Emacs org-agenda is one of the best ways to organize. What are some of the non-emacs alternative that compare?

Emacs org-agenda is one of the best ways to organize. What are some of the non-emacs alternative that compare with it? I am just trying to see what other options for organisations/agenda are available in other approaches which I am not aware of.

For using [Orgdown](https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown) files outside of GNU Emacs Org-mode, there is [this collection of tools and their level of compatibility (syntax-wise!)](https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Tool-Support.org). If you do know more tools, please submit a pull request or drop me a line. *Ceterum autem censeo* [*don't contribute anything relevant in web forums like Reddit only*](https://karl-voit.at/2020/10/23/avoid-web-forums)

Things, OmniFocus, Todoist, Reminders, multiple approaches with plain old paper and pen, Trello, Monday, GitHub/JIRA/etc. Apps like Bear support checklists via Markdown… There are a whole boat load of apps and websites for organising tasks for individuals and teams. Some more appropriate than others depending on your/your team’s needs. If you’ll indulge me, I’m a huge fan of Emacs and have built multiple configurations (including fully custom, literate, Spacemacs, and Doom). I have hundreds of lines of Emacs Lisp to get Org mode *almost* the way I want it, and must have poured hundreds of hours into Emacs over the years. More recently, I’ve started moving things out of Emacs in pursuit of productivity over procrastination. Sometimes constraints can be liberating, especially for a curious hacker like me. Best of luck with your search. If you do find something you like out there, I’m sure you’ll be able to approximate it pretty well with Org mode. Bon voyage!

The issue with "non Emacs" (witch means "modern software" born after IBM and GAFAM model vs the classic Xerox desktop model now mostly represented by Emacs) is that they are designed at heart to be individual commercial programs, FLOSS one included due to the underlying architecture, that's means "a problem => a solution", no integration with anything else or at least a limited and difficult one. A stupid example my agenda files span my notes, just because a TODO might be relevant in a certain "place" (like a project note or a grocery list one) and being forced to put it somewhere else or duplicate it only because a piece of software just act as agenda, another as a task list, another for notes, ... it's a ridiculous limitation. However on the other side of the spectrum is easy to sell and agenda software, a task list one, another for note, "no RTFM, just clicks around and anything will be magic" while it's far harder to sell one "we do almost anything but you need around 6 month training to benefit, more if your users are not much good at IT stuff, less if they are". Our life however *is integrated* and being forced to "divide" things not by themselves but by tools of the trade is awful. I think that's the reason why you can't really compare Emacs vs "modern software" (raw ad archaic actually, in tech terms). Unix know that. Unix state "a program should do only one thing" BUT *inside unix* (integration via IPCs) witch essentially means: a program is a function. Create a real complete user-moldable environment it's too costly so instead of the classic desktops we try to cut anything we can at the price that write a function demand MANY LoC, compile time etc but the overall system is cheap enough to run on cheap hw and can still be useful for many. With GUIs unix itself lost it's principles and modern software is still unable to recover it. Now, again for commercial purpose, the push toward web(cr)apps (witch means NOT run by end users and possibly run by someone else computer) try to give just devs a certain ability to integrate things again, but limits and overhead of this model are enormously high.

Thanks for your reply, but I was looking for something non-emacs/non-org. Nevertheless this looks interesting.

hmm, interesting. I have been using emacs for last 2 years prior to which I used vim for a couple of years. Lately I have been wanting to check what other advantages one would get with modern editors. I am not inclined on using modern software for one task only, since they could limit the ways to look at some data. This curiosity comes due to few factors. The main factor being, am I missing some better way to organize myself?

Thanks for your response and the list of apps you mentioned. I have been using emacs for last 2 years before which I was using VIM. This year alone I have spend 3-4 weeks trying to tweak something or the other in Emacs. I want to look at other out-of-the box editors to pursue "productivity over procrastination". :) I will let you know if I find something that gels well with Org mode, though I doubt it.

I can't answer such question but consider a thing: Vim is "the companion" of Unix ecosystem, witch means it can be combined with other tools, a common example is the classic .plan file, piping commands to vim reading from stdout etc, so in Unix there is, limited to CLI, a certain kind of flexible integration, it does not go as deeper as Emacs but it's there. A possible idea in Emacs, at least something that changed much my "personal desktop digital life", was/is leaving aside my decades long hyper-curated home taxonomy to org-attach (almost) anything and access my files not anymore by traversing a hierarchy with "a file manager" (CLI included) but with a search&narrow UI (org-roam) where notes are kind-of metadata-rich directories, with relevant files attached, accessible on click (org-mode links/org-attach-reveal etc). That's help a lot reducing the maintenance burden of a well organized and interlinked fs tree and reduce the access time to pretty anything, I have much more easy searchable stuff, so *after a very long and tedious* import, I now have something that works far more like a personal Google Search with "semantic search" (kind-of). I've hesitated *much* before such move fearing loosing the control on my files, but in the end not only did not happen, it's now better than before and starting that led me integrating more things like a-contact-a-note (a note per person, company etc) with relevant mail searches directly available on click, linked relevant emails etc. So far if there is a "strange" invoice out of a set of regulars one instead of making a separate note it's all there already accessible with all the explanations, mails, attachments of the case. I can't say though if the long tedious process mentioned above it's really worth the outcome since yes, now it's far better then before, but before I was obtains equivalent results only at the price of more work, it's a personal satisfaction, it's nice, it gives me ideas, but can't say more than that...

Queries in Roam Research are powerful. They can be embedded into nodes, and allow complex conditions.

[TickTick](https://ticktick.com/) is very nice and almost like org-mode for normal people. By that I mean that you mix your notes and to-dos in lists, and it generates an agenda based on deadlines or search queries. Honestly, if it were open source I probably would have switched to it.

This feature and their design of "block" force me to still use roam research. if org mode header can be wrapped such that it acts as a "block" equivalent of roam research. it will supercharge org mode. about quering, I am not sure how much org-ql solve this problem.

nice, obsidian can be setup to do this.

Yeah, that was great. I only left it because it does not run inside Emacs and I would have to pay $15 every month to continue using it.

I have often searched for alternative ways to do things in life outside of emacs and have never succeeded. It very well may be that we have reached the point, or are close to reaching the point, where life outside of emacs may stop making sense

I've been using Org-agenda for the past couple of years but in spite of very customizable and powerful, I've been looking into switching lately as my setup at work makes accessing it pretty slow. Currently I'm looking into [Logseq](https://logseq.com/).