THE OMNI SHOW

Amy Zamikovsky: The reality is you have a three-hour window to complete this exam, and everybody else also has unlimited information at their fingertips. So for me, it wasn't about how much information can I have, it was about how concise and organized can I have this information so that I can get the most out of it in the fastest way possible.

Andrew J. Mason: You're listening to The Omni Show, where we connect with the amazing community surrounding The Omni Group's award-winning products. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today we learn how Amy Zamikovsky uses OmniOutliner. Well welcome everybody to this episode of The Omni Show, where we interview the people and stories about how they use Omni's award-winning products. And today, we're thrilled to have Amy Zamikovsky with us. She's a senior financial advisor at Transform Wealth. She has over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry, and she's passionate about serving her clients as a fiduciary. Amy is also a licensed attorney and counselor-at-law in the state of Texas, non-practicing. Amy, thank you so much for joining us. We're excited to have you today.

Amy Zamikovsky: Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here.

Andrew J. Mason: Well, I'd love for you to tell us more about yourself. We mentioned keywords, Texas and attorney, but I know there's so much more to build off of other than just those two keywords. Tell us a little bit about where you find yourself in life and geographically and just a little bit more to that picture.

Amy Zamikovsky: Yeah. So I got into law after I already was in financial advising in the financial industry, and I have a very thirsty mind. And so as somebody who loves to learn a lot, I'd really like to see how everything fits together. And so that's kind of how I ended up both as an attorney and a certified financial planner working in wealth management, because when I was in the financial services industry at the beginning, I always wanted to learn more about tax law and estate planning. And then when I was doing estate planning, I just couldn't let go of the whole other side of the wealth management picture. And so I think I found a perfect role that allows me to bring all my expertise together so hopefully my clients get the best of both worlds.

Andrew J. Mason: That's amazing. I mean, it sounds like there's such a niche that you've kind of carved out for yourself there where you can be an expert in one area, you can be an expert in the other, but when you've kind of combined those two superpowers, it's like, "I am the person for this," which is awesome.

Amy Zamikovsky: It's very specific, but yeah, it helps to see the big picture for sure. Especially clients have a lot of estate planning issues and most financial advisors just don't have a full understanding of that world. And so I would say that's probably where that expertise really brings the most value to them.

Andrew J. Mason: And talk to us about when you first came across The Omni Group. I know the way I met you and found out about you and what you're up to is a LinkedIn post that you had posted about Outliner and how it had helped you so much through school and collecting and organizing data and information and your thoughts. Talk to us about, was there ever a time that you remember specifically coming across OmniOutliner and The Omni Group, or was it just more of kind of a growing awareness that, "Yeah, that's a tool and then I ended up using it one day"?

Amy Zamikovsky: No, so I definitely remember. When I first discovered it, I was interning at a law firm during the summer when I was in law school, and this firm was a class-action plaintiff's attorney firm. And they filed claims against companies who were marketing their products as all natural and organic, but then on the flip side of the ingredients, chemically, it was false representation. So this attorney who ran the firm, I worked very closely with her in that position, and she was the one who introduced me to OmniOutliner. And when I saw on her huge Mac computer screen the outline, and I saw how she was organizing and building her cases and just the simple ability to even take a link from the web and copy and paste it underneath a heading in the outline was just mind-blowing to me. And so I thought, "Wow, I really need to get this." And I'm very grateful that I found it when I was still in law school because I was able to use it when I was in law school. And I really think it made such a huge difference in just my experience as a student because it really helped me stay focused. And then also I of course used it for the bar exam, and also, I guess the deliverable of Outliner when you print it out, it has a distinct kind of look to it. And I had some friends in law school and I kept telling them, "You've got to get this product, you've got to get this, you're going to want this." And people would see my screen, they'd be like, "What is that?" And I'm like, "You got to get it." And so one of my friends, but she was very on her own and slow to move, but she was on law review and they had this special repository of the best law students outlines that they made for the courses. And she pulled one up and the guy ended up going on after he graduated law school and working for NASA. So he was crazy brilliant, but she was like," Amy, this is one of those OmniOutliner outlines." And so that's what got her to finally join in on the fun, and then we were able to work together and enjoy it. But yes, it's incredible from just a project building standpoint, it's remarkable.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk to me about, sometimes we happen to ask people, especially in OmniFocus world, what applications flow into or flow out of, but more for OmniOutliner, there's the raw material of just getting information or data into the program. Was there ever a sense where you're like, "Okay, this is a scenario where I know I need to use OmniOutliner. This is a project that probably would require that." At what point did that switch kind of flip for you where you're like... It goes from just like, "Okay, I need to copy and paste a few things," to, "Okay, this is a real data management that I need to start a new document for." Was there kind of a tangible switch that happens for you for that?

Amy Zamikovsky: Immediately. I mean, every course that you take in law school, law school is very different from regular undergrad. Everything is very outline-based because I don't know if everyone knows this, but typically as competitive and difficult as law school is, the exams that we take, the one exam at the end of the semester, that's pretty much your entire grade. However, it's open book, it's quote, unquote, "open book." So you're allowed to have your textbook, your 800-page textbook, you're allowed to have other books with you. But the reality is you have a three-hour window to complete this exam, and everybody else also has unlimited information at their fingertips. So for me, it wasn't about how much information can I have, it was about how concise and organized can I have this information so that I can get the most out of it in the fastest way possible. Because that's what the competition is when you are having your law school exam. And so for me, I saw it just like my professors had syllabus for our courses, you take that, just like you open up any book and there's a table of contents, that's pretty much how I was building out my OmniOutliner. So every course that I took had its own OmniOutliner file, and I would go in and there's four really major pieces of a case. So you might be assigned a case to read in law school and it's like 30 miserable pages long. But the reality is you're really just looking for these four main key important parts of the case, and it's the issue, the rule, the analysis and the conclusion. And so it was helpful to me to be able to go in and say, "Okay, this is my course. This is the topic of law that we're discussing, this is the case, and then these are the four things that I'm looking for within it." So it helped me study more effectively while I was trying to process all the information that was coming at me, but it also kept me focused and then be able to synthesize it in a concise way, and then be able to access it as quickly as possible when I needed it. So clearly, I can't say enough good things about how much it helped me.

Andrew J. Mason: Well, it's interesting. This is a very first time I've heard this about the bar exam being less of a question of recall.

Amy Zamikovsky: No, no, no. The bar exam is not open book. The bar exam is definitely not open book. The law school exams, the end of this semester exams, those are all open book. So that's what every course... You go to your law classes for a whole entire semester and typically, all the main courses, unless it's some special writing course where you're doing assignments here and there, your entire grade is to your final exam. And that's open book.

Andrew J. Mason: And just the fact that that's less about accurate recall and more about data efficiency, that blows my mind. Accuracy is a given, but how can I most effectively and efficiently organize this data in a way that gives me the edge to be able to get this information done as quickly as possible? I really never looked at it through that lens.

Amy Zamikovsky: That's what they're asking you for, is your application of your understanding of the rule. So you have all this information, and so you're basically looking for what is a similar fact pattern that we cover during class and how does that apply or not apply to these facts? And so you're really just comparing and contrasting when you're applying what you know. So it's not like you're there just regurgitating facts that you went through, but it's helping you while you're processing, comparing and contrasting the information that you learned. And then also, something that I think it was just priceless for is that your professors are the ones who are grading your exams. And typically, they are the ones who have been in one discipline for a very long time. So they're very passionate about what contract law or whatever it is that they're doing, and they've devoted their life to it because a scholar in this field, and what ends up happening is they have their own viewpoint about every case. They have an opinion and they feel very, very strongly about their viewpoints. And so over the course of an entire semester, you end up having... As much as your professors try to keep their own opinions to themselves because they want you to have the enjoyment of thinking through it yourself, they will sort of randomly pepper in their thoughts and opinions just inevitably over time. And because they're the ones who are grading the exams, all they want to hear is what they already said, right? They are looking for, "What did I say?" And they don't even realize it. It just gives them the warm and fuzzies when they're grading your exam and you are telling them what they think and they're like, "Oh, yes, they were listening to me." And so it was very easy in using OmniOutliner to be able to go back into my existing framework for whatever case or topic it was and say, "Professor said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and I would always have their opinion as much as I could for every topic and concept because I knew more important than anything that's what they wanted to hear back on my exam. And the timing of how that comes out in a course isn't organized. And so the more organized you are as a student while you are taking down your notes, the easier it is to go back into something like OmniOutliner and put it exactly where it belongs.

Andrew J. Mason: What advice might you have for somebody that they know that they need to be keeping track of information or their ideas, they're trying their best to get this out in an organized way? It doesn't necessarily have to be an OmniOutliner specific suggestion, but what advice do you have for somebody that's just kind of getting started in this world of data synthesis, data organization, and trying to make it make sense for them? Like you said, just taking infinity data and kind of giving yourself a lens through which to look at that data and say, "Okay, this is how it makes the best sense to me."

Amy Zamikovsky: So I would venture to guess, I'm not very knowledgeable about actual psychology on this, but I would think that... I'm going to assume because I'm human, that we're all pretty much the same. My brain functions in literal file folders. And so I think that however we learn, if there's a different way that someone else's brain functions, knowing how you learn and how you best keep track of information, whatever that looks like for you, then that's what you need to do. Because when you have ideas, sometimes the bigger the idea, the more information you have, the more questions you have. And if you start out very unorganized without a framework at all, you're going to get very overwhelmed and it's going to be difficult for you to actually get that idea off the ground and turn it into something real. And so I think the best thing that anyone can do is start small, but understanding that with the perspective of a zoomed out viewpoint, because it's going to be about, "Okay, my main idea is here, but what are all these other things that feed into that, and how am I going to keep track of all of the things that feed into those things?" Because it can be very overwhelming, especially when you have fresh ideas and you're trying to work through things. So I think just really being disciplined about going to your main document and always putting your information in there, storing your ideas in there, being... When you have an idea, put it down and have a consistent place that you use that you've just easily trained yourself to store your ideas. The more preliminarily organizing that app or whatever it is that you're trying to use, offers is going to be better. Not too complicated because ideas come quick and you might be driving and you just need to capture something quickly, but as long as you're putting into the right place... I don't know how other people work, but it always makes me feel better when I'm like, "Oh, okay, I got it down." When I have more time, I'll go back to it and figure out how and whether that fits in with everything else. So I think just trying to have the goal of being organized as things come in really helps us see how everything fits together, and that's what helps us bring our ideas to life.

Andrew J. Mason: How do you, and it doesn't have to be for everybody, this is what I prescribe, it's prescriptive, but how do you, Amy, when you're starting with that zoomed out viewpoint, decide what level of nuance in information or detail that a project or something that you're working on might need? I remember David Allen saying something to the effect of, "As much as you need until it's off your mind." But for you, can you kind of riff on that a little bit?

Amy Zamikovsky: Yeah. I mean, I think that when you have a thirsty mind and you love how things connect together, there's really no end in sight for the truth, right? Because it doesn't have a brand. And so if you are always after that and you're wanting to figure out how to make the most out of what you do know, then there's never going to be something that... I guess the filter would be, is this a good thought or not? Because if it comes to me and I think it's a thought, I'm going to... Is it worthy of taking it down or not? And I don't think that things are too granular or too microscopic because I'm not afraid of making a new file folder. So if I have to have a miscellaneous file folder, all of the good ideas that seem too big or out of place for my existing framework, that's where they go. I just am more comfortable keeping track of everything and then making sure I have it.

Andrew J. Mason: No, well said. I remember David Allen saying something to the effect of, "It's okay to have a bunch of ideas that you don't know what to do with as long as you label it." It's in the file folder that says stuff I have no idea what I'm going to do with, but at least there's a place there for that.

Amy Zamikovsky: It sounds like he and I agree.

Andrew J. Mason: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about what is the biggest mistake that you see people making when it comes to either productivity or kind of effective and efficient information gathering and synthesis? What is it that you see that's out there where you're like, "Ah, if everybody would just stop doing that," or, "If everybody would just start doing this"? That would be really helpful for me.

Amy Zamikovsky: Yeah. I think that they're just disorganized sometimes, and I think that disorganization is fighting an uphill battle. Some of the smartest people in the world have the most and biggest and best ideas, but perhaps they're neurodivergent or they have ADHD or whatever it is. And so using tools like this that can help brilliant people synthesize their ideas to turn them into something bigger is a necessity for those people. The saying, "A brilliant mind is a terrible thing to waste." It's so true, and it's a little sad if you think about how many people have incredible ideas that have just gone nowhere because people were overwhelmed and disorganized.

Andrew J. Mason: This has been an awesome conversation. I really enjoyed just... Sorry, it's almost like it's a recursive kind of a pun, where it's like the depth to which we went into this interview. I really do appreciate your time with us, Amy. How can folks connect with you, find out more about what you're up to and just be in your orbit if they want to be?

Amy Zamikovsky: Yeah, so I love having a diverse network of professionals. So if you're listening to this, please don't hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you, and if people want to learn more about me specifically, they can go to my company's website, transformwealth.com, and that's where they can also find my contact information.

Andrew J. Mason: That's fabulous. Amy, thank you so much for hanging out with us.

Amy Zamikovsky: Thank you so much. This was so fun.

Andrew J. Mason: Hey, and thank all of you for listening today too. You can find us on Mastodon @TheOmniShow@OmniGroup.com. You can also find out everything that's happening with The Omni Group at OmniGroup.com/blog.