emacs org mode - what have I been missing !

I’m astounded about the difference that emacs org mode has made for me. I put this down to the following:

1 - it’s always there when I have my laptop open (that tends to be all day in work and most of the time at home); 2 - it is incredibly versatile and powerful;

I have probably used my lists 10 times more since the weekend than I ever did when they were on my PDA. In work, I find myself constantly checking it after completing something, and adding things that previously I would have written on a post-it and stuck in my PDA case so that I could add it to my PDA that evening.

Some parts of org-mode are a revelation - I love being able to stick something in the Waiting list and do \^C-. to add todays date so I know when I started the clock, and to be able to archive a sub-thread to a separate file.

I am still learning and need to read the manual again, but at the moment I’m glad I bit the bullet and moved to emacs for this.

Comments

Jason McBrayer 2005-10-14 15:37:36 +0100

I’ve been using org-mode more-or-less since it appeared in Emacs CVS. Previously I had been using howm (http://howm.sourceforge.jp/), which in general I like, but I wanted to use something that was part of emacs, and less formatting-heavy.

I’m not crazy about everything with org-mode. The emphasis on hierarchical organization doesn’t work well with me; I want something more tag-focused. But in practise, I can just put everything on only a few levels and use org-occur to see what I want. I haven’t yet read GTD, so that might help me with organizing my org-mode file a bit better.

One tip I have is to put your main org file and your emacs diary file in a folder together, adjusting the paths as needed in .emacs, and putting them on revision control. This helps me keep the file up to date between my laptop and desktop, and would also serve as a backup if the repository were remote.”

Administrator 2005-10-14 17:08:21 +0100

I think you should read GTD! :-)

org mode will make more sense then. I will post soon on how I use the GTD methodology with org-mode, including an outline of my lists, which may make things clearer.”

Xavuer Maillard 2006-01-26 07:40:11

Do you plan to effectively post your GTD settings here ? :) I am discovering org-mode and I just love it but I need explanations to well "design" my lists. Thank you