The Power of Muse: How a Unique iPad App Transformed My Creative Workflow

I'll be honest, I was blown away by how much of a game-changer Muse has been for me. It's an iPad app that I didn't take to right away, but after several attempts and some intentional design, it's become an indispensable part of my creative workflow.

At first, I found Muse to be a bit foreign. I downloaded it and deleted it multiple times before finally taking the time to get to know it. And when I did, it was like a whole new world opened up for me. The interface is unique, with a design that's both intuitive and powerful. It's given me a non-artist, I mean someone who's not naturally artistic, but an actual reason to use and rely on the Apple Pencil.

Before Muse, I would default straight into typing whenever it was time to start a new project. But now, I often start in Muse, where the Apple Pencil becomes an extension of my hand. It's amazing how much easier it is to create when you're not stuck behind a keyboard. The freedom to move around and explore different canvases has been a revelation.

I've developed a framework called the Six C's, which provides a structured approach to creating content. Muse fits into this process in a big way. I capture ideas in drafts ahead of time, but when it's time to bring them to life, Muse becomes my go-to tool. The app's ability to link and backlink different canvases has been especially useful for me.

One of the things that's really struck me about Muse is how it's made me think differently about the iPad Pro itself. Before I had the Apple Pencil and Muse, the iPad would seem like just another device. But now, it feels like a powerful tool that's capable of unlocking new levels of creativity.

I've also found that Muse has helped me to be more intentional in my workflow. When you're using an app like this, you have to be mindful of how you're spending your time. It's forced me to think outside the box and explore different approaches to creating content. And it's amazing how much more efficient I can be when I'm working with Muse.

The Apple Pencil is no longer just a decoration at the top of my iPad Pro; it's a essential tool that's given me a reason to have this really big canvas, the biggest version of the iPad Pro because essentially it gives me the biggest version of a Muse canvas that I can have.

I've also found that Muse has helped me to be more intentional in my workflow. When you're using an app like this, you have to be mindful of how you're spending your time. It's forced me to think outside the box and explore different approaches to creating content. And it's amazing how much more efficient I can be when I'm working with Muse.

Sometimes that difference makes all the difference. So now, I'm at the point where if I didn't have the Apple Pencil and if I didn't have Muse on the iPad, the iPad itself would seem like a whole lot less appealing to me now that I've used them, I would just be missing out on a big huge important part of my workflow.

Productivity is a Personal Journey

I'm excited to share with you all that I'm working on a productivity course. If you're new around here, get signed up for notifications if you like this video and these sorts of apps because I'm going to dive into that Six C's process within there. There's a lot of great information really excited for it especially if you want to get more done with less burnout in the Apple ecosystem.

The link down below where you can give me your email will let you get paid when that launches also we've got a newsletter and if you'd like to get some really awesome apps and accessories for your Apple life delivered straight to your inbox on autopilot every Friday you've got to get signed up for that otherwise I'll catch you in the next video later

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's Chris and this is the story about how a little-known app called Muse completely changed the way I use my iPad Pro when I first got an apple pencil for the iPad Pro it was the Gen one it was the slippery one the one that charged all weird and still does I liked the idea of using it I wanted to use it all the time it seemed like I should be getting a lot of use out of it but I actually ended up not using it all that much why I mean I wasn't an artist and even though I could use it there was nothing on the iPad itself that kind of kicked me into apple pencil mode by default I mean I would sketch with it a little and I would scratch out some notes here and there with it but not systematically and that sort of default mode of not really using the apple pencil all that much really kind of lasted up through the era of buying this new apple pencil gen 2. what I'm trying to say is I didn't rely on the apple pencil for anything it was definitely underutilized so every time it was time to create stuff on my iPad I would end up typing it so it if it was a node or an article or script I'd type it if I was going to make a mind map that got typed and again it's not that I never use the apple pencil it's just that I wasn't relying on it for any particular thing it was always a nice to have so it was nice to have for signing contracts with my actual signature but at the same time it wasn't a must-have so like if I lost it then life went up my business continued on just fine but one day I discovered this app called Muse and it's a little bit more well known today but even now among all the infinite canvas style apps it's still kind of a relatively small player but there was something about Muse that changed the way that I perceived the iPad and the apple pencil and what it can do and what I could do with it and maybe beyond that how I should be using these tools now to understand why you have to understand Muse itself what I love about it and I know I've talked about it before is that instead of creating the same app experience for different size screens like basically every other app out there Muse decided to create a specific app with a specific purpose for the iPhone and a different sort of interaction with Muse specifically for the iPad and the same thing specifically for the strengths of the mac and the iPad experience is cool because it lets you create these infinitely nested canvases so just canvases inside of canvases inside of canvases if you want to but the crazy thing is there's almost no rigidity Muse really gets out of the way and I think that's what it's supposed to do the interface is all about keeping things as simple as possible the tool set is purposely very limited but that's actually amazing because that constraint actually makes me way more creative I'm not thinking about well what out of these 50 tools is the best one to do whatever it is I'm doing there's too much mental load for a lot of apps here it's just no I'm going to use this tool and just get to work and it flows for me the iPad app here acts like a magnet and it just draws all the ideas out of my head and and into the canvas now at this point when they land there they're not always pretty right but it lets me kind of hack them up and move things around and it's all very pliable it's not rigid like I said so this is where I'm sort of formulating stuff before I actually make use of it in another app so when I say the interface is simple that's actually not doing it justice because the team has done a good job of making it feel really simple but at the same time there's a lot of power under the hood there's all these little Easter egg features that if you take the time to get to know this app and it's not just a parent right off the bat all these cool little features it just revs things up and takes it to a whole new level and you're just like oh wow now the purpose of this story here in this video is not to like do a deep dive tutorial and show you all the ins and outs I'm mostly just telling you how it changed my workflow but you can go on the website and you can see all these fun features and it is something to learn there's a little bit of a cost to using this app outside of just the price right you've got to invest a little bit of time here to make it worth your while but wow is it worth your while but because of all that because of the interface and because of that intentional design that's been infused into this really unique iPad app it's ended up giving me a non-artist I mean I'm okay with like ourselves but it's not my job right I'm not doing it to make a living it's given me a non-artist an actual reason to use and rely on the apple pencil when it's time to start a new project I no longer just default straight into typing I often start in Muse and actually I should back up a little bit because I have this framework called the six C's and here's just kind of a brief overview of what that looks like and where Muse fits into it but Muse kicks off my actual production cycle whenever I'm creating a piece of content so I do capture ideas in drafts ahead of time but when it's time to do something with those ideas it starts in Muse but here's something that's actually really funny I didn't take to Muse right away it took me several attempts like I downloaded it and deleted it don't know two three four different times before I finally was like I feel like there's something here I think I really need to explore it and take the time to get to know it and actually try using it so I sort of set a challenge for myself look just use it for like two weeks see how it goes and when I did I did fight it a little bit it was a little bit foreign but sometimes that's good I found this great Kipling quote not to like go way off track but it's something along the lines of he who knows only England of England knows almost nothing something along those lines basically if all you're familiar with is all that you're familiar with then you don't know a whole lot about it because there's no context and that applied here with The Muse I really didn't know it I knew a lot of the context around it but when I finally took the time to get to know it stuff just started snapping together and now I'm at the point where the apple pencil is not just a decoration at the top of my iPad Pro it's given me a reason to have this really big canvas the biggest version of the iPad Pro because essentially it gives me the biggest version of a muse canvas that I can have and I've got this chair in the corner of my office and sort of like my iPad slash Muse chair and I go over there and that's where I do a lot of deep thinking you know when I'm trying to put something together and we all know that phrase you know think outside the box well it's funny because when Muse is your box it's really easy to think Beyond it because it doesn't box you in and part of that is just the actual Act of going about it differently not typing it out starting with pencil and paper so to speak and then just to be able to dip into and dip out of all these different canvases and Link them there's like back linking you know so if you've got something that you did over on this canvas you can get like several canvases away and then link it and when you change this one it changes the other one that's nested you know somewhere else it's just a really different way of doing things and sometimes that difference makes all the difference so now I'm at the point where if I didn't have the apple pencil and if I didn't have Muse on the iPad the iPad itself would seem a whole lot less a p feeling to me now that I've used them I would just be missing out on a big huge important part of my workflow that I've come to rely on and that's how you know something good and by the way this is a no way a sponsored video there's no sponsor at all for this video I just wanted to share this because it's something that I've come to love so there you go that's just kind of the quick story of how whoa of how Muse came to completely change the way I think of the apple pencil and my iPad Pro now I gotta let you know I'm working on a productivity course if you're new around here get signed up for notifications if you like this video and these sorts of apps because I'm going to dive into that six C's process within there there's a lot of great information really excited for it especially if you want to get more done with less burnout in the Apple ecosystem the link down below where you can give me your email will let you get paid when that launches also we've got a newsletter and if you'd like to get some really awesome apps and accessories for your Apple life delivered straight to your inbox on autopilot every Friday you've got to get signed up for that otherwise I'll catch you in the next video laterhey it's Chris and this is the story about how a little-known app called Muse completely changed the way I use my iPad Pro when I first got an apple pencil for the iPad Pro it was the Gen one it was the slippery one the one that charged all weird and still does I liked the idea of using it I wanted to use it all the time it seemed like I should be getting a lot of use out of it but I actually ended up not using it all that much why I mean I wasn't an artist and even though I could use it there was nothing on the iPad itself that kind of kicked me into apple pencil mode by default I mean I would sketch with it a little and I would scratch out some notes here and there with it but not systematically and that sort of default mode of not really using the apple pencil all that much really kind of lasted up through the era of buying this new apple pencil gen 2. what I'm trying to say is I didn't rely on the apple pencil for anything it was definitely underutilized so every time it was time to create stuff on my iPad I would end up typing it so it if it was a node or an article or script I'd type it if I was going to make a mind map that got typed and again it's not that I never use the apple pencil it's just that I wasn't relying on it for any particular thing it was always a nice to have so it was nice to have for signing contracts with my actual signature but at the same time it wasn't a must-have so like if I lost it then life went up my business continued on just fine but one day I discovered this app called Muse and it's a little bit more well known today but even now among all the infinite canvas style apps it's still kind of a relatively small player but there was something about Muse that changed the way that I perceived the iPad and the apple pencil and what it can do and what I could do with it and maybe beyond that how I should be using these tools now to understand why you have to understand Muse itself what I love about it and I know I've talked about it before is that instead of creating the same app experience for different size screens like basically every other app out there Muse decided to create a specific app with a specific purpose for the iPhone and a different sort of interaction with Muse specifically for the iPad and the same thing specifically for the strengths of the mac and the iPad experience is cool because it lets you create these infinitely nested canvases so just canvases inside of canvases inside of canvases if you want to but the crazy thing is there's almost no rigidity Muse really gets out of the way and I think that's what it's supposed to do the interface is all about keeping things as simple as possible the tool set is purposely very limited but that's actually amazing because that constraint actually makes me way more creative I'm not thinking about well what out of these 50 tools is the best one to do whatever it is I'm doing there's too much mental load for a lot of apps here it's just no I'm going to use this tool and just get to work and it flows for me the iPad app here acts like a magnet and it just draws all the ideas out of my head and and into the canvas now at this point when they land there they're not always pretty right but it lets me kind of hack them up and move things around and it's all very pliable it's not rigid like I said so this is where I'm sort of formulating stuff before I actually make use of it in another app so when I say the interface is simple that's actually not doing it justice because the team has done a good job of making it feel really simple but at the same time there's a lot of power under the hood there's all these little Easter egg features that if you take the time to get to know this app and it's not just a parent right off the bat all these cool little features it just revs things up and takes it to a whole new level and you're just like oh wow now the purpose of this story here in this video is not to like do a deep dive tutorial and show you all the ins and outs I'm mostly just telling you how it changed my workflow but you can go on the website and you can see all these fun features and it is something to learn there's a little bit of a cost to using this app outside of just the price right you've got to invest a little bit of time here to make it worth your while but wow is it worth your while but because of all that because of the interface and because of that intentional design that's been infused into this really unique iPad app it's ended up giving me a non-artist I mean I'm okay with like ourselves but it's not my job right I'm not doing it to make a living it's given me a non-artist an actual reason to use and rely on the apple pencil when it's time to start a new project I no longer just default straight into typing I often start in Muse and actually I should back up a little bit because I have this framework called the six C's and here's just kind of a brief overview of what that looks like and where Muse fits into it but Muse kicks off my actual production cycle whenever I'm creating a piece of content so I do capture ideas in drafts ahead of time but when it's time to do something with those ideas it starts in Muse but here's something that's actually really funny I didn't take to Muse right away it took me several attempts like I downloaded it and deleted it don't know two three four different times before I finally was like I feel like there's something here I think I really need to explore it and take the time to get to know it and actually try using it so I sort of set a challenge for myself look just use it for like two weeks see how it goes and when I did I did fight it a little bit it was a little bit foreign but sometimes that's good I found this great Kipling quote not to like go way off track but it's something along the lines of he who knows only England of England knows almost nothing something along those lines basically if all you're familiar with is all that you're familiar with then you don't know a whole lot about it because there's no context and that applied here with The Muse I really didn't know it I knew a lot of the context around it but when I finally took the time to get to know it stuff just started snapping together and now I'm at the point where the apple pencil is not just a decoration at the top of my iPad Pro it's given me a reason to have this really big canvas the biggest version of the iPad Pro because essentially it gives me the biggest version of a muse canvas that I can have and I've got this chair in the corner of my office and sort of like my iPad slash Muse chair and I go over there and that's where I do a lot of deep thinking you know when I'm trying to put something together and we all know that phrase you know think outside the box well it's funny because when Muse is your box it's really easy to think Beyond it because it doesn't box you in and part of that is just the actual Act of going about it differently not typing it out starting with pencil and paper so to speak and then just to be able to dip into and dip out of all these different canvases and Link them there's like back linking you know so if you've got something that you did over on this canvas you can get like several canvases away and then link it and when you change this one it changes the other one that's nested you know somewhere else it's just a really different way of doing things and sometimes that difference makes all the difference so now I'm at the point where if I didn't have the apple pencil and if I didn't have Muse on the iPad the iPad itself would seem a whole lot less a p feeling to me now that I've used them I would just be missing out on a big huge important part of my workflow that I've come to rely on and that's how you know something good and by the way this is a no way a sponsored video there's no sponsor at all for this video I just wanted to share this because it's something that I've come to love so there you go that's just kind of the quick story of how whoa of how Muse came to completely change the way I think of the apple pencil and my iPad Pro now I gotta let you know I'm working on a productivity course if you're new around here get signed up for notifications if you like this video and these sorts of apps because I'm going to dive into that six C's process within there there's a lot of great information really excited for it especially if you want to get more done with less burnout in the Apple ecosystem the link down below where you can give me your email will let you get paid when that launches also we've got a newsletter and if you'd like to get some really awesome apps and accessories for your Apple life delivered straight to your inbox on autopilot every Friday you've got to get signed up for that otherwise I'll catch you in the next video later\n"