Nick Milo's 8-App Creative Workflow Stack

Nick Milo works as a professional TV series editor, cutting episodes for major productions with budgets in the millions and deadlines that don't budge. The job involves coordinating with directors, producers, sound teams, VFX departments, and about a dozen other moving parts.

TV editing at this level isn't just creative work. It's project management hell. Multiple episodes in different stages simultaneously, notes from executives, technical specs that change mid-season, render farms going down at 2am before delivery.

The Nick Milo tools reflect that reality. Half creative apps, half hardcore productivity systems. Things 3 for personal task tracking. ClickUp for team coordination. Slack for keeping 30 people aligned. Google Drive for massive file libraries that can't live locally.

What's interesting is the mix. Not all project management tools or all creative tools. Eight apps that each handle a specific part of the workflow without overlap. When you're juggling three shows simultaneously, redundant tools are just noise.

Slack is the nerve center for production communication. Channels get organized by episode, department, and project phase. Episode 3 rough cut gets its own channel. VFX notes live somewhere else. Marketing assets in another.

Pinned messages hold critical info that can't get buried in chat. Render settings, delivery specs, color grading notes, last-minute changes from the showrunner. Instead of scrolling back through 500 messages, everything important stays at the top.

Search becomes essential when you need to find that one note from the director three weeks ago about a specific scene. Type a few keywords, filter by channel and date range, pull up the exact message. Email would be a disaster for this workflow.

ClickUp handles the project management layer that Slack can't. Timeline views show episode delivery schedules across the season. Custom statuses track edit stages from assembly to rough cut to locked picture to final delivery.

Different teams see different views. The editor sees tasks, the producer sees timelines, the post supervisor sees dependencies. Everyone's aligned without forcing people into workflows that don't match their role.

While ClickUp manages team projects, Things 3 handles Nick's personal task list. Separates editing work from administrative stuff like invoices, contract reviews, and professional development.

The 'Today' view surfaces exactly what needs attention right now. Not next week's deadlines or someday projects. Just today. When you're working 12-hour days in the edit bay, that focus matters.

Projects organize tasks by show. One project for Show A, another for Show B, a third for personal stuff. Tags add context (waiting on approval, needs review, technical task). Between projects and tags, finding the right task takes seconds.

Fantastical connects to Things for time-blocking tasks on the calendar. Natural language input makes scheduling fast. 'Production meeting Friday at 2pm' creates the event in seconds. Menu bar widget shows upcoming deadlines without opening the full app.

Color-coded calendars separate different shows and projects. Show A in blue, Show B in green, personal in gray. One glance at the week reveals balance between projects and whether one show is dominating the schedule.

Drafts solves a specific problem: capturing thoughts instantly when you're in the zone editing. Scene notes, alternative cut ideas, feedback from the director during review sessions.

The app opens to a blank page in under a second. No choosing notebooks or projects or tags. Just start typing. Sort it into proper systems later when there's time. Removes all friction from the capture moment.

Actions send notes to the right place automatically. Send to Things as a task. Append to a running doc in Google Drive. Email to the VFX team. The text gets routed without manually copying and pasting between apps.

When inspiration hits mid-edit - maybe a better way to structure a montage or a note about pacing - grabbing the phone and dumping it into Drafts takes five seconds. Trying to remember it later? Never works. The thought is either captured immediately or lost forever.

Among the Nick Milo productivity apps, Google Drive handles what can't fit on local storage. Scripts, production documents, review cuts for client feedback, reference materials for the entire season.

Team Drives keep everything organized by season and episode. Folder structure is standardized across projects so anyone can find files without asking. Scripts in one folder, notes in another, delivery specs in a third.

Version history is a lifesaver when someone accidentally overwrites the current script or deletes critical notes. Roll back to yesterday's version, restore it, problem solved. Beats the old days of emailing files back and forth with version numbers in the filename.

Shared links make client review simple. Upload the cut, generate a link, send to the producer. No massive email attachments, no file transfer services that expire after 7 days, just a permanent link that works until the project wraps.

Mimestream is the native Gmail client that doesn't feel like a web app pretending to be native. Actually fast, actually smooth, actually offline when you need it.

Keyboard shortcuts speed through production emails and delivery confirmations. Archive in one keystroke, search with another, labels with a third. Processing 50 emails takes minutes instead of half an hour clicking around Gmail in a browser tab.

Offline access matters when flying between shoot locations or working from set where WiFi is a joke. Read emails, write replies, queue them to send when back online. The web interface just shows a connection error and makes you wait.

Gmail's filters and labels still work exactly the same, just in an interface that doesn't lag every time you switch folders. For someone drowning in production emails all day, that speed difference compounds into hours saved per week.