THE OMNI SHOW

Victor Savkin: It's kind of, it seems like form function. There is some of it as well, right? Where sometimes you say like, what does matter? Is it less but like super high quality so it feels good, or more, but is like where it becomes a bit clumsy, right? I actually think that OmniFocus is exceptionally ergonomic. I think it's actually exceptionally ergonomic if you look at the outline manipulation part, right? Because that's, to me, what it is. It's a very sophisticated outline, manipulated, with nice UI around it, right? Being like, I used a lot of, like, I like thinking in trees and doing outlines and a lot of other things, right? And the ease with which I can do it here, right, manipulate this outline, assign attributes, et cetera, is very high.

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 Victor Savkin uses OmniFocus. Well, welcome everybody to this episode of "The Omni Show." My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today we're honored to be able to hang out with Victor Savkin. He's the CTO at NX. He's an ex-Googler and the creator of NX and NX Cloud. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But Victor, thank you so much for joining us. We're excited to be able to chat with you today about how you use OmniFocus.

Victor Savkin: Hey everyone, thank you for having me. Yeah, excited as well.

Andrew J. Mason: Absolutely. And Victor, talk to us a little bit about where you find yourself geographically and then a little bit more, you know, color and flesh around who you are and what you find yourself doing, career-wise.

Victor Savkin: So I'm in Toronto, so I'm in Canada, but I used to live in the States as well. So basically North America in general, where I reside. And career-wise, I'm a programmer. I think of myself still as a programmer, even though I do less programming day to day, right? And I used to be at Google working on Angular, and then I, we started our own company. So now I'm kind of growing this company with my co-founder, Jeff Cross.

Andrew J. Mason: That's fantastic. And talk to us more about NX and NX Cloud for those, this is probably one of those difficult questions to answer where you're at a place where there are people who maybe don't have the level of technical knowledge or expertise and they say, Hey, so what do you do? How do you kind of condense that down for somebody where they understand, okay, at least I get the general idea of what Victor's involved in.

Victor Savkin: Basically, I'm interested in tooling in general. I mean, maybe that's part of my obsession is, like semi-productivity tool as well, right? I like the idea of like tooling, of getting more leverage out of what you do, like, day to day, right? NX is a dev tool. So while I was at Google, we were working on some build tools there, NX is a build tool for programmers to build software, right? Usually, software at scale. It's used a lot by like sort of larger teams, large enterprise, but not only, by small teams as well. So that's kinda my main area of interest is building tools for programmers who essentially build tools for someone else. It's like a very meta, like a, you know, second derivative kind of thing, right? So I do like it a lot because then I can use it myself. I dogfood it. I strongly believe in dog fooding, and I imagine you folks dogfood stuff as well, right? Like you use your own software so it feels nice to use what you build because you build for yourself as well, not just for other people, right? Yeah. this one, at least one customer who is happy with it or at least somewhat happy with it is you, right?

Andrew J. Mason: For us, I absolutely agree with and understand the...man, the idea of dogfooding where it's like, let's make sure that this is at least solving the problem that we have for ourselves and then taking it that step further and seeing if if other people are interested in that as well.

Victor Savkin: 100%. A lot of the quality, like the notion of quality in general, it's very tricky to define because sometimes you just cannot define, it's not just numerical, like it's faster, like things like that you can define, right? But a lot of quality is kinda is not fully describable. It's something that is like when you have tactile experience for example. That's kind of, you see a thing that has a good of a, is a pilot BP. So I think it was released in 1963, long, long time ago, right? And like the click is very satisfying, right? You cannot describe the click, it's just there. Unless you use it yourself, you won't be able to tell a very good click from not a very good click, right? It's like you have to like feel it right day to day to be like very satisfying click. It actually makes a big difference. A good click compared to a bad click makes a big difference, you know, when it's worth whatever 10x the price as compared to like a regular click pen, right? And the same stuff with software. If you use it and you dogfood it, or you use it yourself, you can actually see that quality. In a way, almost like there is a book, if you read it there, "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which was written in the sixties, right? It’s a very good book. I really liked it. he talks about quality a lot in there, right? So what is quality? And I really dig it. I think that his description of quality there is, like the whole book basically should be a book on building software, right? You read this book like I kind of get it, right, that there is this almost imperceptible feeling of quality, that you can only, you know, improve once you use stuff yourself. I strongly believe in dogfooding.

Andrew J. Mason: How somebody arrives is something they considered to be, you know, that intangible quality. Is it more art, is it more science? You know, where do you kind of end up in the space where you arrive at that intangible space, you're like, okay, this does work, but how does somebody get there to say, you know what, I think we've landed on something that people will enjoy and find quality, and you know, collectively?

Victor Savkin: I think it's like when you look back, it looks like there is a, it's like, you know, you can rationalize anything you want. If you look back, I think that's what happens. People like, oh it like, it succeeded because those things, those things were quality, because you could do this and that worked or whatever, right? But I'm not sure if the person who is in a moment, like designing it, like the designer, the engineer or whoever, right, they're like, you know what, it needs to have a certain click, and when all like, I like this chair as well. This chair is also good quality, right? And like when you pull back, like it has to have a certain feel in your back that would, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not sure if that is fully conscious or even if it is, if it's like a numerically expressible or it just like, you know, it feels good. It's satisfying, sounds, feels good, something about it works, right? So I found at this in my day to day, a lot of the design, like some things are very easy. We have build tools, therefore like, think like performance matters, okay? You look at numbers, smaller, better, faster, you know, very easy, right? I imagine for you folks that will be like latency, okay, latency matters. Less latency is always better, more latency is never better. So like, okay, those things are kind of, okay, that is figured out, right? But there is sort of sort of second category like where the big impact is. You use something like, okay, something is off. It just doesn't feel right. You kind of walk around for months, sometimes for years. And then after you're like, huh: what if we just do it this way, then like, oh, now it feels elegant. Few ideas, it's elegant, it just feels smaller. It's easier to describe. And then you're like, oh, we should have always done it. It's because of this, because that property's true and because of like, but I think that, and maybe that's also somewhere in there and you think about them here and there and it kind of, you know, something gets triggered. But I think a, a lot of great stuff, good engineering and design and software is, like a lot of it is art, but not art in a sense that visual art. But it's more like just something inuitive within you, tells you that you need to explore this, 'cause you use it enough, it feels off, and then you're like, okay, it's better.

Andrew J. Mason: It's such a great point though, 'cause some of it's hindsight is 20/20, you don't realize it until after the fact. And then it's like, oh, of course, why weren't we always doing it this way? But that doesn’t come unless you develop this kind of longstanding relationship where maybe it isn't a quantifiable set of steps that gets you there, but like as you get to know either the product or whatever it's that you're working on more and more, that puts you kind of in the realm, in the bulls-eye space to be able to land on that insight.

Victor Savkin: Well, 100%. And the part there that makes it even worse that there is kind of, this is water talk by DFW, right, you know, like, you know that, while you're within an environment you don't see it. So you are using something, like, oh, it feels good. And then you see it very sharply when you use something else similar but not the same, right. So you're saying, okay, I'm not going to drive this car, I'm gonna drive a different car. It's still a car, to just drive a different car. You immediately say, oh, well, those things about the car are much better. Because you always notice something that irritates you. You're like, oh my God, this thing here is just not as good. And you're like, you always notice do this one thing, like, that thing over there doesn't have this problem. Let me try the thing over there because clearly it didn't have this problem. And then, you know, you go, you know, try the thing over there. And like the first hour you are very happy. Like, okay, that problem that I really hated over there, it's not present here. I'm very happy, very satisfied. Right? Look, it's perfect. And then a day after like, okay, nothing else here works though, because all those things that I didn't pay attention to because it were just so easy, right, going in that other product, right? And now when I switch the product, I could clearly see what was done right over there. Right? So that ability to not notice, and that's kind of part of the good design. The good design of a lot of those tools that I meant to be like affordances for something else. They enable you to do something else, but they're not like the things in themselves, right? It's meant to be kind of just there and kind of work ideally without friction. Because there is no friction, you would notice it. You only notice if you switch to something else, and like you can feel it right away.

Andrew J. Mason: Do you have any recollection as to when you first came across the Omni Group or OmniFocus more specifically? Was there a day or time where it's like, oh, I didn't know about this, I do now. Or was there just kind of like this growing awareness over time? Like, oh yeah, that's a product and it does some task management stuff, but over time just decided to use it?

Victor Savkin: I think that I, for real, started using it, like I probably tried, like I'm sure I looked at OmniFocus 1 at some point, but I, my full-time usage when I like really got deep was when OmniFocus 2 was released, around that time, right? So, and then I really got in there because some of the folks I followed, what you'd expect, in the engineering space, used it, and the core point that they, those folks would had the same obsession with ergonomics, right? Things have to be just kind of done really well where you feel like, you know, there’s all the thought put into the just interactions, basic interactions done right, to me, are worth a lot, right? Because you do those basic interactions like a thousand times a day, right? If you have an unusual interaction, it takes a long time. I actually don't care. It's an unusual interaction. The basic interaction has to be right, right. And I thought, okay, if those people like are obsessed about it, let me try, right? And I don't remember the exact year, but it was right after OmniFocus 2 was released, I don't know, maybe a few months after around that time. So quite some time.

Andrew J. Mason: That's fantastic. And I mean, for using software for such a long time, I mean OmniFocus 2, I think, came out early 2010, so it's gotta be at least be roughly 10 years. I know you had some thoughts surrounding, you know, this process of using software for a long time. Do you mind kind of breaking that down or thinking, diving a little bit deeper into, you know, what that means for you?

Victor Savkin: Yeah, I really like the idea. I also like new things as well. When I see something new like, oh look at this, it's exciting or whatever, right? Because like, you know, we're all human, I'm excitable, you know, I like software in general, right? So like, you know, so it's not like I only used software for 10 years and nothing else, right? So, but there is something about using something for a long time, right? When you use something for a long time and it's no longer exciting, but it provides a lot of value. And when I say, in a good way, that it's just there, it does what it's supposed to do, it's not breaking, it's not surprised me in a negative way. It works smoothly. It's part of my day to day, right, in a way that is just is, right? Like a good coffee machine would be, a good coffee machine, you use it, it works and it, you know, gives you coffee. You're very happy with it. It doesn't have to excite you with new colors and new music. Does exactly what it's supposed to do, right? So I strongly believe in this kind of, once you commit to something and you use it for, I dunno, I don't have to be 10 years, but some number of years and it becomes part of your method, you don't have to think about it, it's just there, right? It's one of the first things you install when you have a new computer or whatever, if you don't migrate in some way. To me, that like just gives you a lot more leverage in a way that, you know, when you, like I also write my hand that like, if you write by hand, you like, you're able to write by hand, you have to relearn. It's just nice to have this capability that you can just use freely, right? And so only focus is one of those things where, because they use it for so long, and I use it in different ways. I structure my things in different ways. I export tags a lot of different ways when OmniFocus 3 was released, and I do some things here and there, and I did more things, I did like fewer things, and I tried all of scenarios, but generally speaking, the basic like core capability was there, right? And at some point it just like, it's a nice thing that it doesn't cost you anything mentally, but it just gives you stuff, right, because it becomes such a part of your like day-to-day. And I have maybe like five apps that I use like that for such a long time that, you know, you kind of get used to and they're just part of your experience. Maybe even less than five, and I'm thinking, because I mean obviously like everyone uses Chrome and things like that, but those things you can swap around that they actually don't have the same effect because I think that, you know, the competition is much closer to each other, right. But in terms of more unique apps, right, it'll be OmniFocus, would be like IntelliJ, like maybe Alfred, there are a few apps that I used for like bazillion years and, effectively, very good. And yeah, so I really believe if you find something, just, you know, commit to it, exploring new things, try things out. I tried many things during those 10 years, right? I, you know, tried lots of different apps that kind of do a similar thing, and you know, just to achieve what we do well, et cetera. But yeah, I always kind of very quickly come back. I try to, let me see, like I try this for weeks. Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk to me a little bit about what your system looks like currently. You kinda mentioned it morphs and evolves over time. So you know, any given day it might be something different, but is there anything about your system where you would say, you know, I think that's uniquely mine. There's, you know, I've seen different ways that people kind of set things up and structure workflows and things, but this is how it works for me.

Victor Savkin: Yeah, so I went through lots of different steps, and partially, it depends on what type of work I did. When my primary work was kind of individual contributor type of work, where it was like a lot of creative work mostly by myself with some few directions, I used it one way. These days, a lot of my work is like connecting people, connecting ideas and like making sure things are unblocked, right? And so then my usage changed, right? And I also kind of went from going super hard going only tracking things on OmniFocus to now I do that and I also write on a piece of paper, right, for my, like what my current in-progress stuff, right? And so what I do currently is to actually, surprise, much simpler than what I used to do, but it still works well. So I use project, like hierarchy projects depending on like with different kind of like very sophisticated folder structure. Because I do like the idea of like grouping things visually, it helps me. I try to do like tags only, but okay, that's like, I like the idea about like having a tree, right? And I do use tags for if I want to update things for like team members that I want to interact with, or ideas or teams or like basically something that helps me like look stuff up very quickly and to track progress. So I use tags to track progress when I would say like what stages in the context in which I want to communicate like I'm meeting or whatever, right? I use several perspectives. My perspectives are kind of less, maybe, I dunno how unusual they are, but I have basically like the big three and I, you just annotate projects in a certain way visually with like a, basically have a special name thing, and then I would only show projects that have that name pattern, right? And so that would be my like, okay, just focus on the three and it's kinda the most important bits. And then I have like everything that is reasonably active. And then the last part is just like the rest of it, plus random notes. Because I use OmniFocus not just for actionable things, but just for notes as well. I actually think it's just a good outline, lookup thing. And when I need to like have a hierarchy on notes, basically a replacement for sticky notes. If I would have like a note, you have the sticky notes, right? That kind of, I would write a thought, I put something in there. Okay, that's that context in which I want to look it up. Because OmniFocus is the only thing I trust. I had like this whole at some point diagram of like different ways of storing knowledge, right, and I think as I kind separate knowledge in two ways. One that is, I need to make sure that if I write something down, it'll come back to me at some point. Like that the recall will be forced, right? Yeah, versus if I write something down in here I have to think about the recall, right? So like if I want to, I want this receipt, I don't want the receipt to be, you know, once we, hey, think about this receipt, right? No, in that case, it'll go into like, I need to initiate the lookup kind of thing, right? With OmniFocus, it's kind of both. I do initiate lookups obviously, but I will say it's a place where I know if I write something down at some point, even if I get to initiate a lookup, it'll come back to me. So like anything that I think I for sure need to remember, which is a lot of things, right, would go in there and fill it, right. So it ended up being like a weird mishmash of actionable things, delegation things, status updates that I also write down there because it's much easier for me to track, right, and random sticky notes. Because the moment I kind of thought about it as not a task or a to-do list kind of thing, but just a big outline with sophisticated status management, I could just put all more stuff on that. And it works well because ergonomics is so perfectly executed. I do like it for that.

Andrew J. Mason: What suggestions might you have for somebody who is maybe just getting started in task management? It doesn't have to be like an OmniFocus specific thing, but is there anything that you've seen as you've grown over the years that, you know what, this has been kind of the biggest bang for the buck biggest low hanging fruit that I've been able to use and implement, that it's really, really helped me out as I've implemented more levels of responsibility in my life?

Victor Savkin: I mean that's kind of this like, you know, point #1. Make sure that you'll have to remember things. This is almost like the GTD kind of part, right? Which at some point I was like really believed in it, then I kind of, you know, whatever, you know, through my... But I think some part, that I still strongly believe it and they're like, don't keep it in your head. Head is for thinking thoughts, not for, you know, remembering thoughts kind of stuff. You know, write it down somewhere. That's kind of one. And then the second part, which I think is where I really think it some of the like knowledge management tools kind of fall short is that it's only important to write it down somewhere if that thing is going to be used, right? If you just keep writing things down and then you never, like, it's just this giant, but people always say I collect so much information, but do you look it up? No. Then like, might as well not collect it. So like I think we are living at a time where the most important skill is not information or gathering information, is like filter it, to like something that is a smaller set that is more essential, right? I think OmniFocus in this case actually helps because there are mechanisms for these sorts of things that are quite easy to use and they, you know, enable you to, but basically the idea here is that if you collect something, it's better to collect a little bit less, but in a way where it is actually useful, right? So in my case, if it's useful, it goes to OmniFocus for sure. If it's like maybe, probably not going to be useful, I still collect that. It's just, it's not like kind of polluting the more filtered set, right, where like, I really need to remember this few hundred things. The other 10,000 things I might need, but probably not. Okay, that leaves elsewhere, right? If I make them in the same place, okay, just bad things happen because you are either overwhelmed by just the amount of noise you see right, or you know, like just bad things happen.

Andrew J. Mason: And some of it's philosophical too because you're, you're forced to say, okay, am I really just capturing this because it's a thought that I don't wanna lose and I really may, you know, have something to do with that later on, or it might be useful like you say to me or am I just capturing this be, you know, for posterity just because I don't want something, a part of me to go away. I don't know.

Andrew J. Mason: I don't know what the reason is.

Victor Savkin: I know what you mean.

Victor Savkin: I mean, yes, it depends on what your objective is. If you're thinking you've been productive, that's different. If you're thinking, I just think it's important for me to have it, that's different. It, you know, depends on what you wanna get.

Andrew J. Mason: You talked to me about a very status kind of driven workflow here where, you know, tracking things that are in progress, you know, you've got tags that are manufactured lists for remembering based on certain criteria. Do you use any automation in OmniFocus as well?

Victor Savkin: So I do use repeated tasks, lots of them, right, to the degree where at some point I went overboard with like a lot of things. Like, you know what, because at some point like you gotta always go and that's, to me it's like a weird thing that you everyone has to go through. Like you either push or pull, like, pull ideally is the best part. You go inside like, you know what, I cannot forget to undress myself before I go to bed because, you know, like it's self-evident now, like the process forces you to, right? But if something sound like that, like okay, you know, like some even mundane things, my bins, I need to, you know, put out the bins for the garbage collection. Okay, I don't see them so I can easily forget them. So like figuring out how to do this push and pull well, right? What is better to be pulled? Whereas like the just circumstance forces you to and pulls the work out to you, compared to like, okay, you need to be reminded. Right? So, but I do use some of the things like that. I used to be in the more sophisticated stuff. Like okay, I put it over here, it's transformed that task and then put it over there, and at some point it's kind of, it went to this, the issue I took before you, there's a lot captured that was kind of signal to noise ratio just went down for me. It works for some other people. So you know, if it works for other folks, fantastic.

Andrew J. Mason: Talk to me more about that dance between ergonomics and features and the friction that's introduced, and just a little bit of how that finds itself showing up in your world as you're working.

Victor Savkin: I said to me the ergonomics and the features are in conflict essentially. Not always, but a lot of the times they're in conflict because like, and the most ergonomic thing I could think of in terms of the basic example, like if you take a piece of paper or like a notepad and you write with a pen, it's very ergonomic. It's always on, it works, right, easy to use. It's not, it's very hard to use it incorrectly, right? It does very little, but for what it does, it's perfect, right? It provides an experience, right? The tactile experience is very nice. The paper is soft, right? It's nice to touch. If you look at an iPad, iPad does what most of all more features, right? But the writing is like a 5-year-old because it, you know, text is different. So like it's just different, a lot more features. And I would argue in terms of like the actual act of writing, it's a lot less ergonomic. It just does a lot more. So now you have a trade off, right? Do you want all those features, like just being able to store stuff or excise or remove, right? Or do you want to have none of it but the most beautiful tactile experience, right? And it's kind of, it seems like form and function, there is some of it as well, right, where sometimes you say like, what does it matter? Is it less but like super high quality, it feels good, or more, but is like, you know, where it becomes a bit clumsy, right? And I actually think that OmniFocus is exceptionally ergonomic, right? I hope some people say, well it's more complex, but I think that the, like I think it's actually exceptional economic, if you look at the outline manipulation part, right? Because that's, to me, what it is. It's a very sophisticated outline, manipulated with nice UI around it, right? And being like, I used a lot of like, I like thinking in trees and doing outlines and lots of other things, right? And the ease of which I can do it here, right, manipulate outline, assign attributes, et cetera, is very high. Like it's very high. Where I think when OmniFocus 4 was still in beta, which I used, it wasn't working perfectly sometimes and you're like, ah, it just, you know, like it actually was a big deal because ergonomics, like the feature was there and it was actually fine. It was kind of usable, but there was not something, perfection was where, you know, focus would go et cetera, right? Which just like, ah, that just bothers me so much. In a way, like a pen that is faulty will bother you if you write. If somehow you write, you're write like, ah, sometimes, and you have to restart, it just like breaks your flow, right? So to me, for me, the ergonomics part is the part that doesn't break. You use it effortlessly, you don't think about it, it doesn't require anything. It just works. And I really highly, highly value it, because then if you find anything like that, it doesn't have to be software, in general, very few things are executed so well where it's just, there's nothing you need to, you know, you're like, okay, this is fantastic, this works really well.

Andrew J. Mason: It's so interesting you mentioned that too about that because of the, I think of the metaphor where the cars that you were talking about where you sit down in the car and there's, and it might not even be a bad thing, but just the gear shift is over here now and it used to be over here, like just that mental fatigue that you have of like, ah, you know, like just like you mentioned, it breaks your flow. Absolutely.

Victor Savkin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. 100%. And the issue that when you add too many features, like you have to be connected in a coherent way, right? Unless it's like you can have an app with lots of features, but every feature is completely distinct. Okay, there is this thing, let's imagine OmniFocus would just integrate this like OmniGraffle and be like, you press a button on OmniGraffle to start, okay, then there is no cost ergonomically because those sorts of features are distinct, right? But presumably we're talking about features that are kind of interconnected. The more features you add in your kind interconnected space, the more there is opportunity for friction, right? And I think I'm more gravitating towards, you can do just a little bit less, which I actually think OmniFocus does a little bit less. Like I know people do compare with like the most simplest of to-dos to whatever, but like generally speaking, I actually think it does fairly little, and yeah, I mean it in a good way, as it has a particular feature set it wants to support, it supports that feature set really well, and it doesn't try to add five other things to the feature set as, I mean, it does add a little bit here and there, but I think the balance is still correct. Where I could, like the capabilities are pretty powerful. I can do a lot of stuff, but the ergonomics are a hundred out of a hundred, right? And that matters more, right? That would say like if you don't add any new features, I'll be pretty happy. Like I don't need more features because it's, as is, it's fine, right? Like that's right. The core values there, like if you look at whatever, the pens, like the, I know the ballpoint pen was invented some, I dunno, late 19th century I think, like sometime ago, right? And it's basically the same and it's, thank god. We don't need a new, like it's fine. You can be fine with a few things here and there, but it's a perfect design. Yeah, it's worth appreciating when you arrive at something that kind of works really well and really doesn't require that much to provide value. It's already provides all the value.

Andrew J. Mason: I love that, you know, 'cause how much can you improve the pen, you know, and moving forward in the years without it feeling like it's a gimmick of some sort. So I understand.

Victor Savkin: That's right. Exactly. Yeah.

Talk to me about, is there anything that you consider in your journey that would be considered or you would consider to be like, you know, that was kind of a mistake or that was a bit of a misstep? I thought that doing this to my system or changing it in that way would be an improvement for me, but as I did it, and you mentioned before about maybe overcomplicating things or running too many automations or, you know, too granular with tasks where, you know what, the context is gonna remind me anyway, so it's not really that big of a deal, but anything else that shows up for you where you're like, ah, I really thought that was gonna work out for me, and if you can maybe save some other people some grief by mentioning it, say, you know what, maybe I'll just skip that part. Maybe I will do that myself.

Victor Savkin: Yeah, I mean I typically, I imagine everything that didn't work for me would work for someone else because the whole point is that there's, you know, yada yada, right? So I'm not saying that when I, you know, say, okay, that didn't work for me, that is bad. It might be great for someone else. So I tried to do several things that did work as well. At some point I was in the time blocking a lot and I would, and I'm still kind of, but less so, and I'm like, okay, let me encode time blocking in OmniFocus. I know people do it. I know people do do it and it's fine, right? It really didn't work. The idea of, like I said, this is a morning task, this is an evening task. Like I actually don't need that. And I think to me, that ended up being too much push, so to speak, right, where the work was just thrown at me. Instead of just saying, you know what, I'm not just able to do it in the morning or something came up, I'm just too tired or whatever. So I don't want be tired ever since from morning to evening and every time, so like it, to me, that didn't work, right? The other part that, time blocking-wise, didn't work, which I again, I know works with someone else and it's good for them, is like assigning kind of the energy or like time. So there will be a two hour task because then I start with my particular engineering mind, like I have seven tasks, like, oh, that would be more like 20 minutes because it has to like, like honestly, and then I would be like, okay, I completed this task, but it was part of the task when they were there. It just bugs me beyond belief.

Andrew J. Mason: Stress, right?

Victor Savkin: Yeah, whereas right now, like, okay, I have those things. I'm actually thinking less about tasks unless it's like a collection of miscellaneous tasks, but it's a project. Like it's kind of, doesn't matter when I complete what, like I'm working on this project thing. So I will look at those and then at the end of the day, like sometimes in the middle of the day, but all the, I just complete whatever I done, and I could structure the whole project on the spot and say I have those seven things with some particular hierarchy. I'm going to do, right, the whole, correct, end of the day because my understanding of the problem has changed, right?

That's right.

Victor Savkin: And that's fine. And the moment I assign time, so any other things, it becomes a lot trickier because now I have to kind of carry over, you know, certain things for it to make sense mathematically and just bugs me beyond this. So I kind of went into this, right? And in general I think I went it a lot more, it's okay to just to do right things. Sometimes I would look at my projects and that looks fine, like five or six projects, but sometimes it's very hard to know how they relate because like it's, they're interconnected? The work I do is where all these projects are part of like a bigger whole and I'm like, you know what, those aren't five, those are like seven other projects structured differently. I'll be like, rewrite everything. Some of them will be one big thing. I became a lot less obsessed about like continuity of a project comparing to, ah, like what I would do on a piece of paper. On a piece of paper. I would just say, scratch it, lemme just write in a different way, right? So I kind of do the same. And that's why the ergonomics matters because it's so easy to do, I don't have to like say now I have to like, you know, click a bunch of things and remove, like, I can do it in like a minute, right, in a way that's very easy, right? So anyway, so that sort distraction about time, like time working thing didn't work for me super well. In terms of other stuff that OmniFocus specifically, a lot of things didn't work for me in other areas, right? A lot of automation again, didn't work for me, because I find that the act of processing stuff, like say an email to a task, actually thinking specifically what I want to do and doing it in a very direct, like conscious way, and actually maybe it helps because all of the time the task is not one-to-one, right? So the one email could create a bunch of tasks. One email could affect a bunch of tasks, et cetera, right? Marked email could affect the same task. And the moment this one-to-one thing is enforced in some way, I find it creates like a very rigid structure where you look at it, okay, I have 17 things and you had, it's actually five things that's different, right? You always have to like draw paper, like that's actually what's going on. Like the more automation you have, I think, because automation is a bit more rigid, I think, the more, in my case, it creates a structure that doesn’t actually reflect how I think about the problem. So I always have to like map what's written down to what I actually think, which kinda sucks, right? If I do it by hand, the mismatch of my mental model and what's in the app is less, right? So when I look at it like, okay, it actually matches my mental model, right, and it helps me.

Andrew J. Mason: And it's too fluid, you know, your workflow sometimes is much too fluid to be able to say, this is the way it's supposed to be, so much so, forever, that you have to sit there and spend time rethinking about it all the time.

Victor Savkin: That's right.

Andrew J. Mason: Victor, I love this conversation. You have a brilliant mind and hopefully folks will find it super, super stimulating. How can folks connect with you and what you're up to and find out more about NX?

Victor Savkin: So if you're a programmer and you are like, build tools, okay, go to nx.dev, right? You can find out about NX. You can reach me on Twitter, you can reach me on Blue Sky. That's about it.

Andrew J. Mason: Victor, this has been awesome. I really appreciate your time hanging out with us. I know you're a busy person and it's been a fabulous conversation. Thank you so much for hanging out.

Victor Savkin: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

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. (gentle upbeat music)