The Omni Show

How, after almost twenty years with the same app, does a productivity system become so natural you don’t even think about it? Today, we hear from Dr. Mark Carrigan, Associate Dean for Digital Education and Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Manchester, who credits OmniFocus with turning the hyperactive clutter inside his mind into an ordered archive outside of it.

Mark shares why writing every idea down gave him a sense of ownership over his own creativity, and how recurring inbox items eventually became published books. He explains why he keeps his setup deliberately light with two contexts and about fifteen projects. He also makes the case for knowing what OmniFocus isn’t for, including the writing he now blocks out on a calendar instead, and why the inbox is the one part of the system he’ll never skip.

The best design decisions come from paying closer attention to what people actually do. Today we have designer, writer, and Draft consultancy founder Nick Disabato exploring how evidence and experimentation can turn design into a genuine business advantage.

Nick shares how customer research helps uncover the gap between what people say they want and how they actually behave, why even experienced designers are routinely surprised by A/B test results, and how decades of using OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner help him move quickly from messy problems to clear, testable ideas.

A truly dependable productivity system doesn’t just organize your good days; it carries you through the days when everything goes sideways. In this episode, Dr. Peter Gallant (entrepreneur, engineering professor, pilot, and longtime GTD practitioner) shares how he uses OmniFocus to manage a remarkably full personal and professional life with clarity and confidence.

Peter walks through his approach to the technique of total capture, the OmniFocus 4 features that transformed his workflow, and why separating active commitments from reference material made his system dramatically easier to trust.  It’s a thoughtful, practical conversation about building a low-friction system that can evolve with your life.

In this episode, we sit down with renowned cognitive scientist, author, and philosopher, Paul Thagard, to explore the invisible architecture behind our beliefs, emotions, and decisions. You’ll discover how Dr. Thagard developed Cognitive Affective Maps to visualize the relationships between ideas and associated values, why OmniGraffle became the indispensable tool for communicating decades of groundbreaking research, and how the diagrams reveal insights that words alone often miss.

From empathy and motivated reasoning, to artificial intelligence and the surprisingly powerful role of diagrams in shaping understanding, this is a thought-provoking conversation. It may inspire you to open OmniGraffle and map out your own ideas in an entirely new way.

Today we learn from Maggie Delano, an Associate Professor and Chair of Engineering at Swarthmore College whose work spans teaching, department leadership, medical device design, inclusive engineering, research, and everyday life. Maggie shares how OmniFocus helps them move from a scattered sense of tasks and responsibilities into a durable system built around projects, areas of responsibility, and intentional planning.

Listeners will hear how Maggie adapted ideas from Tiago Forte’s PARA method, why they use OmniFocus alongside other tools, and how they decide what belongs in a task manager versus a notes system. Along the way, they offer thoughtful advice on productivity that goes deeper than “just use this app,” by examining whether the root challenge is technical, psychological, or external.

Magic happens when visual thinking leads to a way to tell better stories. In this episode of The Omni Show, we talk with documentary filmmaker, George Washington University professor, and LinkedIn Learning instructor, Jason Osder, about his creative path, his history teaching OmniGraffle for UX and brainstorming, and the role visual tools play in shaping complex work.

Jason shares how OmniGraffle has supported everything from information architecture and wireframing to virtual index cards for documentary storytelling, giving him a flexible space to map ideas before they become finished projects. Listeners will hear a thoughtful conversation about filmmaking, teaching, process, and how diagramming can help clarify not only what we’re making, but how we think.

In this episode of The Omni Show, we talk with Peter Boumgarden, PhD, Koch Professor of Practice for Family Enterprise at Washington University, about how OmniFocus helps him navigate work that rarely fits into one tidy category. On any given day, Peter might prepare a talk on private equity and healthcare, meet with university leaders, grade student work, coach T-ball, and catch a flight...all while trying to keep sight of the bigger picture.

Borrowing from several wise disciplines, Peter outlines his particular approach to using OmniFocus to organize, plan and narrow his attention to next actions. He also shares his novel approach automating the reflective component, borrowing from the social psychology of journaling, to close out the day effectively. Listeners will hear a thoughtful, practical conversation about building a system which balances focus with flexibility, efficiency with exploration, and productivity with a richer understanding of vocation and life.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

What if your task manager could tell the story of your life? We talk with social scientist, and longtime OmniFocus user, Ryan Briggs about what happens when one trusted system grows with you for nearly two decades. From undergraduate chaos, to academic research, to family life, tenure, parenting, and everything in between.

Ryan shares how OmniFocus became an external memory: a place where tasks, reminders, birthdays, research obligations, family logistics, and even the rhythms of life all live together without adding mental weight. Along the way, he reflects on finding a system that truly fits your brain, the hidden value of consistency, the cost of constantly switching tools, and what his own 12-year task archive reveals about how work and life have changed over time.

Some other people, places, and things mentioned:

In this episode, we sit down with University of Virginia data science professor Yong-Yeol (YY) Ahn for a fascinating conversation that moves from network science and how ideas actually spread to the very practical realities of staying organized in a busy, idea-heavy life.

YY shares smart, grounded insights on avoiding “shiny object syndrome,” building a productivity system that evolves with you, using OmniFocus as a trusted capture tool, and even creating powerful workflows with TaskPaper templates and AI-assisted processing. You’ll walk away with both big-picture perspective and immediately useful takeaways you can apply to your own work the same day.

What if the most productive thing you could do right now is stop reorganizing your to-do list? Today, we sit down with Trevor Foley: a 20-year operations veteran whose career stretches from physically mounting movie ads for Sony Pictures in the late '90s to producing custom ad experiences at Hulu in its earliest days.

Trevor walks us through how reading Getting Things Done led him to OmniFocus back in 2008 and completely changed the way he works (and rests). You'll hear his "hub and spoke" philosophy for making OmniFocus your decision-making layer (not your to-do list). Plus, his surprisingly practical family calendar system that's kept his household in sync for over 15 years without a single "who's picking up the kids" text.

He also drops real talk on what he calls "productive procrastination” (that seductive trap of endlessly redesigning your system instead of actually doing the work). Whether you're new to GTD or a seasoned OmniFocus user looking for a gut-check, this one's packed with hard-won wisdom you can put to use today.