THE OMNI SHOW

Khe Hy: I think the thing that separates OmniFocus from all the other to-do list apps is the review function, which is part of the methodology, the weekly review. But also, OmniFocus builds in the weekly review function into the app itself. Productivity has been this accelerant of my aliveness, where I never have to worry about ever missing a deadline as an adult.

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 Khe Hy uses OmniFocus. Welcome everybody to this episode of The Omni Show. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and it is our honor to be able to hang out with Khe Hy today. He's the founder of Latour AI Consultancy, a former Wall Street managing director, and a rare thinker who treats productivity not just as getting more done, but as designing that richer life. And he's the guy that probably would be teaching you how to simplify your tools, amplify that real impact in your life, and it's just such a treat to be able to talk to him today. Khe, thank you so much for joining us.

Khe Hy: Andrew, thanks for the kind intro and it's great to be here.

Andrew J. Mason: Well, you have a really rich backstory, and I don't want to assume that people know exactly who you are. But how do you usually introduce yourself if you're on the stage at a TEDx, or if you're just talking to somebody and you meet a group of people and they don't happen to have a level-setting idea for who you are and what you do, it's such a unique life, what do you usually share with folks?

Khe Hy: You start with the hard questions. I normally say I'm Sara and Amelie's dad and Lisa's husband, because those are my girls and that is why I do any of this, so father first. I probably will then say something along the lines that I surf a lot. I'm not a good surfer, but I surf a lot. And then, I would say I've had a very interesting career. Depending on where the conversation goes, I might lean into what's exciting me now is demystifying AI. But the decade prior to that, it was about what it means to lead a more productive, examined and joyful life. And the chapter before that was how do I make as much money as possible. So situationally-dependent, but I think the thing that I try to communicate to people is that I'm in the pursuit of aliveness, and not in jumping out of a plane type of aliveness, but just does this conversation light me up, does this book light me up, does this workout light me up, and that's the North Star of my life these days.

Andrew J. Mason: I don't think you could have said it better, and I appreciate that you painted a little bit of that trajectory of those last 20, 30 years in that. For folks that really aspire to traditional productivity, where it's like check as many boxes as I possibly can, there's a sense in which I feel like through your story you've said, "I've checked that box, but then also found myself looking around saying, 'Okay, what next? What happens next?'" And earlier on, I know you've mentioned using OmniFocus quite a bit, but how have things really shifted towards simplicity for you these days? How has that shift started to look for you?

Khe Hy: We can go a little deep here, so I'll plant the seed and let you pull on the thread if you want. I think that my obsession with productivity stems from a fear of death, and this life is so short and I'm so scared of it ending that what do I need to do to extract every ounce of it, and being wasteful with your time is a very sinful thing to do, or tragic thing to do, if you're very scared of death. I don't really have that fear anymore and I'm happy. We're probably going to need more than an hour to explain why I don't have that fear. But I would say that that fear motivated me for a large part of my life, childhood and adult. I would also say that I grew up lower middle-class, which is fine, there was always food on the table, my parents paid for my college education, there was nothing material that we ever did not need, material, food and shelter, but I always wanted a lot. I'm going to date myself, but I wanted a nice pair of Air Jordans, I wanted the starter jacket, the JanSport backpack and all that, I'm a kid of the '90s, and my parents couldn't afford it. And so, productivity was always this pathway to getting material things through basically the extraction of money out of time. And I was quite young when I put it all together, I was like, "If I can be extremely efficient at things that are very highly monetarily rewarded, I'll have everything I want." And I think that works, that worked great, and as a teenager, I started to make a lot of money as a website developer, and as a college grad, I made a decent amount of money working on Wall Street. And when I hit 35, I had done well, not nearly enough money to retire, but I had done well where I could take a break, and I had just had a child, and so that led me to rethink the why of everything. And I think I would say productivity before age 35 was all about the how, and then productivity after the age of 35 is all about the why.

Andrew J. Mason: It's interesting to hear, and I appreciate you mentioning the [inaudible 00:06:17] because I do want to go deep, but maybe we'll give people a medium taste, just so that we keep things wrapped in time. But I think about folks that when they hear what you had done in your life, they're still aspiring to what you were versus to where you find yourself currently at, and saying, "Yeah, that's great, but I find myself drowning in tools, drowning in lists," how would you coach somebody that maybe finds themself in that aspirational space, but their life's overwhelming, they know they need to get back on track, what's a good maybe first start or step or two?

Khe Hy: Productivity as a genre, and I know this having spent a lot of time writing about it and using it, I think has a dissociative effect. So what do I mean by that? You might be feeling overwhelmed at work, and your overwhelm might actually be driven by the fact that you're insecure about something, maybe you have imposter syndrome. But the way that it feels like you will tackle that overwhelm would be by adding more tools, by better organizing your OmniFocus or learning how to use Obsidian or whatever. And so, the advice that I would give people is I am pro-tool, I use a lot of... As someone who doesn't really "care" about productivity at 46, I use a lot of tools and I still use OmniFocus, but I would tell that person, "Are you using productivity and the learning thereof as a form of escapism to avoid confronting the thing that you really don't want to confront?" And I think that tools are great and systems are great and they played a huge part of my professional success, which has been a pillar of my personal success and my personal happiness. I think the thing that I would tell people would be to always be careful that you're not using productivity as a form of escapism. And just like doom-scrolling TikTok is an easy form of escapism, there's something about productivity where people are like, "Oh, that's not as bad." I think it's less bad than doom-scrolling TikTok, but I think it's more in the bad category than the good category if your motivation is escapism.

Andrew J. Mason: For folks that are listening to this saying, "This is The Omni Show, you're supposed to be talking about being productive, and now you're actually just... Not discouraging me or anything, but really causing me to look at some uncomfortable things here," what have you found as you've looked in that direction?

Khe Hy: So we talked about the fear of death, and so this do I matter, will people remember me, these questions. I think that if you have this question of did I matter in this life, do I matter in this life, it's very easy to be like, well, I'm going to build a system to basically pour gasoline on my mattering. I think that would be one, but I'm speaking of it in a very cynical way. I also want to say that productivity has been this accelerant of my aliveness, where I never have to worry about ever missing a deadline as an adult. I've never missed a deadline, I'm 46 and a half years old. And you can use some funny examples. I don't have cable, but I like sports, so I do a lot of trials where I sign up for a week at this discounted rate, and the ultimate test of a productivity system is if you're comfortable signing up for free trials and canceling it before the event. I've never... Once I did, I was quite angry at myself, and I called the company and I'm like, "Sorry, this was an honest mistake, can you please refund me the $24?" They said no. But besides that one time, I've done a very good job, so I never worry about things. I think that I get more done today in any given day than I would say 98%, 99% of my peers. I'm perceived by colleagues and friends as reliable. I'm very, very intentional about maintaining relationships. We could talk about how I use OmniFocus to do that still. And so, there's all these amazing things, but being good at OmniFocus wasn't the end goal, being a great friend was the end goal or being a deeply curious person was the end goal. So if I'm worrying about did I pay this bill on time, then I can't be creative. But once I stop worrying about did I pay this bill on time, did I send this email on time, then I can be deeply creative, and so that was the end goal. And so, I don't want people to take away that I'm a cynic of productivity, no way. I'm only cynical of productivity as a means of escapism. I'm very pro-productivity as a enhancer of your personal aliveness.

Andrew J. Mason: For the sake of practicality, do you mind sharing just a few examples? You mentioned the trialing. How else does the software show up in your life, just in the day-to-day, to support whatever actions you're engaged in?

Khe Hy: Yeah, yeah. I'll pull up my phone, I can't show it, but just so... If I go into OmniFocus, I have eight projects. One is networking, the other one is AI networking, which is basically BizDev. I have something called personal, I have personal finance, and I have family, health and birthdays. Those are my eight categories. Right away, you can see that I'm using OmniFocus almost more like a CRM than a to-do list. Most of my tasks, if you go into personal, it's all pay this bill, it's mostly pay this bill. I'm on the ChatGPT $200 plan, and so I have, on the 14th of every month, do you still like ChatGPT Pro?

Andrew J. Mason: That's a great one. I love it.

Khe Hy: Because it's $200.

Andrew J. Mason: That's right.

Khe Hy: Cancel Chordify. I did a one-year subscription to a piano chords app on Black Friday, and I didn't want it to renew, because I'm probably not going to use this. Cancel Chordify by Thanksgiving, Black Friday. So that's my personal. I have birthdays, birthdays speak for themselves, but I try to wish everyone a happy birthday, people that I care about. Networking is pretty obvious. And then, let's see, I think that's... Personal finance and health, health is doctor's appointments for me and my family. That's how I use it. So we could talk about using it as networking and staying in touch with people, birthdays. One thing that's very important to me is that I use the review function on the app. I think the thing that separates OmniFocus from all the other to-do list apps is the review function, which is part of the methodology, the weekly review. But also, OmniFocus builds in the weekly review function into the app itself. And more specifically, what it does is, every seven days, by default, it goes through your projects and it says, "Hey, you have to look at all of the contents of this project." Because remember, OmniFocus, one of the key facts is that it discourages you from using due dates unless there is a significant consequence for missing the due date. So paying your rent would have a due date, but think about my family's values would not have a due date. And what happens in that system, which differentiates it from other productivity systems, is if you don't use a lot of due dates, then all of the tasks without due dates just fall into the nether. They just literally disappear, you have no way of actually seeing them, which is why the review function comes in, which basically the app says, "Here is your personal list, do these tasks still matter?" And you basically can clean them up or force yourself to do them. The ninja move is, so we have this review function and it defaults to weekly. However, what I do is you can also set the frequency of the review date on the app. And so, for something like my personal projects, I'll do it for a week. Let's say if I had more personal development projects, I don't, but let's just say I did, where it's like think about your values or have you signed up a new accountant, things like that, maybe I would set the review frequency of that as monthly so that I'm not bombarded all the time with these review tasks, because those are tasks in and of themselves. So that's basically, in a nutshell, how I use OmniFocus today. So again, to recap, a small number of projects, a lot of it is using it as a CRM. I use very few due dates, only for things that have a penalty if I miss them, like mostly paying bills. And then, I use the review function, and I customize the review frequency based on just anecdotal, empirically, how regularly does that task need to be reviewed.

Andrew J. Mason: I'd love to shift gears a little bit into the realm of AI. You mentioned starting some AI help and AI consulting just to help people out, especially in the financial space, I've heard some fascinating conversations between you and some colleagues in AI. When you're using it as a creative partner or as a coach, and you hear both sides of the coin, people warning of the potential dangers, we're outsourcing our creativity, the same thing that's happened to social media for our attention span is going to be what's happening for AI and our creativity and our muscles there. What are some things that get you excited about AI that it empowers us to do, or maybe that it empowers us no longer to do as well? I've heard you talk about the barrier of what's even considered work these days.

Khe Hy: So there's this quote, I don't know who said it, probably a Mark Twain or something, but it's about the relationship between money and happiness, especially when you start to make a lot of it, and the quote says, "Money makes you more of what you already are." So if you're a greedy person and you win the lottery, you're probably going to be even more greedy. If you are a very generous person and you win the lottery, you'll probably be even more generous. And so, I think about this with AI, I think AI makes you more of what you already are. So if you're intellectually curious, you have literally every single Nobel Prize winner at your fingertips. If you are intellectually lazy, you're going to be like, "I don't need to do this, I could get it 80% done like me with zero effort." If you're not a critical thinker or you're gullible, let's say, if you're naturally gullible, AI will make you more gullible, it will reinforce your gullible. I think that there are some extremely important ethical questions that we need to be asking about AI, about the environment, about the social safety net, about misinformation, about copyright law. I think there's really big important questions that I don't think we're doing a great job of answering today. However, I do have maybe a slightly... I'm not a libertarian, but I do have a little bit of a libertarian view on this, that if they are consenting adults, give them the tool, and I do think the market will correct for you. So if you're intellectually lazy and cheating your way through work with AI, eventually, the market will catch up to you. And so, in that regards, I'm very much of the consenting adults... I don't love that you can gamble on everything, but you know what? You're 18 years old, it's not my job to tell you. When it comes to kids, I feel very differently about this, but that's a whole different conversation. So that's the framework that I use on this, that AI is really an accelerant, and it's actually not that dissimilar from what I said about productivity. If you're using productivity as escapism, I think you're harming yourself. If you're using productivity as a means to becoming a better parent, I think you're helping yourself tremendously. So I think there's actually a lot of parallels here. In terms of the things that excite me, I love learning, so I'll give you an example. So you know how I've been using OmniFocus as basically a reminders app to stay in touch with people, I'm like, well, OmniFocus is not really the right place to do this, this is contact management. So I built a web app from scratch, I don't know how to code, and it does exactly what I want it to do, and now I can share it with my friends. But guess what? As I started to build it, there's all these security questions that come up, like what if someone hacks your project? People are putting in their confidential information here. So then, I had to go to AI and say, "Hey, I don't know anything about security of web apps, give me the principles that I need to learn."

Andrew J. Mason: That's right.

Khe Hy: And they gave me the principles. Then I'm like, okay, I'm going to go try, I'm going to go plug this... It was like, "Don't leave any API endpoints exposed," which, by the way, I didn't even know what that meant a week ago. And now, I closed off all my APIs, and it turns out I had one exposed API endpoint from testing. So I'm like, wait, how did I become a hobbyist software developer with a working web app that's solving a problem that I have and that other people have too, and I'm doing it in a pretty secure way-

Andrew J. Mason: That's crazy.

Khe Hy: ... with a $20-a-month app, that's insane. And I want to be clear, I think that there are significant environmental concerns, significant IP control concerns, significant geopolitical concerns, and I think there's significant child safety concerns that I don't think are being addressed right now. So I don't want to just give this blanket, "It's great." I'd rather live in a world with it than without, but I don't want to dismiss that I think that we are failing ourselves as a society. And if anything, I've been thinking, with my AI knowledge, I think college needs to change, and it's changing too slowly. So I've actually been thinking about starting an AI high school program for free that you have to apply to, like a little AI academy for high school kids, and the goal would not be for me to make money off of it, it would be because I want to do my part. I think our education system is failing kids with AI, and so how can I do my part using AI to make my dent in it? I'm never going to be in all policy person, politician type, that will never be me. But I do think that I have a lot of skills and knowledge to offer to folks. And as I get older, I'm like, yeah, I could teach another 46-year-old how to do this, and I'm doing this in my day job. But eventually, that's going to be like, why teach a 46-year-old who will pay you a lot of money when you can teach an 18-year-old who you could fundamentally change the course of their lives?

Andrew J. Mason: If you could accelerate mentally 10 years from now and just put yourself in that place and whatever that looks like, I'm sure there's unintended consequences, as you mentioned, and we're looking back saying, "Oh, shoot, I wish we collectively, either personally or as a society or as a world, had done things differently." Do you have any practices or habits that you're putting in place today to mitigate against some of whatever that regret might be?

Khe Hy: Yeah. Are you asking about the regret in my own life or the regret in society?

Andrew J. Mason: Let's say personal, because we'll keep it close to home for you.

Khe Hy: Personal, I would say that I think that there is a pull to remove yourself from the physical world, and I think AI is going to accelerate that pull. There are times when I used to ask another person to help me with these questions. Now, I just ask AI. And I think that it's wonderful, but then if you just stop asking other humans questions, I think that it leads to a suboptimal outcome for you and society. So I do fear that human-ness can be... We saw this with social media, where you can "replace," if this is on audio, I'm putting giant suggestive air quotes, you can "replace" human relationships with digital relationships, it's same thing, money makes you more of what you already are. If you were good at maintaining relationships, digital relationships are going to just make you more prolific and more expansive. But if you struggled to meet people, you probably... Digital, not always the case, but it might isolate you more. And I think about this, I like to say that the plasticity of my brain is pretty established at this point, but I think about it a lot with my kids. I could be a little bit wrong, but some large percentage, I think it's like 30% or 40% of AI queries are some form of companionship.

Andrew J. Mason: Wow. Wow.

Khe Hy: I do not want that life for my kids, and maybe that's me projecting what I want for me on them, but I'm going to use the parent card here and just objectively say I don't think that's a good thing. Just like if you told me 30% of their relationships would be people online, I would say I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Andrew J. Mason: Collectively, it's such an open-ended question, feel free to take it in any direction that you like, what have you learned over your years in helping people change?

Khe Hy: My initial reaction was teaching a man to fish type thing, you can only get people as far as they want to go, and I think that that's fine, but I think that's not particularly insightful. I would say I think people, and my wife really embodies this so I'm learning from her, I think at the end of the day, people truly want to be seen. They want to be seen for who they are in their authentic selves, they want to be seen as not judged by their flaws or their perceived flaws or weaknesses, and they want their existence, and that's the things that they do and their character, they want it to be acknowledged. Doing that for other people is so much more powerful than any tactical thing that you could teach them. Now, when you do them together, it's amazing. But if you had to pick one, I think people don't appreciate how much the former matters.

Andrew J. Mason: I so appreciate your time with us. If folks are interested in hanging out and seeing what your next chapter continues to look like or hearing any words from you, it takes different forms, because I know there's different ways of expressing yourself and everything, but how would you like for folks to find out more about what you're up to?

Khe Hy: Well, the archive of a lot of the things that I've described is over at khehy.com/blog. I've written, I think, over 400 pieces there. I don't write anymore on that topic. And then, if you're interested in the new AI work, I have a newsletter called Future-Proof.Your Career with AI, can link to that, it's in Substack. If you google Khe Hy Substack, it will pull it up.

Andrew J. Mason: Khe Hy, this has been awesome. It could easily be a three-hour conversation. I'm so grateful for your time with us. Thanks for hanging out.

Khe Hy: Thanks, Andrew. The pleasure's mine.

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