Worg, the Org-Mode Community

I use org-mode almost every day, and I think it's great, but I also think it's fair to point out what I see as its biggest disadvantage. It changes. And by that I mean the developers don't care at all about breakage. This has caused countless problems for me over the years in two ways:

i. You better be using exactly the same org-mode version on all of your computers, because there is no concept of backward compatibility. Making matters worse, there is no restriction that changes have to be documented before the release. I got burned with some presentations when they made major changes to the exporters. The documentation consisted of a statement that they were working on the documentation.

ii. The documentation you find may or may not work. Google is hit or miss because in most cases your search will return an answer for a different version from the one you're using.

This is not to say you shouldn't use org-mode. As I stated at the top of my comment, I use it on a daily basis, so there are a lot of benefits. Nonetheless, org-mode discussions paint a rosy picture, when there are in reality issues that you have to be prepared for.

> Doesn't have to be that complicated, though. I recommend starting with a simple workflow.

Definitely agree. I tried to force myself into using tags and agenda when I first started and it didn't end well. Instead you should start out using it as a simple TODO list manager and slowly use more advanced features when you figure out how they could fit in with your workflow. I think Carsten Dominik (the original author of Org-mode) put it best:

>What people miss when they are new to Org-mode is this:

>Don't try to set up the "final" task managing system from the start. Because you have no idea yet what your system should look like. Don't set up many TODO states and logging initially, before you actually have a feeling for what you working flow is. Don't define a context tag "@computer" just because David Allen has one, even though you are sitting at a computer all the time anyway! Start by creating and managing a small TODO list and then develop your own system as the needs arises. I wrote Org-mode to enable this development process.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2008-04/msg...

I wouldn't mind adjusting my work flow based upon the latest version and discover some benefits. But it would hurt me when my customization is affected after an update which the developers are not aware of. As much as possible, I stick on the defaults or building on top of it. If you can't find a documentation by searching from google, you might find it by searching on org-mode's mailing list.

Well an outliner is really faster but sucks at showing the big picture. A graphical mindmapper is slower but is great when you want an overview.

Ultimately you would need a combination of both, one where you create your outline and it's rendered as a visual mindmap.

I'm not aware of any software that does that though.

I am currently beginning to use org-mode to keep track of what I do at work. When my boss comes into the office on Friday afternoon and asks us what we did all week, I usually have a hard time remembering what I did on Monday or Tuesday. Having a record of that will hopefully help.

Once I have gotten into the habit of writing down what I did, I hope to also use it for time-tracking, so I can also tell my boss that I worked on Task A for five hours and Task B for three hours.

It is impressive how rich the feature set is, even though I currently use just a tiny fraction of it.