Bernt Hansen

Org is pretty rich. Folks often pick and choose different bits. There's a great writeup that gives a fairly extensive tour: Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text! http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

The tables / spreadsheet functionality can be super helpful when you just need to jot down thoughts which lead to comparisons which lead to calculations which lead to helping you decide which path you want to go down. It's really great to not have to leave the context of what I'm doing and just open up an org mode buffer and jot down my thoughts and then come out with an answer that is backed by calculations I'm confident in. Very handy 'back of the envelope' or 'napkin' alternative! For anyone looking for a good place to start, here's a great resource: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#GettingStarted

I had been following some of the set-up from "Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text!"[0]. [0] - http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

As a tool, I use Org mode in Spacemacs (Emacs) with a variation of the following setup. http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html This is the most comprehensive setup I found, and I have modified it to suit my workflow. I use dropbox to save all the Org files, which I can open (view/edit) on my phone with Orgzly. As a philosophy, I don't do everything I write in the task list. It is just there to keep my mind empty to think clearly. I actively find tasks to take off the list - by delegating it, by paying someone else to do it, or by just saying no to those tasks.

I've tried many systems over the years for implementing GTD (Palm Pilot, MS Outlook, Evernote, One Note, paper) adding scripts and tools like autohotkey. For me by far the best system is org-mode in emacs, but getting proficient in emacs is not trivial. For me at least emacs also seems to work much better under linux, and org-mode works better if you use emacs as your email client. This is a good reference http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

The built-in emacs tutorial is good, as I recall, but I went through it 15 years or so ago. For org-mode, the documentation on their site is good, but I also found myself referencing this [0] site a lot. The author happened to do a lot of things in ways I liked, or near enough that I could borrow their config and tune it to my own preferences. Borrowed piecemeal, not wholesale. I recommend starting with stock org-mode and emacs and only adding pieces as you understand them. Otherwise you end up with a non-stock configuration and other people may not be able to help you out as readily because you can't identify whether erroneous behavior is emacs or your specific configuration. [0] http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

Ohhhh yes, the one that really inspired me was this super detailed org-mode workflow: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html The part that was best for me was someone taking so much time to document, screenshot, and close the loop on most parts of managing information with org-mode. I hope it treats you well! Something I would also recommend: try to setting things as file-local variables or org comments at the top of an org file instead of dumping in init.el. Setting the configuration globally can make things confusing when you're just learning things.

I read the built in help and the recommended parts didn't take too long (30 - 90 minutes somewhere I guess). Used the GUI version (the menus are usueful for reference when I started) but learned the new copy / paste keys instead of using Windows standard and generally try to pick up every shortcut. I've tried a few "distros" and found one I liked. I also spent a little (too much?) time on implementing org-mode, mostly according to http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html Wouldn't use it for window manager though for roughly the same reasons I wouldn't use the tractor to go shopping with the family. (Background: I've used vim for configuration for the last few years and ST2/3 + Netbeans for developement, never touched emacs before last fall except by accident.)

If you like the challenge of a steep learning curve, might I suggest org-mode for emacs? It's got tasks, todos, built in agenda calculation, and so on. Also it's shipped as default with emacs. For something like a "waiting" status, you can easily reconfigure the default to-do states on a global or per file basis, and even have several different sets of states for tasks. Here's a pretty handy guide showing what you can do with it, and then there's allways the org-mode documentation which outlines all features. http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html I've got a friend of mine who uses it for literally everything from notetaking to planning projects and billing project time, and I'm slowly getting into it as well. If Evernote's greatest strenght is flexibility, this will certainly give it a run for its money.

Print this out and leave it somewhere handy: http://orgmode.org/orgcard.pdf For a simple TODO list just open a .org file (so org-mode is actually enabled). Make a new TODO item by pressing ctrl-shift-return. Clock in with C-c C-x C-i, mark it finished with C-c C-t d. That should be all you need to get started, and when you want to do something else scour the cheat sheet to see if it's there. If you decide to go all-in, this is IMO the best and most complete reference for a GTD-style setup: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

In case you're interested in what it looks like WITH org-mode: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html This is a great tutorial on an end-to-end org-mode setup, with very in-depth time tracking. Note that most people don't go to quite this length, but it's nice when someone does and documents it.

For the interested, here's the best non-brief intro/tutorial to Org-mode that I was able to find: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html It helped me immensely when I was just getting my feet wet with org-mode.

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html is definitely the best introduction I've seen. I still don't use it as much as I'd like, but I'm slowly getting there.

Org mode configs are really Emacs configs. It's true it's easier to build your system in small pieces as you discover your needs, but it helps a ton to have a better idea of what can be accomplished through customization. In my case, I didn't write any Elisp between 2004-2010 and probably used Org mode as a bullet list during that time. Until I had enough interest to read its documentation and explored how others are using it. Only then was I able to come up with a half-decent solution that was still quite good, but really so far off of what can be accomplished with a better understanding of the parts at play in this mode, as demonstrated by Bernt Hanson's setup (http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html). To this day I'm not even considering trying to rethink the way he is using Org mode because his setup works out perfectly for me, and I have to GTD like everybody else. All I'm saying is it may not be obvious at first glance and without studying documentation but a very powerful set of tools are available in there and anyone with half a brain can use them, and that it's best to adopt complex-type configurations once you've wrapped your head around them.

It's always good to see Org mode flagged up (though it gets a surprising amount of love on HN). I use Org more or less constantly, and I'll take this opportunity to note an Org-related observation that I've been mulling over for a bit. It's apropos of nothing, but then so was this submission :) The observation has to do with how new Org users get to know the system. The whole thing can seem pretty daunting, especially when you look at some of the examples of TODO setups (http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html) in the wild. Pretty crazy. My nutshell advice for new users is: in the beginning, you should emphasize learning to use Org's tools effectively, rather than spending time organizing your Org files structurally. The initial impulse is: I'm going to make this file look just like my brain (or my project). Instead, learn to use the agenda commands, so that you can make the Agenda look like your project, not the file. A couple of reasons for this: If you start out trying to make structure (and I'm also talking about very complicated TODO keyword flowcharts), you're going to get it wrong, and it's going to be a pain in the butt to fix. Learning Agenda commands, on the other hand, will always provide you with more flexibility, not less. It will give you the power to handle new situations easily, and to narrow your focus with ease. (Actually the same principle applies to Emacs usage in general.) For instance: I do a fair amount of event and conference management, little…

Your point could still partially apply to vim. But my main train of thought on reading this, as well as the sample configs offered above[0], is that it really is much too complex for my needs. The amount of configuration and maintenance required, shuffling todo items around, filing, refiling - even the person whose setup is mentioned elsewhere[0] admits he had 373 tasks at that time - that doesn't sound organised to me! I'll most likely stick to developing my 'plaintext vertical kanban' system, unless I dabble with the vim clone of org-mode. I do however get the ethos of the thing, and happily encourage it. I saw a fun quote at the top of one of today's HN front page articles: Laziness is a virtue as it “makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.” — Larry Wall, founder of Perl [0] http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html --- PS - slightly off topic, but saw in another comment here you still use org-mode on an N900 - I need to de-brick mine, but that involves splitting a USB cable and soldering it onto the test pads under the battery. It lasted for 5 years, performing brilliantly, and I was just about to put the easychroot Debian back on when disaster struck. With that phone/device I had an SSH shortcut on the desktop to my various servers and also ran syncthing on it directly, barely affecting battery life, to keep phone and laptop notes in sync. I can still do most of that on the Ubuntu phone, but can't help feeling restricted. Sure I can enable…

Org mode is great. It took me some time to learn to love it, and I'm still not done customizing it - for example I just learned about org contrib modules and I need to go through them and enable what seems useful. I got some inspiration from this site: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html and from some "tutorials" focused on "Getting Things Done" implemented in Org. One great feature Org provides is time logging, which let's you easily see how much time you spent on a given task. It's a blessing since I need to enter this data into Jira anyway - I just generate clock report from org and paste bits of it to Jira (I'm in the process of writing more automatic integration for this, too). As for your workflow: do you know you could create "TODO types" instead of wrapping your projects in parens? You could style them to have different colors. There's "TODO keywords as types" page in Org info docs which describes this. You could also use priorities (but there are only three if i understand this correctly) or tags for this, but since I don't use any of them I can't tell you how exactly.

TODO lists -don't- work? Maybe they'd work with some mindfulness, context and discipline? The author acts as if David Allen's "Getting Things Done" did not exist. GTD calls for all these things and, at the most basic level, you're tasked with assigning priority to, creating context outlines for and estimating time commitment for all of your tasks during the first time block in your morning. GTD became well-known because it works. You just have to take the book seriously enough to both finish and internalize it. Difficult, perhaps, for many in the information-age [quick-fix-age]. GTD is a lifestyle versus a system. That's the only way it works. Software: org-mode is what I use and it's amazing. You can create massive collapsable lists with TODOs, outlines, context with code-blocks that can be set to any language, direct links to files/emails/websites/almost-anything. It's versatility and scope is so enormous that it can be adapted to suite any conceivable need. Like scheduling? Go to a TODO item and CTRL-s (C-s for you fellow emacs users) and a calendar pops up. Select a date, hit enter and it's agenda'd. The agenda can be set up to send you reminders via iCal, Growl/libnotify/Snarl, appointment-mode, Remind, Google Calendar... practically anything! The problem with these brilliant systems is the initial time commitment where there are no pats on the back (no insta-grata) and no payout of any kind. They're both intricate systems that work like a circuit - if the circuit…

It's more than you ask for and has a significant learning curve, but Emacs' org-mode can handle that workflow. Just create a task, give it an effort estimate, clock it in, and when you reach the time you estimated, it raises a system notification. In the agenda view, you can get it to output a clock-report in the form of a table for all the tasks you did in a given period of time. The columns are customizable with arbitrary expressions, so you can get it to tell you how well you did against your estimates in any form you want (percentage of estimate, 2 columns giving you both times, a time difference between the estimate and the time you took, etc.). I'm using more or less the workflow outlined here: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

So... do you prefer the (only 234kb) plain text [1] version? [1]: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.org

These posts can get your ball rolling. The first one is pretty detailed, I started with copy-pasting a large hunk of code from it and using as is. Once you get the hang of it, the second one gives a gentle introduction to the entire process of capturing, refiling and prioritising. http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://www.newartisans.com/2007/08/using-org-mode-as-a-day-planner/ Also, this one on quickly capturing anything from the browser: https://orgmode.org/manual/Protocols.html#Protocols

A lot of it is based on http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html, which I used when first learning org-mode. I made some modifications, mainly around easier task switching and reports

emacs org mode. with a heavy customization inspired by bernt hansen (http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html).

org-mode is extremely versatile and can be used to organize any kind of data. It has time-tracking support built-in, which I use to track my time at work (methodology inspired by http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#Clocking). Any other type of data you are tracking (e.g. step counter) you could export to org tables. Granted, it would require a bit of customization to generate custom reports/summaries for these tables, but its customizability is exactly what makes it so powerful.

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html is awesome for inspiration but it's a ton of information. I think your point about pre-packaged Emacs configs also applies to org-mode configs. For building a productivity system, I think it's much easier to build it in small pieces, week by week.

So true. Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text! [0] http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

If you're implying that TaskWarrior is a tool and that org-mode is a formatting language (or file format), then you're way off to begin with. Org-mode does have a specific format for its files. But much of its power derives from the tools it incorporates. E.g., the org-mode Agenda functionality enables complex searches over multiple files and collects and orders the results in a single buffer, and allows users to perform operations on the results (i.e., on the original buffers containing the results) directly from the Agenda buffer. There's much, much, more. Org-mode is primarily a tool, not a file format. If you want an overview of some of its functionality, you can take a look here: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

there is a ton of stuff here http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html for me the initial "aha" moment was when I realized I could do an agenda window with multiple customizable horizontal blocks, so at a glance I can see deadlines, projects I am working on and so on Adding to this something like being able to fulltext search across all my org files via org-occur-in-agenda-files is awesome too

I combined a few different views into one using Bernt Hansen's custom agenda as a starting point (http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#CustomAgendaViews). It includes everything I need - schedule for today, a list of projects, stuck projects, etc... Typically I will just go by today's schedule, but it is invaluable having my list of projects on the same screen so I can just tab over in a separate buffer to the actual org file if I need more detail (or if I want to see notes for a given project).

I've used artist-mode with my tablet PC, which works surprisingly well. You can draw with the stylus and everything! For other ways to produce graphics from text (especially within Emacs), check out the examples in http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#Publishing : ditaa, graphviz, plantuml... Cool stuff. =)