THE OMNI SHOW

Lynne Murphy: Life gets so busy. So I put an OmniFocus, a once-a-month reminder of a friend, have I been in touch with her or not? If so, I can tick it off. If not, I've got something to do. Have I sent all my brothers their birthday cards on time? All those sorts of things I can just put in as repeated tasks and therefore, I feel like it makes me a better person. It makes me the person I want to be in some ways because otherwise I'd just be, again, just reacting to what comes in rather than planning what I want to do and how I want to be.

Andrew J. Mason: You're listening to the OmniShow where we connect with the amazing community surrounding the Omni Group's Award-winning products. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today we learned how Lynne Murphy uses OmniFocus. Welcome everybody to this episode of the OmniShow. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today we're excited to hang out with Lynne Murphy. She's a professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex. She's born and raised in New York state and has studied linguistics at the University of Massachusetts and Illinois before starting her academic career in South Africa and Texas. Since 2000 she's lived in Brighton, England, where in her words, she's acquired an English husband, an English daughter, and an alter ego, Lynneguist, which we will learn more about that as well. Lynne, thank you so much for joining us today. We're excited to have you.

Lynne Murphy: Thanks. Happy to be here.

Andrew J. Mason: I am thrilled to know you. And the first time I came across your work or yourself was LinkedIn, where you had mentioned the usage of OmniFocus for travel lists creation. I feel like that's getting ahead of myself just a little bit. Do you mind taking the trouble of pinpointing yourself, Brighton England and where you find yourself and what you are up to currently these days?

Lynne Murphy: Well, Brighton England is on the South coast an hour south of London, very conveniently located. And yes, so I'm, as you said, a professor of linguistics, which means that I've got a job that involves a lot of different things. I don't know that people outside academia understand these jobs and how complicated they are, but it's sort of a third teaching, a third research and a third administration. I've just finished being head of department, so I've got all that. On top of that, you noted that I have an alter ego. So I have a mission to bring linguistics beyond universities and to talk to people about language and about English. So I do a lot of public speaking, a lot of blogging, a lot of writing for different kinds of places. And then as well, I am editor of a journal called Dictionaries, which publishes twice a year. So I've got a lot of things to keep track of and a lot of international travel.

Andrew J. Mason: Yeah, and dip us a little bit more into your blog as well. Linguist is, I love the subtitle there, Separated by a Common Language, and that idea that, hey, this is a common language, but there are a lot of distinctions that are floating around here. Tell us a little bit more about what that is and how that works.

Lynne Murphy: Okay, so I moved to the UK in 2000. Before that, I lived, as you said in South Africa for a few years. So I'd started getting a sense of my English being different from the English of people around me. It's not a surprise, everybody knows that there are some differences, but what I found was there were more differences than I ever imagined, and they're very subtle and you never know when they're going to pop up. So when I was supposed to be writing a textbook, I always need a procrastination project while I've got a big other project on. So while I was supposed to be writing a textbook, I procrastinated by starting a blog way back in 2006 when that was the thing to do. So it's been going on since then at various levels of productivity, but now I've got into a nice rhythm of blogging once a month and having a newsletter on top of that where, yeah, I write at various bits of length to various levels of tedium about particular differences. So to give one example, I've just added a bit. I don't know if you played the New York Times Spelling Bee game, but it's a game where you find words and people get very frustrated because words they know aren't in there. So I have a running blog post called Perfectly Common British Words, the New York Times Spelling Bee Has Denied Me. And so I'm always adding to that because people write to me because I have got this public persona, and so people were texting me today to say, "Lambing, why isn't lambing in there?" So I just had to go and add that in. Sometimes it's silly things like that. Sometimes I do a word of the year, the most interesting American word for Britain this year, and the most interesting word for Britain for the other way around, which was what I just said. And just day-to-day stuff like why do people say, "If needs be," or "If need be?" That's a really sort of in the weeds one, but you tend to hear it, if needs be in Britain and if need be in America, and people want to know why. And I usually say because that's the way they do it.

Andrew J. Mason: Before we started recording, I had asked Lynne to forgive me because there are probably multiple atrocities that may occur during the course of our conversation, and she very politely said, "I'm here to observe, not to judge," and so I am grateful for that. But with that in mind, I am curious as well, are there any top-of-the-list pet peeves for one side or the other that hits your list where you're like, man, if we could just fix that one I think we'd all be in a better spot.

Lynne Murphy: I think I've shared those a lot since I've been blogging and word got just to the point of enjoying them. So when I first started blogging, I swore I'd say toward and not towards. I swore I was never going to say towards. I've heard myself saying towards, so that one's over. But I suppose one thing that gets me is, in regards to instead of in regard to, and that just drives me a little bit crazy, so I always correct it when the students do it. I know that's not so much a difference between British and American. I think it's more a difference between older people who have read more and younger people of haven't.

Andrew J. Mason: As you mentioned in your introduction, a pretty large variety of things that you find yourself involved in. Would you mind, do you have any memory recollection of when you first came across OmniFocus or even more broadly, the Omni Group, just in your day-to-day work or whatever? Do you have kind of that first or was it just more of over time awareness grew and "Oh yeah, that's who they are, that's what that software does."

Lynne Murphy: No, it's pretty sudden. In my social group, I do not know a lot of people who do a lot of productivity stuff. I'm in a humanities part of the university, and I think if I were in the computer science side it would be different. But I remember hearing about it on the podcast on the Reg, which is run by Inger Mewburn, who I think may have been one of your guests and Jason Downs, and they love it. So I heard them say it a few times, enough times that I thought I got to check this out. So I got a trial, quickly fell in love, and now it runs my life.

Andrew J. Mason: And for anybody that maybe isn't as familiar with productivity software or as familiar with this sort of lifestyle where you have more probably floating around in your head that you could probably take care of were you not to write it down and track it, and those sorts of things there. There's a pretty large spectrum of things that you mentioned being involved with, any first words of wisdom or advice for somebody, not even in regards to OmniFocus software, but in regards to how to take some good fruitful first steps in that direction?

Lynne Murphy: One of the things that got me going on thinking about productivity and using software was just tracking my time. I use Toggle to do that, and I just track what I'm spending my time on. When I started doing that, that started me sectioning off my time a bit more. So instead of going from task to task to task, following what email came in, I started getting more organized about, okay, I've told the timer I'm doing head of department stuff, so I'm going to continue doing head of department stuff in the next half hour. That started me thinking in a more organized way about all the jobs I've got in a less reactive way. Then as I added in OmniFocus, I think, well, I don't know if this is a first piece of advice or a later piece of advice. I quickly discovered that there's nothing too small to put on a list. There's that getting things done adage that if you could do it in two minutes, just do it. But I think in the land of and the age of email where things are always coming in and requiring a quick response and all that sort of thing, I think it's too easy to fill your whole day with two minute tasks that aren't really two minutes. They take 10 minutes, you think they're going to be two minutes. So I just ended up feeling that there is nothing too small to go into my to-do list, and that the great thing about OmniFocus as a tool, since it's on my laptop, it's on my phone, I can just say to the inbox, put this in. I can forward the email to my OmniFocus inbox to remind me to do it later. It all is easy to capture and then I can do it in a more organized way than in a constantly reactive way.

Andrew J. Mason: That's really helpful. I think of maybe two words that popped up as you were sharing that. One was the awareness factor. Just even being aware of what it is that I'm committing my time to and the intention, bringing some intention to that I think is a very helpful thing for anybody taking a first step. And then the second was integrity. You don't really track things that you're responsible for or not unless you have some level of integrity about that. And it's really, really easy if you don't track things in that way to just, the stream of commitments is flowing by in life and just pull your bucket out and let a few go by and say, "Oops. Well, I guess that's it for me, I'll get back to that email sometime." I think that's a really great first step. Talk to me about the, or actually, yeah, any further thoughts there?

Lynne Murphy: Well, I mean that takes you on to a bit further down in my steps when I realized that I didn't just need that for work. And so now as I said, it runs my life because I realized I'd forget to call my friends sometimes, life gets so busy. So I put an OmniFocus, a once a month reminder of a friend. Have I been in touch with her or not? If so, I can tick it off. If not, I've got something to do. Have I sent all my brothers their birthday cards on time? All those sorts of things I can just put in as repeated tasks, and therefore I feel like it makes me a better person. It makes me the person I want to be in some ways, because otherwise I'd just be, again, reacting to what comes in rather than planning what I want to do and how I want to be.

Andrew J. Mason: And don't get us wrong either if you're listening to this, reactive work shows up for everybody. It is important, but by the same token, what I hear Lynne saying is the sense that, you know what? I'm going to put myself back in the driver's seat a little bit and rarely will, "Hey, you need to send your brother's birthday card" show up on my desk and somebody wave it in front of my face saying, "If we don't do this, there's going to be big trouble." I like it. It's out of that integrity that says, I want to do that, and so I'm going to put it in front of my own face.

Lynne Murphy: Going back to the concept of being reactive, I am now reactive to OmniFocus on that, so it comes up in my inbox, so I do it because I had that earlier intention. I'm still reacting to cues all the time, but I've made some decisions in the past about what kinds of cues I want to be coming into my life regularly.

Andrew J. Mason: 100%. Yeah. There's a past self, present self, hack happening there where it's like, you know what? I know myself enough to know I'm not going to have the intentionality to when the prime time shows up. Oh, I need to go out and buy that birthday card. Instead, I know that I'm reactive. I'm going to use that, leverage that for a superpower if you may, and be more intentional about that. I think it's brilliant. Talk to me about your overall context within which OmniFocus sits. You've got a lot of information coming in, a lot of demands and requests coming in, and sometimes people even have things going out of OmniFocus before they're executed upon. Sometimes it's just checked off. Talk to me a little more about the ecosystem, how things flow into it and how actions come out of it if you don't mind.

Lynne Murphy: Some things flow into it. I'll be in a meeting and I've got my folder open for that committee, and I'm sticking things in that I need to do before the next committee meeting as I'm there. Other times it's me just throwing things into the inbox and then either at the end of the day or the beginning of the next day saying, "Where does this go? Where does it need to be?" If it's very important, I put a deadline on it. If it's, I mean, I've got all sorts of things in my OmniFocus that don't have deadlines on them because I just want them to come back when I get the review once a week or however many weeks I've set for that particular project. I want it to come back to remind me, I want to be thinking about that thing. So yeah, a lot of things coming into the inbox, being sorted. I have some things that never come into the inbox, so on that issue of email, I've got an email inbox that's just batch the little things, and I have two OmniFocus reminders in the week to say, spend a half hour with the little things inbox, and that's where I do those allegedly two minute tasks. So not everything goes in there, but reminders go in there to get me to do the spare things as well.

Andrew J. Mason: Do you do any, and I use the term broadly, but automation, and when I say automation, you mentioned not really necessarily having a foot in the productivity space as much as somebody who is in computer science, but it can be as wide of a range as plugins and things like that to have multiple steps be automated or as simple as, you know what, this is a repeating task. I know this is a rhythm in my life. I'm going to set this one task up and have it show up at predictable times for myself. Do you have anything within that scope that shows up for you?

Lynne Murphy: I have a lot in the repeated tasks. So I've got every day, I've got do my shoulder exercises, and every day I've got read after dinner for 20 minutes just to make sure that I've got nice things in there too. So I've got those things. And then I've got, I mean the thing that you heard about me from was talking about travel lists. So yeah, I've got those in a space where they default to repeat once a year, but every time I know I've got a trip coming up, I go into that folder and put the right travel lists with the right deadline. So I do that kind of thing. One of the things in my Work Life project folder in OmniFocus is find out more about plugins. So not yet is the answer to the plugins question. I'm aware of them. I have a site to go look at, but that's not something I've put a deadline on yet, so it hasn't happened.

Andrew J. Mason: Is there anything that falls within the space of a misstep or you would consider to be a mistake in your journey as you're cultivating a system that works for you as you're getting to know your rhythm, your lifestyle, how you work in terms of getting projects and tasks done? Is there anything that fits the structure of, I thought that was going to be really helpful for me, and so I tried to implement it, and then over time I found out, you know what? It's just not for me or just as a rule, this is not going to work. I thought it was a good idea. It turned out no, I would skip that.

Lynne Murphy: I was making lists and they were disappearing. So just putting that on repeat was a lesson learned. I think the other thing is, I mean, I mentioned my shoulder exercises. I had an injury that I've been trying to fix and that I'm really bad... I'm always just not doing that when I'm supposed to do it. For exercising things I have learned what I need to do is not put it on a list of things for me to do. I have to make an agreement with somebody else that I'm going to do it with them, whether that be an exercise class or a walking buddy or something like that. I know that just putting it on a list isn't going to get me to do it.

Andrew J. Mason: Lynne, talk to me about, we've mentioned the themes of awareness, tracking the time. We've mentioned the themes of integrity and keeping the commitments that are made as well as you possibly can. If somebody came up to you and said, "Lynne, what is it that makes you passionate about productivity?" Is there anything that shows up for you that there is a deeper why behind this, or there is a deeper meaning or reason that I do this outside of just like, yeah, I want to check everything off and do all the things, but there is something driving that for me. What would you say to that?

Lynne Murphy: I have a real sense that I need to be responsible. I need to be responsible to other people, and therefore I have to keep all that going. But besides that, I have a very complex life in terms of all the different things I choose to do above and beyond what's technically in my job description and hobbies and friends and family, and so many things going on. And that just all comes down to I'm going to die and I don't want to die before I've done everything there is to do. And I'm interested in so many things, I want to have as many experiences as possible, so I want to make sure that I'm not just frittering away my time on email or other things. I don't have a big, I know some people want to be productive because they want to leave something behind. I don't have a big sense of that, that any of my work will necessarily be revered in decades to come. But I do want to feel like I've taken advantage of every opportunity that I can take advantage of, and I'm in a fortunate position to have lots of opportunities, and the more things you do, the more opportunities you get. So there's just that sort of zest for life, I'd call it.

Andrew J. Mason: I have to apologize to the listeners or to the folks at Omni [inaudible 00:20:53], the last person that I had recorded this show with actually gave me almost the exact same answer to that. He's like, "Listen, I don't know if this is a dark show or if this is the direction you wanted to take this, but I know that I'm going to pass at some point. And because of that, that drives a lot of my why, because it's a really, really big why." And I think a lot of us have that at some level. At some point in our lives, we're forced to come to terms with what's the real reason behind some of the things that I'm doing? What's the [inaudible 00:21:22].

Lynne Murphy: I don't know. I grew up in a funeral home, so I don't know if that's why I've always had this-

Andrew J. Mason: It's not my fault everybody.

Lynne Murphy: I've always had this thing that I want to know everything, and yet I can never know everything because there's going to be a limit on this. So how am I going to deal with that? How can I fit as much in, I don't know.

Andrew J. Mason: 100%.

Lynne Murphy: I'm willing to articulate that. I think that's what the funeral home did for me. I'm willing to talk about that. I'm not sure everybody else is.

Andrew J. Mason: Yeah, yeah. I apologize if there's any uncomfortable feelings anywhere, but I love that we're willing to have this conversation. It is a very real thing, and it is something that's worth talking about. You don't want to be spinning your wheels and then asking what for. So I 100% agree with that. Very cool. And I have loved this conversation, by the way. Thank you so much for hanging out with us and spending some time with us. I really was expecting to dig more into the nuances of the two different countries and the differences between common words that show up there or the differences that show up. So I'm curious, so maybe there's another question I could add in that direction, because you do have a lot to offer in that space, and I'd love for people to be introduced to it.

Lynne Murphy: Being someone in a new culture, I do find that when I do things that are about productivity that are, when I track my time, when I talk about organizing things and getting things done, that marks me as very American in the circles I travel in around here. So I think that's not a linguistic difference, and it's not to say that there aren't British people who aren't very, very driven and very, very organized but... But yeah, I do get a fair number of eye rolls with, "Well, if that's the way she wants to live her life, it sounds very American to me."

Andrew J. Mason: We see. All right, okay. You're that kind of a person. That makes sense.

Lynne Murphy: Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: Fantastic. Lynne, I really have enjoyed this conversation. If folks are interested in finding out more about what you're up to, where they can read more from linguist, just all the places they can find you and connect with you.

Lynne Murphy: Okay. Well, the blog is called Separated by a Common Language. It's on Blogspot. I'm on LinkedIn under my own name, Lynne Murphy, Lynne's with an E. And then on most other things I'm Lynneguist, which is L-Y-N-N-E-G-U-I-S-T. So a pun on my name, and I'm on Bluesky, X, Facebook. I'm on Instagram, but I don't post on Instagram, but all those sorts of things, that's where I am.

Andrew J. Mason: It's fabulous. Lynn, I could not have enjoyed this conversation more. Thanks for joining us.

Lynne Murphy: Well, thanks so much.

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.