THE OMNI SHOW

Andrea Soro: The one mistake I did at the beginning was like overdoing the setup, trying to add new things to your system at once. Start like super simple. Start with like, I'm gonna put things in the inbox and maybe you can have my two, three. Max projects or areas. So always like try to keep, um, to keep it as simple as possible.

Andrew J. Mason: You are 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 Andrea Soro uses OmniFocus.

Welcome everybody to this episode of the Omni Show. My name's Andrew G. Mason, and today we have Andreas. Of joining us from Zurich Switzerland to share the creative ways he's using OmniFocus to make consistent progress toward his most important goals. Uh, Andrea is a software engineer, a dance instructor, and we are honored to have him.

Uh, Andrea, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We're so excited to have you on the show.

Andrea Soro: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for reaching out and I'm really excited about. Today's little conversation. Well,

Andrew J. Mason: us as well. I mean, talk to us, uh, give us some level setting. Uh, first of all, talk to us a little bit about yourself, who you are, uh, where you find yourself, and what you currently find yourself doing day to day as well.

Andrea Soro: Yeah, so first of all, um, I live in Switzerland in Zurich. My main job is, uh, software engineer for a tech startup that we're here, based in Zurich, but also we have offices of States, Berlin, and now we just got merged. So yeah, lots to do. Um, and then, so that's kind of like me by day. And then at night I'm also employed by a dance school or I'm a dance instructor.

Uh, so that's kind of like my side gig side job. And so yeah, the dancing definitely plays a big part of my life, um, on one side of teaching. But then like we have like the trainings, the events, all the social aspect to it, private classes, festivals, so that's another thing that kind of needs to get managed alongside my.

Um, main job. Yeah. Other than that, I don't have a family, so that, uh, reduces the complexity. Uh, so no, no family project in my OmniFocus. It's, um, I'm single, so, uh. May not the most of my life goes into my work and, uh, I would say the dance hobby, it,

Andrew J. Mason: it's amazing. I wanna maybe hit on this, uh, in a little bit.

Uh, we had this conversation with Sound Sequoian as well, where he, you know, was software engineer at Apple, but then also was really into jazz music. And like playing jazz and there's, there's, it's, it's so easy I think to maybe categorize and say, well, this one is the technical, you know, analytical work.

And then this one over here is like the creative passion kind of side of things. But do you find that there is some interplay between the two, where like you really need some creativity to figure out the software engineering slice of it, and you really need some structure to be able to figure out, you know, what the, the, you know, the semantics of the dance stuff look like as well.

Andrea Soro: It's actually kind of fun, fun, funny that you ask, but actually most dancers, uh, especially the guys, most of them are software engineers or a lot of them come from like really analytical jobs. Um, I mean, I have my entire theory about why that's like that. Um, but yeah, part of it is definitely that 'cause dancing at some point when you get a bit deeper into it, there's a lot like there's a structure behind it.

So everything that might look like, oh this person is like, is then trans. And just like the moves are coming out, there's a lot more structure behind it than uh, one might think. And um, so I think one of the reasons why a lot of software engineers or engineers like it is 'cause then at some point they join maybe out of curiosity and then they say, ah, but wait, there's an entire system behind it.

So they kind of start to like it 'cause they're learning the system.

Andrew J. Mason: That's right. Yeah. It's, it's a mass, you know, mass creativity, but there's a lot of, uh, uh, structure happening behind it. I wanna dig a little bit deeper too, into your, your software engineer role. Uh, tell us a little bit more about the company and the merge that's happening here.

What specifically you guys are working on, or, or do if you, if you can, if that's, if that's okay to talk through.

Andrea Soro: Yeah. We, I work on the mobile team, so I'm a Android engineer, so me and a couple more guys. We just take care of the Android app. Um, our team is the only one responsible for the mobile app, so iOS and Android.

So that gives a lot of, uh, gives us a lot of room to like, experiment things and, uh, a lot of decision making to be done. Um, which is kind of cool 'cause we live in our little bubble, so to speak. Um, which is nice. Also, like a really, really cool team team, a really good synergy between everybody. Um, the merger is not impacting us right now 'cause uh, it just got signed and, um, we're gonna start working with another team, um, of the other company we got merged with probably in a couple months.

So, so far. We just got to know them. Uh, so let's say it's not really affecting

Andrew J. Mason: our life. Okay. You can see it, uh, coming down the pipeline. And then one more kind of dig deeper question on the dance. What style of dance, uh, are you, are you an instructor for?

Andrea Soro: Oh yeah, of course. I didn't mention it. Um, I dance mainly Bachata and um, Brazilian Zoo.

Which is something that many people do not know, but it's, uh, it's growing.

Andrew J. Mason: Let's shift over to, um, the Omni group. Do you have any recollection when you first came across, uh, OmniFocus or the Omni group more broadly? Uh, do you, do you even remember, like, was it kind of a fussy thing or just, uh, like, oh, that was the day and then I know

Andrea Soro: at some point during, uh, university, um, so once I moved, once I started university, I wanted like some kind of tool.

It might actually have been even like the last year in high school, but it was around when I was like 19, 20. I'm, uh, 33 now for the record. And I remember I wanted to have some kind of like to-do list kind of software back then. I, the first one I, I was using, it was called Wonder List, but I think that got discontinued.

I don't know if you remember it. Yeah,

Andrew J. Mason: yeah. Um, fun fact, I think Microsoft bought them out and it turned into Microsoft. Oh yeah. Actually, yeah. I think Microsoft

Andrea Soro: bought them. Yeah, that's true. Um, so I was using that for a while and then I, I kept looking around and then I stumbled, um, upon, um, OmniFocus, don't ask me, I don't remember why, like how or why.

I was just, I kinda, I kind of like, I was trying things out and then, um, I got into that. I saw lots of resources, people using it, and then it looked like the one that, it was like the most flexible as far as, um, customizing things. To me it was the one that made a bit more sense. Yeah. Then also add the thing that the, like the student discount back then, um, which was cool, uh, for a broke student.

So, so yeah, that's how, that's how I started using it. Then like, I found, like, uh, resources online videos. Um, so yeah, I've been using it for over 10 years now. Oh my gosh.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk, talk to me a little bit about the placing the software in an overall context. Like, um, you know, what style of things do you end up using or tracking OmniFocus for?

Uh, how does it look? Maybe, uh. Place it in like an overall workflow for, for us as you're kind of working throughout the day.

Andrea Soro: The main, like if I have to like pick, one thing I use it for first of all is to like, uh, put everything in one place. I'm on my, in my laptop during the day when I'm working. Um, but I'm also a lot on the move and I really like to like.

When I have an idea to just put it into OmniFocus and then to like sort it later on. Uh, so definitely it's like this bucket where I put everything that crosses my mind that I'm like, oh, this one I want to go back to later. I use the app, this unofficial app on the Android app where I basically just use it for the inbox.

'cause I don't, I don't do anything else there, but it puts everything on inbox, on OmniFocus and then I usually go through it on my laptop. Um, and then I use it quite a bit to track, um. Goals, um, like personal goals relating mainly to, usually, yeah, to dancing and also to track like my day-to-day work, um, and my company.

So let's say from the inbox, uh, I use a lot of perspectives. Because I have various perspective to do various thing. I have one perspective for like everything that I want to work on today. I have one perspective where I see like weeks. So I have like tag for every week of the year. I have one perspective for routines.

So morning routine, things like that. Weekly routine. Um, yeah, so like I, I spend a lot of time on the inbox on this perspective and also like the review. The review I think is a great feature. Um. Because for actually for many years at the beginning I was using OmniFocus, but it was, I was use, I was kinda like misusing it as a bit of a, this database of things that are not actionable.

So I was like, ah, this is like a nice book I can read at some point. Or this is a nice movie. So like at some point I realized, wait, my is becoming this library. Like things, but it's not, not everything is actionable. And then I kind of did like this revamp where I removed everything that was around actionable.

I was also based on, uh, Tiago, Fortis building a Second Brain. Yeah. So I read his book and I watched some of his stuff. And then like, I did this revamp about maybe two, three years ago. Uh, 'cause I, at some point I realized I was doing reviews of like this list of like 50 books. Storage. Yeah. Yeah. I promised myself to read and I was like, why am I reviewing these books?

Um. Yeah, so, um, so these are the features I use the most.

Andrew J. Mason: You know, something must have went right for you to go from, you know, college, university high school into a product engineering role. Um, and some level of that. Even though you mentioned you may don't have. Uh, you know, family related or a partner kind of commitments.

There are, your life is still a very full plate. And what advice might you have for somebody that is like just getting started, expanding their roles in their life? So, you know, maybe they do have a new job showing up or maybe something that introduces chaos. That was a project that they didn't ask for, but like, oops, here it is, and now you're responsible for it.

Uh, what advice do you have? For somebody. It doesn't necessarily have to be an OmniFocus thing, but like a productivity, you making the best with what you've got. Kind of, uh, advice for somebody like that.

Andrea Soro: The one mistake I did at the beginning was like, kind of like overdoing the setup on one side. On the other side is like trying to add new things to your system at once.

So if you've never done, like, if you've never used such a tool, start like super simple. Start with like, I'm gonna put things in the inbox. Maybe you can have, I don't know, my two, three max projects or areas to have a bit of a separation if it's getting too cluttered. But honestly, like if it's not a lot of items, you might just, you might as well just have one list and at some point, depending on how many items you have, you might wanna like sort them out a bit.

So always like try to keep it as simple as possible. And then that's tip number one. Number two is you need to have periodic. Yeah, you need to have a habit of periodically going through it and, and this is usually, it should be every day at least. Uh, but definitely every week it's all fun, engaged to put things in it.

But if you never review it, then it's like, what am I doing this for? So you need to create this habit of, okay, let me go through it. Lemme see what's on the list. But if you put it there, but then you never review it, you might as well, like, it's kinda like you forgot it. Um, so these are like, I would say the main two tips let mean a lot of people, they don't even write down what they have to do and they think I'm gonna remember everything.

So like the first step is like, just put it somewhere at least, and then one step, it's like. Ingrained in you, then add one other thing and, and just like, and progressively like, um, make it work better at, at the end of the day, it has to work for you and you don't have to work for the system because that's also one thing in life.

Sometimes, uh, at the beginning I thought, oh, but no, it's kinda like I'm doing all these things to make the system pretty, but I'm, it's not working for me 'cause like I'm investing so much time in it. Um, so it's kind of like more wasting my time than anything. So make it work for you. And then the other thing, like everybody, that's a nice thing of OmniFocus.

Like it gives you so much freedom to like customize it, that you have to try things out. So you have to do, do like experiment and try things out and see what works for you. So definitely like get inspired by other people and then if they see you, see something, oh, I like this, try it. But like also be aware that sometimes it looks good from the outside.

But then it doesn't really match kind of like who you are. Um, and then just, yes, and be okay with like, doing experiments and then like evaluating whether it worked or not. And if you, if you see it, it's not sticking, maybe it's not like even if it looks fancy or cool, maybe it's not. It's not helping you at all, so just drop it.

Andrew J. Mason: I, I so resonate with your, uh, progressive implementation advice. You know, David Allen, I think himself says something like, if you at least write something down, you're ahead of 95% of the people Yeah. On the planet. You know, because at least if you're doing that, you're not kidding yourself. You know, it's the first step is like, just stop lying to yourself and saying, oh, I'll remember that, and we're really good at that too.

You know, in the moment we're like, oh, I, I've got it. No big deal. Under control. And then, you know, something shiny shows up over here and it's gone for me. So, uh, I think you're right on for that. You know, write it down. And then, you know, step two from what you said is, is, uh, looking at it, you know, the pressure gets relieved once we write it down.

We just want to take a nap or chill out for a little while thinking like, my gosh, finally the pressure's gone. I could feel better about this. I took a good step, you know, congratulations me, and then what, you know, we don't look at it again, and then nothing becomes of it. It's just as bad as if we never wrote.

It down in the first place. I think that's, that's fantastic advice.

Andrea Soro: Yeah, exactly. And also the one thing I realized also at work, um, I used to have this tech lead and like, um, once I asked him what he was using and he would told me, oh yeah, I just used my hat. And like, no surprise, the guy was like the most chaotic tech lead I've ever, I've ever met.

And like my current tech lead is like always on top of things and like he's putting everything down. He has like checklist it goes through. I'm sure there's people that have like. Some more capacity for this, but you're still gonna reach, you're still gonna hit a wall at some point. You're not gonna be able to like remember 50 items.

So, and I think people that say they do, they're kind of like lying. 'cause um, it means maybe your life is really not that complex.

Andrew J. Mason: That, and that very well could be true. Yeah. Maybe you don't need something external, but it might also be that, you know, probably just showing up with whatever's latest and loudest and being present to that.

But for anybody that like really has, uh. A bit of knowledge work to do. Not kidding ourselves about where the edges of our capacity are. I think that that's, that's a wise thing to do. It's so funny, I can't remember who said it or recall who, who the quote was from, but they say, if I'm ever in executive meeting and I don't see somebody like with a pen and paper or like not looking at me because they're typing what I'm saying down, like I get nervous.

Like, do you really have this commitment? 'cause you say you do and I don't know if you really do or not. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's fantastic. Talk to me a little bit about, uh, I know AI is under the conversation a lot and a couple of our guests, we've kind of gotten some hot takes on where they think things are going with that or, uh, best practices when using that.

Tell me what you see in the current landscape of ai, especially large language models and the use and, and, uh, of that. Where, where does that sit for you and, and kind of what do you use it for and, and how does that show up as you're trying to be as productive as you can be?

Andrea Soro: Yeah, no, I embrace it and, um, I think it's gonna be disruptive.

I mean, I think it's already disruptive. And I think it's gonna like literally, I think like I think the world in already, maybe five years from now, it will be a complete different place. Um, and um, I say with like high conviction, so everybody who's like, oh yeah, it's still not that good or like, it's not gonna replace us.

I'm like, man, just look at what it was able to do only three years ago and now. And it's like, it's insane. And at this rate of speed, it's just gonna get better and better. So like to me it's, it is like, um, incredible what is happening. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm definitely riding that wave of, in terms of now OmniFocus and um, and this task management, uh, that's one thing that I'm hoping for, like to see an OmniFocus.

I do have a lot, like you wanna do the reviews. Sometimes I, I'm, I cannot finish them 'cause it's like I have too many things and I have a lot of things that I don't wanna get rid of just to make my review shorter and a lot of times I will kind of need, it would be cool to have an assistant that says, okay, you have all these things.

I also kinda can deduce or predict a bit what is the urgency of these, but we still wanna get them done at some point. Like, it would be cool if it could just kind of like, um, at least because all the urgent things, I know what they are 'cause they're urgent by definition. Um, but it's all these things that are like, like those important but not urgent that you still wanna plan.

But since the urgency is not high, you don't do it. And that's where I think it would be cool to have this AI that does surface them. Then also like, like another thing that in my opinion is huge is the time blocking or putting things in your calendar. Um, so ideally I would have like an AI assistant that like I can take care of the urgent things and the AI assistant would be like, ah, you have these two projects that are important but not super urgent.

Um, I broke down the tasks to do in like small tasks that are super manageable and it tells me, oh. On Saturday, you're not doing anything. Why don't you do this too? You know?

Andrew J. Mason: Hmm. I love that.

Andrea Soro: So kind of like filling

Andrew J. Mason: in the gaps. So something in the review section to be able to say, you know what? Your list of books probably doesn't need to be looked at every single week.

Let's change that. Review frequency to quarterly or yearly, just to page through it real quick, you know, or the idea of, uh. Uh, you know, David Allen always talks about, uh, handling things when they show up versus when they blow up those important tasks that you're talking about. Like, hitting it in that inflection point right before it becomes something that blows up.

I think, oh my gosh, that would be amazing. And, and being able to predict that with some degree of accuracy.

Andrea Soro: Yeah, and even like just the day planning. Like I use this, um, basically I have a tag called today and I put it when I go through the inbox and like, what I have to do the work, I put it today tag and that will end up in my to-do in my today perspective.

But sometimes I put too many things, you know, and it would be cool. And then like, I kinda wanna do time blocking, but like sometimes I don't do it. Sometimes I do. And it would, it just means putting those things into, like dragging them into, onto the calendar and adjusting the time. And that's another thing where I'm like, so these are the things I wanna work on today.

And it would be cool if like, I just have the button, I don't know, AI time block today.

Andrew J. Mason: Do the thing. Yeah.

Andrea Soro: Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, just put on my calendar and then put the breaks in between blocks. And then I just like, I literally press the, I decide what I wanna do, kind of. AI can even suggest, ah, why don't you also do this?

So a bit of like autonomy, like AI itself to tell me, ah, why don't you squeeze in this as well? Or maybe, oh, this is too, it, it looks like it's too much. But then you press the button and like your calendar. Gets populated with like things and you just follow through and you don't have to, you don't have to do thing that much.

Andrew J. Mason: What about the co-creation part of, uh, of using uh, ai? Do you do any kind of conversation, like anything where you have a project, you know, maybe a deadline's looming down and it's not really immediately clear to you, what do I do with this next? Or how is it supposed to show up? Uh, is there any kind of like co brainstorming you do in order to flesh out next actions in a project

Andrea Soro: for resemble?

I just moved, um, apartments. And there, like I told Judge, GBT, I'm moving apartments, literally flesh out, uh, OmniFocus, uh, what's it called? Like task paper and task Paper format. Yeah. Paper important, yeah. Of all the things that are usually important in a move. And I literally like, it did it and I literally like pulled it into OmniFocus.

Of course, I didn't need like some points, I delete it 'cause it's like this doesn't apply. A couple of things I had to add. I also did it, um, last year I did this like two month, uh, dancing full immersion in Brazil. And there I also used AI to basically create OKRs. So I created OKRs. Yeah, it was actually OKRs like initiatives.

And then I told him like, make an eight week plan week by week. Put objective on every week. I don't think I translated that into OmniFocus 'cause it wasn't that. It was more like goal base rather than, what do I have to do? It was more like to define goals, but I was also, it was also pretty cool. Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: I, I really like the, uh, the task paper, uh, idea.

That's, that's super cool to be able to flesh something out. 'cause anything that does come, yeah, you might be like, chopp it away. No, I don't need that part. I don't need that part. But like, anything that remains, represents like calories. Your brain didn't have to burn in order to like come up with this stuff and save time.

So it's like. Yes, let's do that. Um, very cool. Talk to me, um, kind of maybe one more question before, before I let you go. I think, uh. At, at like a gut level, you know, there is something in you that's like, I wanna be as productive as I possibly can be. I, I don't wanna leave potential unexpressed in my life, you know, if, if and whenever it's my time to move on from the planet, like I wanna have done all the things I'm supposed to have done.

What do you think that is that's, that's in you, that drives you to be as passionate about being as productive as you possibly can be?

Andrea Soro: Yeah, so I think on one side it's, um. Bit the need to, uh, like self-improvement. So I think it's, it's something that to me, as with other people, it's like really addictive to like, see, see progress.

And at some point if you wanna see progress, you have to like, yeah, plan it and structure it, in my opinion. Uh, otherwise it's gonna be a bit limited. Yeah. The other thing in me is also maybe like this engineer thing of like optimizing stuff, depending on what we're talking about. But a lot of times I hate doing things where I'm like, I'm wasting my time.

Or like, I could do this more, more efficiently, or there's a better, better way to do it, that it's not a lot harder. It, it might even be easier. And like I get the same result with less, with less work. Um, so there's definitely also, um, some of that, um, it's kinda like a, it's kinda like a friend of mine who's uh, he's usually late and once I was like, dude, why are you, you are always late.

And he is like, yeah man, actually I thought about it and I think the reason why I'm always late is 'cause like I hate waiting. So I know that if I'm late I will not be waiting and then I'll be wasting time waiting for other people. 'cause I know some other people. And then when he sat up was actually, this kind of makes like you're still not so nice for being late.

But I see where it's coming from because you basically say if I'm late, if I'm late, the chance that I will have to wait for somebody and waste my time 'cause they're late is lower. So I'm like, sometimes I'm late. 'cause I'm like, that way when I get there, we'll start doing whatever we have to do.

Andrew J. Mason: It actually checks out too.

Like when you see like CEOs or you know, executives coming into the boardroom and everybody's like already in the boardroom and they come in, all right, let's get this meeting started. You know, or whatever, you know? Yeah. You have that picture in your head of how that that works. It, it kind of checks out.

It actually sounds almost exactly like that. That works. I, I'd love for you if you would just take a minute or two to share, uh. If folks are interested in kind of staying in your orbit or finding out more about, you know, this, the startup that you're an engineer at, or the style of dance that you're doing instructing for, uh, how can they find out more about you and what you're up to?

Andrea Soro: The company I work for is called Beekeeper. Uh, we're now getting merged with a company called Lu Maps from France. Um, if anybody's interested in the dancing, I can also leave you maybe like, uh. I think most of my dancing stuff is on Instagram, 'cause that's like the platform that is most, um, used for dancing.

So I can leave all this info is also my LinkedIn, mainly like email, LinkedIn, Instagram, um, where you can find me. I also have a personal website, but I haven't, I set it up once, but I, I don't think ever everybody, anybody, ever looks at it. So please ignore my website, which is basically my name.com. La andrea solo.com.

So yeah, that one you can ignore. 'cause I, I set it up once I paid for the domain, but I don't know why. 'cause it's, it's not really, um, maintained. Oh yeah. So definitely LinkedIn, Instagram, email is the best. Um. To reach out.

Andrew J. Mason: Andrea, you got it. Thank you so much for hanging with us. This is really cool, and I appreciate you just, uh, you are a busy guy.

Hey, and thank all of you for listening today too. You can find us on Mastodon at the Omni show@omnigroup.com. You can also find out everything that's happening with the Omni group@omnigroup.com slash blog.