THE OMNI SHOW

Jim Mitchell: I remember reading on daringfireball.net, the post that John Gruber made about OmniFocus on Merlin Mann talking about it. Something about that. It was so many years ago now. That's when I first saw OmniFocus. I said, "This is for me." So I bought the license, and then shortly after that I bought a license for OmniPlan and then OmniGraffle

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 learned how Jim Mitchell uses OmniFocus. Well, welcome everybody to this episode of The Omni Show. My name is Andrew J. Mason, and we are honored to be able to have Jim Mitchell with us today. He's the director for Salesforce applications for Vizio, where he runs the team responsible for their Salesforce initiatives. Jim also happens to be a user of OmniFocus, which is why we're chatting today. Jim, we're honored to have you with us. Thanks for joining.

Jim Mitchell: Andrew, thanks for having me. The honor is all mine. I was really surprised to hear from you.

Andrew J. Mason: We go scouring all over the internet and here we are digging deep, and as soon as I saw that you said, "Oh yeah, I actually happen to use that software." "Okay, let's talk about it."

Jim Mitchell: Let's talk.

Andrew J. Mason: Speaking of talking about it, talk to us about yourself. Who are you? Where do you find yourself in the country, and what does day-to-day look like for you as director of Salesforce application?

Jim Mitchell: Yeah, I really like the question, "Where do you find yourself?" Because I went to college to be a design artist, and this is before the internet was even a thing, so I was a print design artist. So now to find myself as director of Salesforce applications for the largest TV manufacturer in the US is an incredible journey. So my life has always been a path of hey, right time, right moment kind of things. So I started out as a design artist, and one day I designed a database system to manage my own work. And this was before I even knew about OmniFocus, before it was even an application, to be honest. So I designed this database to track all the jobs that I was managing in the art department, and it became a company-wide thing. And so the company said, "Hey, you did a pretty good job, let's move you into IT." So I just sort of fell into IT one day. And it was like, "Oh, this is my calling." So from there, that was 25 years ago. So I've been in IT now for 25 years, and I fell into the Salesforce ecosystem about 15 years ago, very much by accident. And when I found that, it was like, "This is what I want to do the rest of my life." So I've been doing that at Vizio now for 10 years, and we've kind of grown it. I run the team and we make some incredible stuff for our users.

Andrew J. Mason: Hear, hear. Yeah, that's very true. And it's interesting too, to hear the... I'm sure there's some intention attached to that path that you just discussed, but also the idea that whosoever happens to be sitting next to a printer is dubbed IT when it first starts off, it just happens to be that way, and you're like, "Okay, well, here I find myself." That's awesome.

Jim Mitchell: I was going to say, it's funny you should mention that guy sitting by the printer because I was that guy sitting by the printer for about a year. No, it's funny you say that.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk to me about... Do you have any recollection as to when you first came across either OmniFocus the software or even Omni Group more broadly? Do you have a space in your mind was like, "That's kind of when it first jumped up on my radar"? Or was it just kind of this growing realization over time like, "Oh yeah, that's the software and that's who they are"?

Jim Mitchell: Yeah, I went looking back through my emails to see when did I buy my first license? And it was on September 4th, 2008. So it was literally nine months after the software became publicly available. I remember reading on daringfireball.net the post that John Gruber made about OmniFocus, and I remember Merlin Mann talking about it, something about that. It's so many years ago now that I don't remember all the details, but that's when I first saw OmniFocus and I said, "This is for me." So I bought the license and then shortly after that I bought a license for OmniPlan, and then I was all in on The Omni Group. So I still use OmniGraffle in my position now to write flows and diagrams and stuff like that. So it's an incredible tool that has just kept me on track in more ways than one.

Andrew J. Mason: I'd love to talk to you a bit about how that morphed from the initial database that you use to manage your day-to-day operations into something that maybe incorporates OmniFocus or OmniGraffle into it. But let's first hit into you find yourself over the course of your career, not to mention your personal life as well, finding additional responsibility being handed to you. Things are morphing over time. What advice do you have for somebody that finds themselves on a similar track, maybe not necessarily the exact same career, but they're in this place of continuous growth and, "Oh shoot, I need to do something. I didn't really have a system. My system was my head. How do I do this?"

Jim Mitchell: I was kind of at that place myself, and it's really... You need to find a method for capturing all of these things that you need to do, all of these ideas that you want to act on. I remember early on in my career that I was just writing things down or making notes here, there and everywhere, and I'd lose track of stuff. So I realized I need an application. I need the database that I built to know where everything was all at my fingertips. So I would give the advice to somebody that, "Find a central place to gather your information and make that your source of truth no matter what." Then I would say make it really easy to capture that information. Friction kills productivity, so making it really easy to capture it, just a few seconds to get it into the system, go back and look at it later. So that's what the inbox is so great about OmniFocus is you can just dump it there, go back a day or two later and say, "Okay, this is how I'm going to action this." When you're starting off, keep it really minimal. If you need to categorize anything, keep it really small to begin with, and even when you become experienced in your task management or your capture system, still keep it really simple. If you don't, you will have the friction that you're trying to avoid.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk to me a little bit about OmniFocus itself. How does it start to manifest for you in your day to day? If there is such a thing as an ordinary day, how does that look? Maybe walk us through how a day looks, and then maybe walk us through what's flowing in and out of the ecosystem of your system, of OmniFocus? What kind of data is going into it? Is there any corollary software that sits around and maybe place that in the environment for us?

Jim Mitchell: So every day I wake up at 4:00 AM and walk the dog. So at 4:30 I'm at my desk and I'm essentially reviewing everything that's in my inbox. So I'll action everything that I put in the day before, I'll figure out where it needs to go, when it needs to be done by it, and then I'll look at my perspective of everything that's upcoming. So I'll determine, "All right, I want to try and get this done at this particular time." I'll look at my calendar, I'll see where I do have openings for the day. Some days I'm wide open, other days I have nothing open at all. So I'll try and fit some of those tasks in the do-by date... Or not the due date, but I set everything up by planning date throughout my day and say, "These are the tasks I'd like to get done." I only use due dates for things that must be done by a certain time, and then I kind of schedule out my day. So along with my calendar, OmniFocus. They're side by side. They determine what am I going to do today, my meetings, my tasks. Along with that, I am using Obsidian to capture things, so all of my notes go in Obsidian. I do have an integration that I worked on with one of your prior guests, Andrew Canyon. He's an incredible OmniFocus guy. He had created an automation between Obsidian and OmniFocus to get the tasks that he added to Obsidian into OmniFocus quickly. So using Keyboard Maestro in between them. So I asked him, "Hey man, show me what you did. I'm totally nerding out here, so I'd like to know." He shared it with me, and then I said, "Well, I'm going to take it a little bit further." So when I list those tasks in Obsidian and I want to get him into OmniFocus, I want to mark them as done in Obsidian. So I kind of tweaked his work and then shared it with him. So that's really the only automation that I use is when I'm in Obsidian, I make my tasks from a meeting note, I'll do a key command and just everything goes into Obsidian into my inbox, and then I'll action that the next day. So really Obsidian, OmniFocus in my calendar, those three work together to keep me going and keep me productive and not dropping the ball, because when you're managing a team of 10 people, you've got people you need to report to, give statuses on, and also, even though I'm a D level, I'm still an individual contributor in some way. So I have my own tasks that I still need to get done too. So that all keeps me... Because if I had to remember it all in one place in my head, forget it.

Andrew J. Mason: It's over. Are there any additional perspectives that you rely on? Anything in the task space that shows up for you in terms of how you slice and dice the information and how you like to see it? Or is it really as streamlined as inbox projects and upcoming? That does it for me.

Jim Mitchell: No. I have two custom perspectives. One is for today, today only. And then one is kind of the future. So everything that's today and coming up that I put a complete-by date on, but also my due dates, it's essentially a very comprehensive list out into the future of what I've got on my plate. Sometimes I'll look at my projects. My project structure is really pretty simple. I have two contexts that I really work in, and that's personal and work. So I keep the two separate as much as possible. All of my work projects obviously go under that. I've got a few projects for personal, house, self family, and I really keep everything there. So very rarely do I dip into the projects. It's more the today and the future context that I work with. And then of course, I do my weekly review. Some of my projects, I'll do a monthly review, some I'll do a weekly, kind of spread them out so that I'm not sitting down reviewing everything all in one day.

Andrew J. Mason: I am curious, too, Jim, about the morphing, the transition of, so you see something like OmniFocus, you mentioned Obsidian as part of your workflow. How did your workflow from the early days of self-management with the database continue to transition into what you find yourself with today and maybe break down some of the details of what that looks like for you?

Jim Mitchell: Sure. The database that I created became a company-wide ERP system. So I just started this little thing off to manage my own jobs, and it became pretty big. So eventually I wasn't able really make it my own personal task manager. So I had to turn that over to other people to do. But still at the same time, I built my own side database to keep track of my own things going on because I needed to have something still. It was right about that time when OmniFocus 1.0 came out and being a Mac nerd that I am forever and ever... Design artists, Macs, they go together. When I heard about OmniFocus, I kind of kept an eye on it, and I've always been a software hound. When a new application comes along, I'll check it out. When I got my hands on OmniFocus, that was kind of like, "Yeah, this is it, man. This is an easy way to capture." Capturing my tasks to me is the most crucial thing because something will pop into my head at the craziest time. When I'm driving to work, something will pop into my head as I'm walking the dog. So I've made my capturing as frictionless as possible on my watch. I'll dictate ideas into the inbox. On my phone, same thing. I'll dictate what's on my mind to get it in the inbox so that I can move on from it or move on from that idea and forget about it until I have to deal with it. So I guess that's sort of how I moved into OmniFocus. I didn't really mature my information gathering workflow until I started having to manage people. When I elevated to the position I am, a lot of meetings came with that. Meetings mean notes because I can't remember everything from every meeting anymore. That's when Obsidian came into the flow. I've really only been using Obsidian for probably the past couple years. Before that, I would take notes like in BBEdit and keep those around as text files, but the interlinking to different notes wasn't there for that. So that's why I landed on Obsidian. I tried every other note-taking app there is, and Obsidian with its sync, that's the one because I can have it on my phone, have it on my computer at home, work, et cetera. Yeah, and then of course, rolling in the calendar. That just comes naturally.

Andrew J. Mason: And I know you mentioned that the only automation that you happen to be engaged in right now is the one that was built off of the Obsidian task creation. Is there anything that if you considered automation a little bit more broadly would show up for you in the term of routines, habits, repeating tasks, anything that shows up for you on a regular basis that you're like, "You know what? This isn't a one-off thing. This is going to be something that if I don't have to think about it and it's routinized for me, man, that's a load off my brain."

Jim Mitchell: Yes. I lean heavily on repeating tasks. I mentioned earlier, I have my personal areas of my life. Myself, my family, the house, stuff like that. So managing a house, there's a lot of things that you need to remember to do on a regular basis. So I've got one... This is kind of silly. I clean the trap of the dishwasher out every three months, but I've got a repeating task that reminds me, "You've got to do that this weekend, Jim."

Andrew J. Mason: That's right.

Jim Mitchell: That kind of stuff. The RV sits in storage, so I've got a task that every three weeks I go and I start it up. I run the generator. I wouldn't remember to do that otherwise. So yeah, repeating tasks are key to me not having to worry about it and making sure it gets done on time when it needs to be.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk to me about anything in your journey thus far that in your career you look back on it and you say, "Maybe I wouldn't necessarily call this a mistake or a problem or anything wrong that happened, but when I look back on it, if I'm giving somebody life instruction and saying, 'Here's everything I did functionally work-wise to get to where I consider myself to be in my productivity space,' maybe just skip that part. If it was up to you, you probably could just jump over that part of your journey and be perfectly fine. It was a side quest for me, didn't really bear any fruit. I thought it might, and here we are."

Jim Mitchell: It's so easy to over-complicate your system. A lot of your guests have said this. It's because you can over-complicate it, doesn't mean you should. Just keep it really, really simple is the best advice, I would say. On a personal level, I think the advice I would give now that I'm so many years into IT and along the way is find your passion early. Because I started out as a design artist and I thought that was the way to go because I was interested in art when I was in high school, and it turned out that I actually found a passion in writing code. So know your passion, really, I think. And if you don't know a passion or you can't land on one, just get interested in anything. Find something that interests you and just go 100% into it and learn all you can about it. You may find that it is a passion or it might not be. The biggest one I might say is don't be afraid to make mistakes. I just wrote a blog post on this yesterday. It just came to me as I was driving to work. Failure is our best teacher. When you listen to her lessons, she'll give you wisdom and humility in return. So don't be afraid to fail big. I have failed big so many times. Early on in my career, I was afraid of failure, but now I find that when I do fail, that's what I'm learning things.

Andrew J. Mason: A mentor of mine double clicked into that and said... Gosh, I'm going to butcher his quote. But it's something along the lines of, "Fear isn't overcome by pure courage. Fear is overcome by passion or curiosity or a drive towards something that's beyond what's required for that courage." So it's like, get curious. That is really, really powerful. As you said, failure is a great teacher, and not that this is what the show is about, but I may, if you can listen to the words that Jim's sharing right there, you'll sometimes find yourself in unexpectedly good places if you listen to that. I think that's very true. Jim, this is a great conversation. Any way people can keep in touch or stay in your orbit if they're interested in hearing more of what you have to say?

Jim Mitchell: Sure. I have my blog at jimmitchell.org. I'm on Mastodon as well. You can find a link to my Mastodon presence there. I'm on Bluesky and on Micro.blog. That's where I run my blog from, so I don't really do any of the other socials. Try to keep it simple. That's my whole mantra is, "Keep it simple." Very, very simple, actually.

Andrew J. Mason: That's awesome, Jim. So honored to have you today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jim Mitchell: Thanks for having me, Andrew.

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.