting the inbox or chat app you use determine your output.
It is thus output driven, rather than input driven.
Is it worth the $39.99?
You might think that with the Microsoft suite that your company gives you, it’s already good enough.
Paying an extra $6 a month for a ‘writing’ app just seems a little too much.
But it’s not just an app.
It’s actually a productivity power tool.
With Ulysses, you find yourself just focused on the output of the writing you need to do, rather than the constant input of dings, and bings, from the notifications of instant messaging.
It focuses you on pure thinking, and pure writing, rather than having to scroll through ribbons and menus, trying to adjust.
It’s made for thinkers.
That said, I do have the student subscription.
If you still have your student email address, it’s a no-brainer.
It’s definitely worth it.