THE OMNI SHOW

Joel Clermont: It's not just about cranking through the tasks that I wanted to get done today or this week, but I actually like to have a quarterly goal session where I'm not going to write a new book unless I set that as a goal. That's not something that's going to be a task on a day or even for a couple of weeks. It's a bigger picture thing that's going to move my business forward or help me achieve some bigger goals. So having that orderly mindset, not once a year, a lot of people think about goals once a year, but I think doing a little bit more frequently, just taking an hour on a Sunday afternoon, go sit someplace nice and be like, "Boy, for this quarter I would love to move these two big things in my life forward."

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 Joel Clermont uses OmniFocus. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Omni Show. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today we are honored to be able to hang out with Joel Clermont to learn how he gets to use OmniFocus in his day-to-day life. Joel is the author of Mastering Laravel Validation Rules and he helps Laravel devs ship better products and level up their skills as well as he's the co-host of the No Compromises Podcast. I know you're going to love this conversation with Joel Clermont. Joel, it's just our honor to be able to hang out with you and get to find out what you're up to. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Joel Clermont: Yeah, this will be kind of fun. I normally do very tech nerd podcasts. I guess this is sort of in that realm, but a little more focused on a specific software tool that I love, so I'm looking forward to it.

Andrew J. Mason: I'd like to think it can be. It definitely can. It's one of those rabbit holes where it goes as deep as you want it to, so it can be nerdy if you want it to be. But your expertise, you were talking about Laravel. What is Laravel for people who aren't familiar with PHP or web coding or anything that has to do with that?

Joel Clermont: Yeah, so the way I explain it, and just like a fun side note, I just got a personalized plate for my van that says Laravel, and so I figured I have to get this pitched down for my wife, because we share a car. So I have been thinking about this even outside this interview. So PHP is the language that I write code in. Laravel is a web framework that sits on top of it. So I'm still writing PHP code, but it sort of has all of the things that you would need to build a typical web application. And so the way I think of web application is it's more than just a site where you go and you read a story, but it's you're logging in, you're entering data, you're getting reports. Most of the things we interact with on a daily basis are probably more web apps and less the basic website, but it has so much logging in, connecting to a database, security things, dealing with data validation. All of that is sort of baked into this framework and it gives you a good way to build common things that you need to build. So the end result is you can build things more quickly.

Andrew J. Mason: So acceleration is the name of the game there. Okay, that's fantastic. And what type of work do you do using Laravel in order to help people out?

Joel Clermont: Yeah, I work with a variety of different companies. So I'm independent and I've been doing this for quite a while, but I would say the last eight to nine years, actually nine to almost 10 years now, I've been focusing almost exclusively on Laravel. So pretty much anybody that needs a web application, I can help build it for them. But because I've focused on Laravel, I tend to attract clients that are already using it in their technology stack and they know I have some expertise. And so they might have a team already and just need some help or they might not have a team at all, or they may be looking to grow the team. So it's really across industries. It's not any one specific industry, but it is that tech specialization, that's the focus.

Andrew J. Mason: So I imagine that your engagement with certain clients may sometimes typically look like they have a pile of code or a silver platter saying, "Hey, somebody left us with this. Can you help us figure this thing out a little bit?"

Joel Clermont: That has happened, that certainly has happened or it could even be, "We have this application that's 15 years old and we need to fix it or we need to modernize it." And sometimes we'll help them move to Laravel from something else, maybe some just pile of code that somebody wrote in a fever dream in 2006 and now it's the core of their business somehow and they need help to actually stabilize it so they can grow further. So it's a whole range of different types of projects.

Andrew J. Mason: That's really fascinating. And how did you find yourself leaning into this framework and starting to gain notoriety and expertise in it?

Joel Clermont: So I've been using PHP. I was looking back, it looked like 1997 was the first paid project I did in PHP. So my experience with web programming and even PHP programming predates Laravel. I think Laravel was created in 2011. I didn't find it until 2014, but things come and go. Technology is kind of prone to cycles of fashion and things come into fashion and go out of fashion. And so I never really like to pin myself too much to one thing or if I see something better, it's like I'll give that a shot. And so Laravel just came across my radar at the right time where the tool I had been using before that had just made a major version change that I really didn't like. And so I was kind of already looking for something new and this just fit the bill. And so now it's a really vibrant ecosystem. There are conferences around the world, there are tons of companies hiring and looking for Laravel help. There's people writing packages to add even more functionality to Laravel that it doesn't come with. So I feel like it was a good decision in hindsight, but who knows what the next 10 or 20 years will bring. You can never say.

Andrew J. Mason: And let's switch gears a little bit over to the Omni Group or OmniFocus. When did you first cross paths with either that software or more broadly that company? Is there a specific memory or is there just over time growing awareness of like, "Yeah, that's the company that does those things and that's some software they came out with."

Joel Clermont: Yeah. So what I knew we were going to be talking, I thought about that and what I found, so my vague recollection was that I read that Getting Things Done book David Allen and OmniFocus was one of the pieces of software out there that sort of made it easy to digitally adapt that methodology. Being a little bit of a data hoarder, I'm like, "Okay, well when was this?" So I looked and I found on Amazon in 2007, I bought the book and looking at the date, here's another little confessional. I distinctly remember reading the book on a beach in Florida when my family and I were down there for over the winter break. So that's how I roll. That's a lot of fun, but then OmniFocus, I found an iTunes store receipt from 2008. It must've been February or March, I don't remember. It was several months after I got the book, but it was version 1.0. So I'm like, "All right, I guess I've been doing this for a while."

Andrew J. Mason: You are an original user. Yes sir.

Joel Clermont: Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: Yeah. I think there's only maybe three or four other guests I've talked to that have been around and kind with it for that long. That's awesome.

Joel Clermont: I see other people, I have other friends that experiment with tools and I even follow some people that are kind of known for teaching productivity and just like I talked about fashion and tech, there's fashion in productivity tools, but I really have never strayed. It just works for me and maybe I'm stubborn and I kind of have my workflow and everything works. So I've never upset that I've seen things like, "Wow, that looks kind of cool," but I've just never been tempted to try to upend my life and do something new.

Andrew J. Mason: Do you mind maybe placing OmniFocus in an overall context for us? So how big of a slice of a life do you kind of manage in it? Is it for certain roles and talk about maybe the software that flows or data that flows into and out of it, just kind of start to place it in your work system if you would?

Joel Clermont: I think of it as the source of truth for pretty much everything in my life. It's not just work. I mean that is how it started, but even things in my personal life. I have kids, the kids are in school, they got to go places. I have to file forms, I want to organize my basement, you name it. If it's something I want to get done, I will put it in OmniFocus. I would say things I don't put in there are lists of things like, "Oh, these are books I'd like to read or movies I'd like to watch." I've dabbled with that, but those aren't really to do's. I have other places that I put that information out, but things I need to accomplish in whatever sphere of my life it's going to go in OmniFocus, so it really touches.

Andrew J. Mason: Do you mind me asking what software you do use for reference or is it paper paste, what does that section of your system look like?

Joel Clermont: Well, specifically for books, because I do like to read a lot, both fiction and nonfiction and even technical books to keep up with the software industry. In the past I had used Goodreads, which is a web app and was free, and I really liked it because it integrated with my Kindle, which I tend to do a lot of reading there. But this last year I moved, you know how I've just been saying how loathe I am to move tools, but I moved to a new thing called StoryGraph and I really like it and there's a free version of it, but I pay for it and there's a little bit of friction with, it doesn't link with my Kindle, but I still am really enjoying that. But that's probably the most structured way I use of tracking things I want to read or consume like that. Otherwise I use Obsidian for taking notes. And so I'll have lists of things in there. Maybe, I don't know if you're like me, you buy a course or something, "Oh, I'm going to finish this course," that will go in there. And so I have a list of courses I bought that I haven't taken yet. And so I like using Obsidian, just plain text to track that sort of stuff.

Andrew J. Mason: What about your Laravel development? Do you use, is OmniFocus a part of that or if not, what kind of strategies or methods do you use to keep track of what's happening with Laravel in your development in your professional life?

Joel Clermont: When it comes to actually the nuts and bolts of writing Laravel or PHP code, OmniFocus really doesn't have much to do there, but for project management, because I am independent, I'm working with multiple companies, which means multiple projects, multiple conflicting, possibly deadlines, all of that needs to be managed somewhere. OmniFocus is my source of truth for that. In the software world, there's a tool called GitHub and most of our clients use something like that for their project management. So I have to keep that up to date. But in a given week or a given month, maybe I'm assigned four tasks in GitHub, those will immediately get copied into OmniFocus. And I use another tool called Recast where you can write little snippets of code. And so if I'm looking at a GitHub issue, I can hit a hotkey and it creates a structured note in the right project in OmniFocus with a link to that issue and what I need to know about it. So that's probably the most integration I have set up. I don't do a ton of automation, but that one I actually use pretty much every single day.

Andrew J. Mason: When talking about productivity and somebody's looking for that kind of great first step, not necessarily having to do with OmniFocus or any specific bit of software, but just overall they're getting to a point in their life where I've got more going on that I can really keep in my head at any given time. The kids arrive or maybe they've got a life partner or maybe job responsibilities have expanded, but they're in these points of inflection in their life where they're like, "Okay, there's more to do and more for me to show up as here." Do you have any kind of go-to first steps or thoughts for somebody that's like, "Hey, if you haven't done this, this is the lowest hanging fruit and you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck out of just doing these things?" Anything come to mind when I say that?

Joel Clermont: Yeah, and I do think it can actually be a pretty simple system. The getting things done methodology where I started, I don't follow that religiously, but for me, the two absolute essentials is the idea of capturing things. So if I am taking a walk or I'm brushing my teeth and I just think, "Oh, I need to do this," and it's not in my OmniFocus, I'll capture that. So having a way to quickly capture ideas is like that's probably the most important thing to me. And then that has to be paired with some sort of regular review. And so for me, I do it weekly because if you don't review everything you're shoving in this to-do list, it's still not going to get done. But I kind of organize my life around a weekly cadence. I've even organized my business in the way I bill my clients around that same weekly cadence. So looking back at what I did the previous week versus what I wanted to get done kind of helps me level set my ambition for the upcoming week and then just thinking, "These are the things I have to get done this week, and then here's a few things that would be nice to get done." And just that simple process really keeps things on track and helps me from feeling overwhelmed or like, "Oh, I don't even know what to work on today. I have so much going on."

Andrew J. Mason: I don't want to reach down too far here and say like, "Hey, if you're Gen Z, listen up," or something like that. But I don't know what bias or stereotype to apply to this, but if you do find yourself identifying with what I was just talking about where it is I am at that inflection point and what Joel's saying is making a lot of sense, I think he really did reduce it to the irreducible minimums. If you capture and you get that stuff out of your head, the issue is sometimes people will go that far and then feel like, "Oh, all the pressure's off, I feel great." And it's exactly what you said. That weekly review is like a shower, and if you leave it in there too long, it's going to start to stink and you're like, "I got to take a look at what I've created and what I'm taking responsibility for and decide what am I going to do with this stuff." Because if we don't put that manager's hat on, then it's like, "Okay, well then we still have that." It may not be a lapse of integrity internally. We might have the best of intentions internally, but to the outside world, it looks like we don't have our stuff together because it's like, "Oh, did you mention about the dry cleaning or your son's," whatever, all that stuff that's packed in there that we had good intentions about, we didn't really sit there and start saying, "That was a crazy thought I had at 2:00 A.M. delete it. That was something I really needed to take action on by tomorrow. Oh shoot, I got to do something about that." All of those things, all of these decisions, if you have that once a week and just staking the ground saying, "No matter what, at least I'm going to look at this stuff," man, that puts you ahead of I would say 80, 90% of people that are career driven. So please take a listen to Joel's advice. That's really, that's so good. I'm going to flip that on its head though too and ask Joel, do you have anything that you would consider to be, I thought it was a good idea at the time in terms of productivity, I thought it was the right move for me to make. And then looking back on it, hindsight 20/20, I probably should have headed it in that direction. So if anybody can learn from what I did, it could be a mistake. I don't know what we call it, but looking back, I would say it didn't bear as much fruit as I thought it was going to be. So if I were you, just skip that. It is not as what I thought it was cracked up to be.

Joel Clermont: Yeah, for sure. When you were asking that question, something immediately popped in my mind and it was this idea of being too rigid in planning. I've gone through some different phases where there's this approach called time blocking where, "Well, I'm going to work on this task for three hours on Monday and I'm going to work on this task for two hours on Tuesday." I find that useful maybe as a sanity check to make sure I'm not planning to do too much because if I can't even make it fit in the calendar, then okay, this week isn't going to work. But I just found life never goes the way you plan it. And so I would always end up feeling kind of defeated like, "Oh, I didn't get these three things I meant to get done today." Well, I got two pretty important things done. I shouldn't feel bad about that. And so I do the weekly planning where I have, and I use a tag called this week. So I just add a tag in OmniFocus called this week and I have a bucket of things, some small, some big, some important, some just things you have to do that are not really moving a goal forward, but filing your taxes or something like that. And then the day before or maybe the morning of, I'll sort of pick out what is the one to three big things that I'd like to get done today. That just leaves me feeling better because some days you pick one thing and it goes faster than you expect and you can actually pull a second thing in or a third thing in, but you don't create this impossible list where it just adds needless stress, especially if these things don't have deadlines. And maybe that's a side point too, is like don't put due dates on tasks unless they're actually due like the tax example. April 15th it is due, it has to be done. But if I'd like to get this done this week, I will not put a due date of Friday, because it's not due Friday. If it doesn't happen this week, nothing bad is going to happen other than maybe I wish it would have. So don't overuse due dates and don't try to too rigidly plan too far in advance.

Andrew J. Mason: That's so good, Joel. Like cut yourself a break. We don't celebrate the wins enough and I mean I think some of it is the business book culture thing where it's you read the Charles Duhigg or the Cal Newport and you're like, "Man, these guys are rocks. They've got it together. They know what they're doing," and they make it seem so effortless. And then so I put the plan in place. I've got the focus block down and 60 minutes into the 90 minute block, I'm like, "I was just on social media for the last 10 minutes. How did that even happen?" I don't even know.

Joel Clermont: That's right. You don't care to do that.

Andrew J. Mason: So cut yourself a break if you got a win or two wins out of three for the day, that's amazing and I think that's worth celebrating. That's good. Any other final words of wisdom or your billboard to the world kind of thing? Sometimes I frame it as you got the magic wand for productivity and you could wave it and everybody gets this once, boom, "Okay, oh, we're all doing this now." What's the behavior? What's the habit? What's the thing that we're all doing that if everybody got it, man, we would be so much more frictionless in our efforts if we did that?

Joel Clermont: Oh boy. If I can wave a magic wand, I don't know if it'd be about productivity, but if that's where my constraint is in addition to my two key things that I already mentioned, I think the one thing I'd put on top of that in general for productivity is having a bigger picture in mind. So it's not just about cranking through the tasks that I wanted to get done today or this week, but I actually like to have a quarterly goal session where, because I also do some content creation, so I have some books and some courses and a daily newsletter and a podcast. Those things, I'm not going to write a new book unless I set that as a goal. That's not something that's going to be a task on a day or even for a couple of weeks. It's a bigger picture thing that's going to move my business forward or help me achieve some bigger goals. So having that quarterly mindset, not once a year, a lot of people think about goals once a year, but I think doing a little bit more frequently, just taking an hour on a Sunday afternoon, go sit someplace nice and be like, "Boy, for this quarter I would love to move these two big things in my life forward." And that way when I'm doing weekly planning, I can at least move something into there that's related to one of those big goals. And your life doesn't just become closing tasks that get thrown at you throughout the day and the week, but really still moving forward those big goals in parallel with the other stuff that you have to keep doing.

Andrew J. Mason: And somebody thinks maybe why, why would I do that? Why would I take an extra hour here and there? I think really the name of the game there is alignment. You've got these small projects, you've got these really, really big life ambitions, and that quarterly is just kind of a sweet spot sometimes for folks to say, "You know what? I want to make sure and check in on is this moving in that direction? If not, why not?" And it gives you just that extra milestone, extra opportunity to course correct without the pressure. There's so much pressure on people these days and it's just like any chance we can to get off of our own backs, like please, let's just give it ourselves that chance. So an hour on Sunday, let's be honest, you'd probably be watching Netflix anyway. Let's just spend that time doing something that's helpful to yourself and moves you in the direction you want to go.

Joel Clermont: It can be a little bit of a trap is like just recognize if there's been something like some goal you set for three quarters in a row and you haven't done it or some task that's been in OmniFocus for a year, you can let it go. It's not a failure. Sometimes you have an idea, you think I need to do this or I want to do this, and reality proves you otherwise. I just don't want to do that, or it's not the time. So part of my review is also just dropping things like, "You know what? It didn't happen. That's no big deal." Don't feel bad about that either.

Andrew J. Mason: It feels so weird at first, especially if you're raised probably in the generation that we are, where it's like the checkbox is the only way out of this sucker. And it's like, "No, there's that delete key too." And you should feel like that's a success if you're able to make that decision wisely. Yeah. Joel, this has been a great conversation. I'm really grateful for your time. I know that you're a busy person. You mentioned books, podcasts, a bunch of content. How can folks connect with you, find out more what you're up to and see whether or not, even if they'd want to engage with you for some of your services?

Joel Clermont: Sure. I think probably the hub of everything is our website, MasteringLaravel.io, and from there you can get to the newsletter or the books or there's a contact form if you want to talk to me. But yeah, everything links out from there.

Andrew J. Mason: Joel, I so appreciate this. This is a great conversation. I had a blast.

Joel Clermont: Yeah, it was fun.

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