Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

I have been interesting in learning Org Mode since first finding out about it a couple years ago. I probably would have had more success if I'd started before purchasing a smartphone. Like a billion others, my smartphone as become my personal digital assistant. Now I would love to (again) have a smartphone with a full keyboard - but the market seems to have rejected that form-factor.

org-mode has an extremely low barrier to entry. I thought it seemed monstrous and magical for a while, but the learning curve is basically strictly linear (and goes on as far as you want, because Emacs).

Smartphones aren't gonna replace org-mode any time soon either: if you do any work on a laptop or desktop, you'll want org-mode. It's the best way to manage ideas and projects.

I think there are a couple of key things that people need to grasp with Org mode. First is the way it cycles visibility. You go from closed, to semi-open, to completely open, back to closed again. You can't go backwards. I know this frustrated me for a long time before I got used to it.

The next biggest frustration is the way it folds empty lines. If you have a paragraph followed by an empty line, when you fold the paragraph, the trailing empty line will get folded as well. This makes it practically impossible to have empty spaces in your outline. Trying to make it work will result in madness for your average user.

Just relenting on those 2 issues and allowing org mode it's own way will go a long way to making it easier to use, I've found.

The main benefit I've found for using org mode is being able to write up TODO lists and then easily move everything around by folding it and cutting and pasting. Also being able to change the organization by easily changing the hierarchy is amazing. I know of no other application that allows so much ease of change.

After that, the spreadsheet capabilities are really quite interesting. I've actually implemented full on XP-style planning lists with automatic velocity calculation in org mode -- complete with automatically generated burn down charts.

Of course, other people use org mode for completely other uses. This is just what I end up using it for.

I don't know why this get in the frontpage but for those who are willing to give it a try : Org is the best software I've ever used to clock time and generate reports. And org-capture + Deft is a decent note management system (though there is place for improvement)

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 four/five day things. In the beginning, I started by making Org files where each day was a heading, and then the various events lived under the various headings. This meant that, if events got changed around, I had to go to the file and refile, which isn't terrible, but is a pain.

Instead, I now have no day-based headings at all, just a pile of potential events with timestamps. The Agenda organizes things into days for me. If I need to reschedule something, the Agenda provides more than ample commands for shifting dates by hour/day, or simply entering a new date altogether.

Dump everything in one file, all top-level todos. Use the built-in TODO keywords. Learn to make timestamps, and schedule/deadline cookies. After you're good at that, maybe consider using tags (but maybe don't). Spend the rest of your time learning how the Agenda commands work. Stay in the Agenda, and if you must look at a file, do it with on the headline (followed by "o" when you're done), or, if you must, . Resist the temptation to futz with your files at all, until some real need begins to emerge from daily usage. If you hold out until the annoyance is killing you, it should be very clear what needs to change, and how, and you're unlikely to do something that you'll regret later.

(I should note that I use Org for two general types of work: one is document authoring, the other is todo/agenda management. The above basically only applies to the latter.)

Learn to impose dynamic, temporary structure on your agenda, rather than imposing static, one-time structure on your files.

Here endeth the (unasked-for) lesson. :)