Musician, teacher and coach Andy Bliss joined us from Knoxville, Tennessee to share how he uses OmniFocus and Notion to manage his multifaceted life.
Andy Bliss took us on a tour of his OmniFocus setup and workflows. He also shared why he chose OmniFocus and highlighted a variety of ways that he uses OmniFocus to manage all aspects of his life.
Andy is also an avid user of Notion, a highly customizable online platform that can be used for everything from keeping notes to highly-customized project and goal tracking. Andy shared how he uses Notion alongside OmniFocus, highlighting personal and collaborative use cases.
Resources
August Bradley – Andy referenced August Bradley and his excellent Notion series on YouTube. What Andy learned from watching August’s generous library of free videos was instrumental in building his current system.
Building a Second Brain (BASB) – Andy’s Notion setup and workflows draw inspiration from Building a Second Brain, a popular organizational approach pioneered by Tiago Forte.
Johnny Decimal – Andy has been experimenting with using Johnny Decimal after learning about this approach in OmniFocus + Obsidian Workflows with Leah Ferguson.
Hookmark – Hookmark is a clever app we’ve featured many times on Learn OmniFocus. Hookmark makes it possible to connect apps and data together, adding convenience and reducing friction. During the session, Andy showed how Notion can be linked to OmniFocus using Hookmark’s Universal Links feature.
Kaitlen Salzke – Andy uses Kaitlen Salzke’s excellent Templates for OmniFocus plug-in. Kaitlen has been a guest on Learn OmniFocus and shares an excellent library of plug-ins.
Marie Poulin – Andy also spoke highly of Marie Poulin and her course, Notion Mastery. Appropriately enough, Marie teaches this highly-acclaimed course using Notion.
About Andy Bliss
Andy Bliss is a music professor, percussionist/drummer, and musician’s coach who uses technology and intentionality to optimize his workflows and maximize his time for creativity. He is the Founder & Artistic Director of Nief-Norf, a 501c3 chamber music organization that champions boundary-pushing musical practices with an entrepreneurial mindset.
He’s been a Mac user since elementary school, after growing up next door to an Apple employee in the 1980s, and has been using OmniFocus since 2010. He was recently interviewed on the Omni Show podcast and attended MacStock in 2019. He’s also an enthusiastic member of the Learn OmniFocus community.
Andy’s use of OmniFocus extends to an ecosystem of contextual computing, including tools such as Fantastical, MindNode, the Stream Deck, and especially Notion.
When he’s not playing drums or refining his productivity, Andy can typically be found working in his home LEGO studio with his daughter or at a sports card show with his son.