THE OMNI SHOW

William Gallagher: No, it's almost great to be with you. I mean, I say almost, I never miss an episode, right? And I've learned so much from it. But you recently added this thing of putting in a sentence at the start of the recording. I'm thinking I've got to say something clever for you to proper put it out, I don't know what it's going to be. So-

Andrew J. Mason: This is that sentence. So it's one of those things where it's meta and you just bring it back to the very beginning.

William Gallagher: Oh, I wish I'd thought of that. Okay.

Andrew J. Mason: It's time travel. 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 William Gallagher joins us to talk about how he uses Omni software. Welcome everybody to this episode of the Omni Show, where we get to know the people and stories behind the Omni Group's Award-winning products. And today it is my great honor to be able to hang out with William Gallagher. He's the Deputy Chair of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, and also the host and producer of 58 Keys, a YouTube channel that explores writing, juxtaposed against software, juxtaposed against all sorts of fun stuff and is worth watching, I would say, if not just for the entertainment value. This episode is actually special for me for a couple of reasons. First of all, not the least of which is that after Ken, you were my very first interview on the Omni show, so it's great to finally get to be able to circle back around to you. So thank you for that.

William Gallagher: I mean, watching every episode, watching every episode, listening, and now more recently watching, I think it's amazing where you've taken it. I mean, it's a show about four apps and yet every time... Well, I was going to say, every time everybody's so interesting, I'm now going to live up to that. Okay.

Andrew J. Mason: It's been four years and dare I say, a couple of things have happened in between here and there. You look good. You seem to have done well throughout a pandemic and coming out on the other side, so grateful to see that. But talk to me a little bit about how your landscape, your world, has shifted and changed over the last four years. Feel free to take that anywhere you want.

William Gallagher: Well, I worked it out when the pandemic hit. I lost 40 events that I was supposed to be doing. I was booking, and just gone straight away. So a big blow obviously to finances and even just self-worth. What am I going to do? And over the next couple of years I did manage to replace most of that with online stuff and it's come back now. I'm doing more events, but it's still a mix of the two. So I kind of like that. I think you mentioned that I'm Deputy Chair of the Writers Guild and there are certain term limits. So after we last spoke, I came to the end of a term, but actually this week as we record it, I've been reappointed, so I've got another year with them. I'm ecstatic about it, I'm very proud to be part of the Writers Guild. I mean, I always aspire to be a member and here I get to work with these people instead of doing things. I think also, I had started 58 keys when we spoke before and I know I was writing for Apple Insider, but since then in the last year I've taken over producing the Apple Insider podcast. I've become a publications manager for a charity, the National Association of Writers in Education. You saw me hesitate there. I was thinking of it as NAWA, N-A-W-A. I was thinking, what's that studying for? So that's a few issues of a magazine a year and a conference and stuff. And still, I love this, once a month I get to work with young writers. At the moment they're between about seven and 12 years old, sometimes an older group, but it's great. Two hours every month working with them and you go away exhausted and exhilarated. I love all this stuff.

Andrew J. Mason: It sounds like that's the sort of thing that would continuously feed one's soul just to be able to go back and have that continuous inspiration show up for you. But also, yeah, I could see where that would be very draining as well because you're there to give, I'm here to give as much as I possibly can for this next generation.

William Gallagher: So that's me really worrying as well, because they're so good. And you've got to give them something new. And I did, there was this one, there's this one young girl, I think she was 12. I saw er over 10 months of the sessions. At no point did she ever do what I asked her to do, and I don't mean through rudeness or anything like that. It's just I'd asked them all to do something. I've thought about it a lot. We were going to go somewhere and she had a slightly different take on it. And a few months into this, when I'm planning it out, what's she going to do with this? And I just stare. It's so exciting to see where a new writer takes something completely different. It just fires me up completely.

Andrew J. Mason: I think this is something we share in common. I love the overall zest and enthusiasm you bring to most anything I've seen you interact with so far, not the least of which as well was the OmniFocus three and four biscuit guides that you've come out with. Talk to me a little bit about the feedback that you've had so far on that. Have people used that as an introduction to OmniFocus? It feels like a very accessible way to get introduced to the software.

William Gallagher: I love that you said that and yes, people have told me they have bought OmniFocus 4 because of me and I am an evangelist for this software. It is life support dependent for me. So to have given that to somebody else and encourage is great, but I worried I need to explain the biscuits thing. I think 58 Keys has three biscuit guides and the idea is it's one video that tells you everything about some or at least everything I know or I can find out, and it's always going to be long. Therefore, you need provisions. And I just wanted to bring some biscuits. I went to an event not one long ago and somebody brought me three biscuits for it, and a total stranger came with a biscuit. Love it. You saw me hesitate slightly. There are many, many of these three biscuit guides. It is always true. It's three biscuits, one video does the lot except for Omnifocus, because Omnifocus needed a fourth biscuit. I was reasonably sure I wanted to do it, but the fourth biscuit became about Omni-Automation. It was like hide that off into a separate thing so you didn't need it. The three Biscuit Guides is everything you needed. But because I asked in it, did people want to know more about this section? And they all said yes. I got messages through Patreon for it, over Twitter, direct emails and things. It was like had to do this. And so the only time ever there's been a fourth biscuit, and actually the only reason it was possible to do a fourth was I was Sal Segoian, Naomi Pierce and King Ace as well, the three of them, it's like they held my hand through Omni-Automation telling me about it so I could tell other people. And actually, I mean I just had a great time. It's my social event for a couple of weeks, talking with them about this.

Andrew J. Mason: It speaks to their level of personal care regarding the product as well. It's more than just software. It is a life's passion and life's work for people that are curious about that fourth biscuit, for me, automation always seems to be where you transition from something that's considered beginner into something that is, okay, this is the advanced stuff, this is the power user. This is the intimidation factor right here. For somebody who's looking to start dipping their toes into automation with Omni-Focus, did you have kind of one piece of shining advice show up for folks as you're looking through this and saying, what way can I really start to open this up for people so that they can see the possibilities as easily as possible?

William Gallagher: I know that my approach was the thing in 58 Keys is, I am a professional writer. It's for writers and that's why I think I can talk to people. I mean everybody knows, I mean how many people use Omni-Focus? But how many people are writers who do it? So that's the perspective. And I thought in this case with the fourth biscuit is, okay, so as a writer, what can you possibly do with a to-do app that needs automation? I mean, rewrite chapter one, that's not a repeating task really, but what is a repeating task is that I go into schools as a visiting author, and so I use this example, I mean it's different schools all the time, but a long time ago I worked out, I think there were always 10 steps I needed. And so for the first few I was writing them in and then comes the basic level of automation, the most basic as you can use shortcuts with Omni-Focus, I'm going to do that. I use it to start off things. If I'm in the middle of writing something, I can press a button to call up a shortcut that will save an idea into a particular project, for example. But in this case, there's a thing only focus sports called Task Paper, which is basically a text list. So I wrote down the 10 things that I always do. So you had to contact the school, invoice the company, the day after I've presented, these things worked out, and so now what I have is I have a shortcut which asks me some questions, which is, which school? What's the address? Who's the teacher? Contact details, stuff like that, and what date is it? Things like that. And it asks me the questions and then I don't think about it because OmniFocus adds those 10 steps, not just into the right project, but on the right days. Because I've said, when it is, OmniFocus works it out. I've already told it I need to contact the school two months before, so it figures out the date. So on that day, when it comes up suddenly, oh, contact them and after I've done the event, the next day there's the invoice thing for it. So I suppose it's like having a template, but I don't really like templates for some reason it just doesn't seem to work for me. Whereas this interrogation thing of just give me the answers and then it all fills it in for me and I must have used that. The thing with Automation OmniFocus is once you've done it for one thing, you can do it for loads, so I did it for these school visits. I've now done a very similar one for my young writers thing, the Spark and Writers program it's called. And more or less the same thing, what's the date of the next session? Or carry on for it.

Andrew J. Mason: I love the level of detail that you are going into it and one of the things I pulled away from that particular example in the fourth biscuit that you were talking through, there's language that somebody like Neil here who appreciates programming. I appreciate the automation side of things, but if certain keywords are used, that slice of my brain just shuts off and says, "Okay, that looks cool, but it's just not for me." And you didn't give me a single one of those words. And I'm like, okay, yeah, what's the next step? And it literally as if you're talking back to me, you're like, "And that's it. That's all there is to it. It's that simple." The ability you have to be able to break something down into that granular level of steps and still have it be as accessible as it is, I'm appreciative of that.

William Gallagher: Well, thank you. That's what I want. I'm delighted you say that. Thank you enormously.

Andrew J. Mason: Absolutely. When you're working on a new project, like a nonfiction book or something along those lines, how do you know when it's time to start shifting gears and moving from one role or task to another? I know creativity probably for a lot of people is something that needs to be renewed or needs to be or switched so that this space of your life or brain can rest while this part gets refilled. Talk to me a little bit about the dance and the rhythm that happens there for you and what that looks like? How you know it's time to maybe stop working on this thing and start focusing on another project? Or are you the type of person that, you know what? I go into the Batcave, turn off the lights for three hours and I come out with, here's my baby, here's the thing.

William Gallagher: That's not a great answer, I'm afraid because the giant majority of my things, I am required to move to the next thing because there's a deadline on something else for it. But maybe this is the nicer part of the answer. I find I work best in one hour chunks. I may have said to you before, I've kind of refined it over the years now. Whether it's something I want to do or particularly just, it's very difficult, particularly when you're starting, you don't know where you're going. The next 60 minutes, this is my job on this project, nothing else. And I make a big thing in myself that it's 60 minutes, it's not 59, it's not 61. This doesn't happen often enough, but it happens. You'll get 20 minutes in and you've started it and you feel good for having started, but you've run out of steam. You can't think of the next thing and you really, really want to move on to something else and there's a long list of things to move on to. But no, you stay there and you press and you work and just often enough, the last 20 minutes of the hour is your best and you come up with writing that you would never have thought of before and you leave that hour feeling fantastic. When it doesn't happen, you leave that hour thinking, well, at least I did the hour. You feel good. So no matter what happens, you leave it feeling good, which is important because that means you're quite keen in a way to come back to it to do the next hour another time. Whereas just for me, if I carried on past the hour, I'd start tailing off and I would stop at some point when I was feeling rubbish and then I wouldn't want to go back to it next time and just an hour. So on the worst days, worst days because they're very busy or worse, I've got start loads of things. I'll do five of those hours in a row, 60 on whatever it is, and then collapse and trying to catch up on the rest of the day for it. I know lots of people use the Palmadoro, the 25 minutes on and off. I do solid 60s and that seems to work for me.

Andrew J. Mason: It's interesting to hear the level of discipline that's required to kind of create at that level with sustained, and actually even say, you know what? Even though something's not showing up, I'm going to force myself to sit here to see what shows up and for the amount of times that the right thing does happen to show up more than worth it, I'm sure. That's awesome. Talk to me a little bit about the source of inspiration for you. I kind of touched on this just a couple of questions ago, but never really got to ask the question. You seem to have, you mentioned this curiosity, this zest that is ongoing, and for some folks I feel like that's a well that's run dry for themselves. What is it? Where is that source for you? What is it that keeps you excited, enthusiastic, curious about life, curious about your writing? You don't come up with infinite ideas for writing unless there is something that's just more than the task that's driving you. Talk to me a little bit about that.

William Gallagher: Just everything is so interesting. Everything and everybody is so interesting. Well maybe not football, but everything else, I can't get enough of the detail behind things. I mean, I'm talking to you, I've already told you I want to ask you questions, because I look at you and I think all the things you know that I don't, all the things you've done that I haven't, I know all about me. I was there, I saw me do it. I want to know about you and want so much to find out from everybody about everything and it's just unstoppable, ceaseless numbers of people doing incredible things and how can you just ever get enough of all of it?

Andrew J. Mason: Absolutely. Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel like I have this kind of zest, this creativity where it's like I, how do you ever get bored? I don't know if everybody's mind is an am amusement park like ours is, but how do you get bored? There's just so many things to ask questions about. I did promise, or actually I didn't promise, but mentally I agreed to in setting up this interview, in setting up these conversations with William mentioned that he was asking if he could ask me some questions. I'd be happy to allow that to happen.

William Gallagher: Great.

Andrew J. Mason: Also, being producer, I feel this sense of calm and control over that fact too. Yeah, ask away anything, any questions you have for me, I'd love to have the [inaudible 00:16:41] flipped.

William Gallagher: Oh, are you going to, I don't know, go off and think of a really elaborate answer on it, insert yourself back in?

Andrew J. Mason: I could. I could. I don't think that's going to happen this time though. No, I have done that before though. I will say there have been times where producing a show where my answer was just so atrocious, William, my gosh, just in the moment the question wasn't the right question or my ability to think in the moment to articulate the right answer just was not there. And I said, you know what? I think I would serve everybody better, and it's difficult sometimes to see if you're coming from a place of am I there to serve them or am I there just to look as good as I possibly can too? So working on that a little bit as well. But I think if you're coming from a place of service, you do your best to focus on how do I provide as much value? Also judging for people's attention spans as well. So I want to give as much value in the shortest period of time as I can and not waste people's times with ums and ans and that sort of a thing too. So I think there's a bit of it coming from there too.

William Gallagher: Those three biscuit guides, they can easily be an hour long, but there was one of them, and I can't remember which one it was now where I'm watching it, I'm doing the edits and because I'm talking about software, I'm talking and then here's the screen and I think I'm really bored of this and I found a 20-minute chunk of me where I thought, you know? Could lose all of that. So I just took it all out and I can't stand it in YouTube videos when you get a jerk suddenly to something. So I just put in a little screen grab of pages or something over that bit and I shrunk it by 20 minutes and it was so much better. Love all that.

Andrew J. Mason: It's funny when you have the timeline of YouTube when you had movies where it's like you have the two-hour time slot and it has to be two hours or less, then that's kind of a given constraint that shows up there for you. But for things like YouTube, I think one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten from somebody who ever talked about public speaking said, nobody ever walks away from a talk or from listening to your YouTube video saying, "Man, they really filled up the time well." They get inspired by what the value was and no matter how short of a burst of a time it took for them to get that value. And so not to make this show about editing at all, but just very, very cool to see how can we possibly provide that value in the shortest amount of time as possible.

William Gallagher: I think you're leading me away from last few questions, but I want to explain. I identify as a script writer, I'm a drama plan. I don't actually get enough script writing work, so I write 58 Keys. So I'm writing a script every week just to write scripts. I love them so much. But that means I'm very conscious of the structure and drama and it has to be visually interesting, but also the maximum amount of information in the smaller space. But this is what you do every time. And I made a note to make sure I remember which one. It was my book, that was it. It might've been a year ago, you asked me for tips and he did this thing where I think he has a keyboard shortcut that when he starts a new note it puts in the week number. And I've been doing that ever since. But that's one explicit thing I've taken away from it. You've spoken to all these people in detail. Can you tell me the things that you have learned that you are using in your work?

Andrew J. Mason: Oh my gosh, yeah. Dang, William, that's a really good question. Now I might cut out the amount of time it takes me to think of an answer here, but let me noodle on that for a second.

William Gallagher: I wondering, did I suggest anything useful last time? And you could be a crawler and say, well, ever since William Gallagher said... No?

Andrew J. Mason: I really did honestly appreciate your advice on OmniPlan. I don't know if it's the type of productivity that people were looking for, but just the social engineering of the tip that says, I counted out what the resourcing was for everybody and then put all of it at the front end, put myself at the back end of that resource for work that none of us wanted to do by the way. And then use that as the excuse for why I wasn't necessarily the one that was being productive because thank you very much, it was all on their side. So I think that was a fabulous tip that you had given. For me, I think when I hear people talk about all of their productivity systems and different ways of getting things done, whatever method they use, for me, it feels like it's just as varied as it is people. And the answer is as varied as it is people. So I think all of us go to, we get chicken and eggs switched up sometimes and we think that I see somebody who's successful, who's living in a space that I want to live or living kind of a level of success that I want to have with productivity and therefore I need to copy their behaviors. And very often that does work, but I think there comes a point where tweaking is not going to get it done. Changing up your system or making things look differently is not the answer anymore as it is to be content with the system that you have and use that as the backdrop for the actions that you're going to try and take in life. It's just a very overblown way of saying that a lot of people use their productivity systems as a crutch to think about their work and not necessarily get the work done. I think if we are willing to find a spot where we say, you know what? I know we could tweak something differently. I know that we could do something a little bit better, but I'm going to choose to stop that for now or maybe do it minimally over time in smaller chunks. It might even be a very, I don't know if it's a United States Western behavior or if it's all across the globe, but there's this tendency to want to think that if I can find one huge change, it'll solve everything for me. And it's not necessarily that combination lock that unlocks for us.

William Gallagher: I think you are spot on, I said that the OmniShow is about four products because it isn't, it's about all the different people that use it and people are so interesting for it and systems are so interesting and I copy elements from it, but I am conscious that sometimes it's easier to plan out in say, on the outline of what I'm going to do than it is to actually then do it and things like that. So sometimes just getting on with it. You had David Sparks on recently and I remember a particular thing he said a long time ago about OmniFocus that you should look at it first thing in the morning, last thing at night and not in between. Spend the time in between doing things. Well, I mean I obviously remember it and I obviously rate it, but I don't do it. OmniFocus is on the screen all day for me, but intellectually I know he is right, but it's what suits you.

Andrew J. Mason: Yeah, I think so. I remember David Allen talking about the map is different from the territory and some of us have jobs or have lifestyles where we really need to update that map as quickly as possible. So I understand having it kind of sitting co-pilot to our lives to make sure that that information is as accurate as possible and needs to be reflected. And then there are people, I remember, gosh, it was Ushi McGuire who, I think, she was a shepherdess who used OmniFocus for her daily farming activities and stuff. And she opened it once to see what it was that she needed to do throughout the day and then that's it. That was perfect for her. Whenever it is that it ceases to become a sidekick that supports you versus the main event, it's great to be passionate about the main event, but I think that's when it's really worth having the conversation about what is this really here for?` To support me.

William Gallagher: I worry a little that OmniFocus is such a good crutch for me and supporting and I get through the day because of it. There's sometimes I only get through the day, I firefight the current problems, the current projects because I'm freelance and have been for a long time, you've always got to be thinking of the next thing. And there are passions, like no, actually I think I'm busy but compared me to a dog or something. There's enough going on that I'm not planning ahead enough and I think I need to step away. This one near me called Haley McKenzie is a script editor, runs her own company. And she tells me that she takes one day a week away from her company to work on the business instead of in the business. And you should see how she's grown. I mean it's internet access now and I don't tend to take that time. It's always what's the next thing OmniFocus says I can do? Get that done and get that list down and onto the next. I mentioned that I started off in OmniOutliner for a lot of things. I've also seriously used OmniPlan for a genuine set of projects that I wanted to do. The charity, the NAWA thing. I was taking over so many issues at different deadlines and things, working with different people. I did a proper plan there. And actually once you've thought ahead taking the time out and thought ahead more, I felt a lot more comfortable taking on that whole responsibility. So I'm convincing me, I should do this more.

Andrew J. Mason: Well, I like the forward-thinking though because sometimes we become beholden to the product saying it's a have-to instead of a get-to. When it's a get-to, it's like, okay, David Sparks last episode or two episodes ago saying, "This is my list of options. What's on the menu that I want to take a part in today?" I think that's a much more freeing perspective than the one that says here are all the red lines staring them in that face, and if I don't get these things done... And by the way, we were the ones that created those to begin with, never mind that we're within the structure operating within the confines, the rules of the structure versus like you said, "Just taking a minute, taking a day and stepping away from that." Looking at the forest versus really worrying about this one tree and whether or not this is even the tree you should be chopping on.

William Gallagher: Joe, I think I got this from the armature, I'm not absolutely certain, but I'll credit for you anyway. I can't remember what the default is now in OmniFocus, but I used to get up in the morning and everything was red. So I've changed the default time now to 5:00 PM So I get up now, it's nice and yellow and then at five I've still got hours to go and it all goes red, but I have a nicer morning through one setting.

Andrew J. Mason: Are there any people or experiences that have approached the way that, and maybe the answer's myriad and that's okay, but any come to mind that have shaped the way that you approach your work and your creativity? I think it's really inspiring and I'd love to know, is there anybody that you think of when you think of, man, I look to them as they would be a person that I would say is an inspiration to me in the work that I get to do as well?

William Gallagher: Goodness, so many people. I can boil it down to actually an organization I'm ex-BBC. I worked on, BBC radio, BBC News Online, BBC C-Fax. There's a reunion for BBC C-Fax later this month it's going to be a thrill to go back to see everybody for that. The discipline of, I don't want to use the word art, but I've just done it. So okay, you're creating art maybe in quiet marks on art, but you've got to do it now on a deadline. BBC is online, had this trap line I've updated every minute of every day. So there was no hanging about, you got on with it. And I also love the fact that there was a couple of times when you would put your heart and soul into a piece you were writing or recording whatever it was, and then something happens that's more important, so your thing is just thrown out. I think you've got to work on the next thing. I learned from the BBC to be proud of your work but not precious. To know that it's the audience that matters, the mood's on. And since you asked the question, I can see that I put it like that. I mean there are certain key editors I've had actually right now on Apple Insider there's Mike Worthily who's very strong on just getting things done. And on Radio Times, there was someone called Helen Hackworthy, who was just exceptional at thinking ahead. She was also very... Not, technical isn't the word. She relied on paper notebooks and I just found it riveting because no matter what meeting we were in, what we were discussing, you mentioned something from last week or last year and she turned to the right page in the notebook. How did she do that? I'm totally digitally dependent, so I got her work ethos I think, but not any of her processes.

Andrew J. Mason: Any words of wisdom or thoughts that you've had that are currently giving you inspiration? So what is it that you're finding these days that is like, that is something that is new and fresh for me and I'm really still thinking about it and processing it, but it's something that I draw as a source of inspiration right now.

William Gallagher: I'm used to working on my own for different organizations, but it's usually it's one producer, one editor. There was a gorgeous moment at BBC Television Centre a long time ago now when I walked around the corridor and TVC was very circular. So you walk around the doughnuts it was called, and I came to this point where there was my Radio Times editor, Helen and there was BBC News Online editor and the Radio Times editor and they just met, they all knew each other, but in that moment they just found out that I worked for them and I don't know, did I come in at the right time at the wrong time? They all looked kind of aghast. I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I love that fact that I had three totally separate related, they were siloed and I enjoyed that. I like it when I had a thing where I realized a company, thought I was only working for them and they were like one of 10 I was in that week. I liked that they think I've got that attention. But recently, actually, specifically with NAWA, there are like five people I'm working with constantly and they're working with each other. I'm involved in this bit with them and not that bit. And I'm finding the whole collegiate thing terribly uplifting. And I also think I up my game to match them more than I might do when it's on my own. So mixing with other people, getting on with people who are really good and really care about what they're doing. I mean, why would you want anything else? But I'm finding that uplifting and inspirational and also daunting in a way. You've got to live up to that. Live up to these people.

Andrew J. Mason: Yeah, that's right.

William Gallagher: I'm not sure if that's the answer, but it's what you put in my head.

Andrew J. Mason: I love this conversation and we will have more because I think you're a source of inspiration as well. So where can folks find more about you and what you're up to and how they can connect with you?

William Gallagher: I think the most relevant thing is probably the Three Biscuits and the fourth is GitGarnet, which are on YouTube on a channel called 58Keys. So five, eight, keys for it. And there's a deep secret reason for why it's called that, but we need another hour, so let's leave it as a mystery. 58Keys on YouTube or I am on Twitter still as W. Gallagher. A lot of my stuff on there is posted by Apple Insider, so sometimes I don't quite see what's just coming to me, but I'm still on there for a bit. I've done every week listening to the Omni Show.

Andrew J. Mason: Fabulous. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. This has been fantastic.

William Gallagher: Thank you. A delight to be back. Thanks for having me.

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.