2023-06-21 – OmniFocus + Obsidian Workflows with Andrea Soro

Software engineer, Andrea Soro joined us from Zürich, Switzerland to share creative ways he’s using OmniFocus and Obsidian to make consistent progress towards his most important goals.

Andrea took us on a tour of his thoughtfully-developed system years in the making. This system taps into the power of OmniFocus and Obsidian, allowing him to manage his day-to-day work and his longer-term goals consistently and dynamically.

A productivity system is more than a collection of productivity apps. Andrea talked about the overall design of his system, including how he draws principles from Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain (BASB), the OKR framework and Johnny.Decimal.

Andrea shared why he opts to work with quarterly goals. He also shared details such as naming conventions, plug-ins and automations that contribute to the overall effectiveness of his system.

Resources

Building a Second Brain (BASB) – Andrea’s Notion setup and workflows draw inspiration from Building a Second Brain, a popular organizational approach pioneered by Tiago Forte.

Johnny.Decimal – A system for organizing and naming folders in your productivity system. Visit the Johnny.Decimal website for more information. The creator, Johnny Noble, has also been a guest on the Omni Group’s podcast, The Omni Show (Episode 114: How Johnny “Decimal” Noble Uses Omni Software).

Obsidian Plugins – Obsidian’s feature set can be expanded significantly using plugins. Visit the Plugins page on the Obsidian website to browse this extensive plugin library and install Obsidian plugins. Here are some of Andrea’s favourite plugins (descriptions are from the Obsidian plugin directory):

  • Advanced Tables (by Tony Grosinger) – Improved table navigation, formatting, and manipulation.
  • Calendar (by Liam Cain) – Simple calendar widget for Obsidian.
  • Dataview (by Michael Brenan) – Advanced queries over your vault for the data-obsessed.
  • Periodic Notes (by Liam Cain) – Create/manage your daily, weekly, and monthly notes.
  • Prompt (by Hung-Su Nguyen) – Show inspirational prompts from a prompt file in your vault.
  • Quote of the Day (by Florin Bobis) – Inserts random quotes in the editor.
  • Readwise Official (by Readwise) – Official Readwise <-> Obsidian integration.
  • Templater (by SilentVoid) – Create and use templates.

Obsidian Templates – Andrea shared some his Obsidian Templates. Download the ZIP file that contains these templates and modify them to suit your specific use cases.

RaycastRaycast is a launcher app for Mac that, among many other things, provides convenient access to ChatGPT.

About Andrea Soro

Andrea is an Android software engineer and productivity aficionado based in Zurich, Switzerland. He’s currently working at Beekeeper, a rapidly growing tech startup with a mission to transform the way frontline businesses work.

He has lived in over eight countries in Europe and the Americas. He’s fluent in no less than five languages and is currently learning a sixth language.

Andrea has a multitude of hobbies, including software engineering, bachata dancing and teaching, CrossFit, street photography, language learning, yoga and travelling.

You’ll find Andrea on LinkedIn, GitHub, Medium and Instagram.

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