Emacs with Org Mode be like...

https://i.imgur.com/SuShOXE.gif Seriously, I dedicated a solid 2 months to learning emacs and org-mode this Jan, Feb (continuing to learn while using Agenda after that), and I feel like I have a super power that I never had before. I can "consume" so many little things, ideas, habits, reminders, etc., throw them into my system/schedule, and I've become about 1000% more productive, maybe more. (But to be clear, I'm ADHD and was scatter brained before. And it's not *just* org mode that's helping me, it's also *how* I'm using it.)

Go on - how are you using it? (:

What's falling down? Teeth?

For me org-mode started becoming really useful for task management when I started to use org-ql and other contributions by u/alphapapa . Before that, and for a very long time, I just had way too much task and scattered around too many projects to be able keep track with native org-mode. Can you describe your workflow ?

Not OP, but I’m using to organize the time I spend confguring org mode and sharing the knowledge I’ve gained, about org mode

Use org-roam to connect all these notes and ideas into proper knowledge management system

Seconding this! I also have ADHD and am just starting the emacs/org-mode journey myself… would love to hear more :-)

hahahaha! letters lol keys I guess

and how did you start?

Can you describe yours?

Another ADHD org-mode user!! There's dozens of us!

I think it may be a common thread. There are dozens of us!1

*The system*

One of us, one of us

Also not OP, but it's been very useful (between capture, being able to drop timestamps like breadcrumbs, etc.) for figuring out what I was hyperfocusing on for the past 6 hours when I emerge confused and dehydrated. ...which has turned out to be configuring emacs/org more often than I'd like to say. In seriousness, it short-circuits my novelty response. Most organizers become background noise to me within a week or two. Org has the double-threat feature of being both functional after being ignored for a week or two *and* always having something else to fix, which inevitably exposes me back to all the stuff I had scheduled or *intended* to do.

It's org mode all the way down.

Funny how this post popped up on the very day that I'm trying to get set up with org-mode for good. It's been a long journey of learning bits and pieces of org-mode but also spending absurd amounts of time customizing Emacs itself. You mean to tell me I could have been hyperfocusing on org-mode all this time instead of just customizing Emacs? I guess now's as good a time to get started as any. But first, I'll need to rehydrate. Thank you for the inspiration.

I'm using org mode to manage life as well as life-hack new/better habits (but there's other things that help too). I'm so new at org mode that I don't know if my way would actually be good for anyone else. But one thing I'm doing is creating my own kind of anki-like system for remembering things by creating repeating events, because I have such a hard time remembering important things. I'll set it up to daily reminders, and if I get tired of that, .+2d, then maybe .+1w, then .+1m, etc. That's the theory. I call them "REMBERS" as short for remember. So for example ("REMBER" is a todo keyword): https://i.imgur.com/uMHkXzH.png And of course, all kinds of daily, weekly, monthly, yearly repeated TODO's. I put the repetition in the headline to help give me that context. Oh also, I took some time to set up my font faces (both standard org mode as well as agenda) in what I think is the most *logical* manner. Maybe it's my OCD, but this was very important to me, and there's a philosophy behind it. I might publish it someday. My "personal productivity stack" has been a big broken puzzle for much or all of my life. I think recently it has come together in a very positive way. Some of the other pieces include the following: focusmate, beeminder, psychologist, antidepressant, lol. Oh also five of [these timers](https://www.amazon.com/Secura-60-Minute-Classroom-Countdown-Management/dp/B07X1JLVRK/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3G4T092F8SAVD&keywords=Secura+60-Minute+Visual+Timer&qid=1649457131&s=home-garden&sprefix=secura+60-minute+visual+timer%2Cgarden%2C96&sr=1-4). I put one in each of my standard work locations (and they are NOT to be moved from their dedicated location). A bit expensive, but they are absolutely awesome and so "low friction" to use. Well, tbh, not any ONE of these things can account for my recent productivity boost. It's not just org mode. It's my personal stack of things, briefly mentioned here, and probably many more little things, that has helped me recently in a significant way. But org mode is a significant part of the working machine. It's the dream tool I've always needed.

Here's how I started on emacs: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/splayn/how_to_start_learning_emacs_my_successful_method/ Then I worked my way through org mode by documenting my org mode and emacs learning. Basically organizing my knowledge about features and keyboard shortcuts... cheat sheet basically. Then starting to throw in various ideas and whatnot. Then I started throwing in some of my TODO items with dates and repeating dates. Then I typed `C-c a a`, and instantly became a true believer.

I have /u/alphapapa's packages on my "Org Mode Learning Path". I'm using a hacky workflow, started with plain gnu emacs (macport). My philosophy/attitude is I wanted to kind of suffer through growing pains from the bottom up. Once org mode started becoming useful to me (after 2 months intensive study and practice), I transitioned away from pure learning emacs and org mode to *using org mode* for life management, and learning or hacking whatever process would fulfill my current need. So my current workflow is *extremely* hacky. I know there's better ways to do just about everything I'm doing, and that includes using several of u/alphapapa's packages. As such my current workflow is not scaleable. I'm getting more and more TODOs in my daily agenda. So pretty soon I'll need to refactor my workflow with some better processes. For example, I'm not even using tags yet.

Text. https://wifflegif.com/gifs/697446-writing-process-bradley-cooper-gif

I need to watch live people using org because I never get passed the usual outline + lists + occasional table and I never feel anything special, surely my brain is missing something

We're a type. I'm currently setting up someone else (...also with ADHD...) with org, specifically emphasizing that he did not have to touch the text editor part, and configuring it *only* as a viewer/scheduler... until he saw me using the 'emacs side' of it and stopped me with "no, now that I can see what the hell you were talking about, that actually looks preferable". One of my overarcing theories about it is that, at least for a certain personality type, something that's a *little bit* broken or *almost* exactly what you want but not quite is *way* more compelling than something that works fine but has no knobs to adjust. Maybe because you're seeing the delta between what is and what could be, which is much more compelling than its absence.

I feel ya. It takes a certain amount of pain to soldier through learning enough to "see the light". Idk, maybe try filling this out with scheduled TODO items with appropriate repeat intervals: * Repeated Tasks ** Daily Tasks ** Weekly Tasks ** Monthly Tasks ** Yearly Tasks ** Habits Learn how to create scheduled and repeated tasks, deadlines, and "habits". Then use the agenda view `C-c a a` to see what you need to do TODAY. I think it was agenda view that really got my gears moving. Note: the above structure is just a general guideline. I actually have repeated tasks all over the place. It doesn't REALLY matter where they are put, but having that structure just helps me... uh... I guess it just helps me feel good about it, lol.

Most of the aspects of org that really changed my day-to-day are also way too personal or specific to eg. post a video about. I figured the case was similar for others and that accounted for why a lot of the example content, demonstrations etc. are kind of generic. On the other hand, I'm probably not giving other people enough credit; a *lot* of my config and ideas about using org in general were lifted from people with also-hyperspecific projects or problems who *did* share them. That stuff definitely seemed like the exception and not the rule, though, so maybe this bit of self-contradiction is rampant.

thanks, if you ever stream your workflow, ping me :)

do you remember any article or repo ?

Sounds a lot like where I was two or three months in. On surface it seems like such a small thing, but having the reminders there, navigable, and in something I could trust not to randomly update and delete itself (or break notification mechanisms) (or be married to that one application for the rest of time) (or have my careful styling steamrolled) was a big deal. In particular it's interesting to me you have your own mnemonics that fit into the whole todo/done/whatever system right away. That had also appealed to me immediately when I found it; it's opinionated on state, but has *no* opinion on the granularity of that state, what you use it for, or whether you even use it in more than one file. It was a breath of fresh air coming from so many other applications where setting that sort of thing up would've been a fragile nightmare of updating metadata about what a 'todo' can be and having it saved god-knows-where. It also similarly came at a time in my life (antidepressants, better living conditions) where it could be particularly influential. To the point I think if I'd spent time learning it at the 'wrong' time it could've bounced off me and soured me to it later, or reinforced less functional habits.

I can assure you're not. I noticed one common thread throughout the innumerable accounts canonizing org-mode: the authors are all non-programmers. Org-mode is a bit like Guitar Hero, which is not to say programmers are in any way special. I mean, a programmer is the plumber of the 21st century. But to a product manager type whose *raison d'etre* is taking meeting minutes, org-mode offers a glimpse of programming's tight-feedback empowerment.

I've referred to Sacha Chua's config a lot as there are a lot of code and ideas for dealing with both domestic puzzles and memory problems there. https://pages.sachachua.com/.emacs.d/Sacha.html I've gotten a lot of ideas on ways to use, as well as simple awareness of, a lot of org features from Karl Voit. https://karl-voit.at/tags/emacs/ Similar with Xah Lee's emacs pages as he writes in a very direct way that is kind to my eyes when I have grown a headache from too much of the 'GNU manual' style of writing. http://xahlee.info/emacs/ ... http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/elisp_advanced_index.html But an unfortunately large amount have been random github repos or gists where someone is solving a *very* specific problem that I only found through the grace of a search engine or SO link 8 comments down. For example, code I didn't end up using myself, but was useful as reference when I was working on something that manipulated org documents and needed to brush up to do some actual xpath queries (on unrelated XML) in the process: https://gist.github.com/cbowdon/e5f52761a50da552c92c Or someone else who must've had a habit-and-pursuant-issue like I did with using evil registers when doing repetitive text editing tasks and saved me the time of writing code to view and edit them: https://github.com/floscr/emacs.d/blob/master/config.org#evil-edit-register That's just a few off the top of my notes file. I guess that's another complicator; sharing workflow with that intent is very everything/nothing as there's no way to know what could be useful to the next person, and the less that's there, the less likely any of it would be. But at least I'm in the habit of keeping notes on *everything* I put in config now: where I lifted it from, or a link back to my own notes of where I was researching/writing it. I don't trust past me for a moment, neither to remember nor to have done something sanely. And not coincidentally, using org for notekeeping was what got me into that habit, if only by letting me see *in aggregate* just how ... unreasonable... sleepdrunk-me or distracted-me can be.

> I noticed one common thread throughout the innumerable accounts canonizing org-mode: the authors are all non-programmers. Apologies for me being dense, but could you please explain what you mean by canonizing org-mode? Is what I'm doing here, with this post, what you call canonizing org-mode? > Org-mode is a bit like Guitar Hero In what way? > which is not to say programmers are in any way special. I mean, a programmer is the plumber of the 21st century. But to a product manager type... Guitar hero, programmers, plumbers, product managers. You're mixing metaphors and references in a way that makes it very difficult for me to understand what is your intended message.

I can't make sense of normal org-agenda, but alphapapa's org-super-agenda is the shit. The ability to logically group things was a tremendous UI improvement for me. The custom DSL felt awkward at first, but once I understood the flow of items through the filters, I could accomplish almost everything I wanted. It's a very lispy solution.

As another ADHDer this is how I keep afloat

Maybe this is what you're missing. My workflow includes a feedback loop where I try something, such as what I mentioned above, and then when I hit a stumbling block, I do intensive research (google mostly) to find out how to solve that problem. Or I think "could I do... X" and think, "probably other people had the same question", so I go again down a rabbit hole of research to find out what other people have done to solve that same problem. A lot of google searches are in the form of `some google search terms` followed by `site:reddit.com` My workflow includes constant problem solving and tweaking my workflow, my learning about emacs/org mode, or work on my init.el to achieve a desired result. Look at my post history and you'll see a lot of questions that I've posted here.

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Hmmm you're like a puzzle. Are you saying that org mode is a rich experience, made by programmers, but org mode is difficult to understand unless you have a programmer's mind, attitude, or experience? I might agree with that. But I'm still not sure what you mean by canonize. Do you mean that (mostly) non-programmers are the ones that relegate org-mode as an old (and not useful) dead thing? I don't know if I'm properly interpreting what you're saying, or if I'm just assigning my own meaning to your metaphors, lol.

Thanks, I've added Xah Lee to my "Emacs Learning Path". It's already on my to-do list to dig deeper into Sacha Chua as well as Karl Voit resources.

The app ToodleDo *almost* worked for me. But I wanted to program what it lacked via it's API. But then also, ToodleDo has had a rocky history and uncertain future, so I couldn't trust that it would be around to invest my time to it. And I was overloading it as a PIM. Nearly out of the box, Org mode fulfills many of the things that ToodleDo was lacking for me. Plus so much more, of course. And like you said, trusting the tool was a big part for me. Org mode will be here forever, basically.

I'm definitely hacking my way through groupings. For instance, I'm using some long repeating SCHEDULED headings to move them to the top (Sched.30x items comes before Sched.20x items). Sometimes using priority to help group some things. And using physical/actual location of headings to help with grouping. I know this is *incredibly* hacky and there are much better ways. I have org-super-agenda on my short list for which packages I'll install and dig into learning next.

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Could you elaborate on how you're using it and what your workflow looks like?

Yes, I've elaborated a little bit within this post. Other than that, it's mainly just agenda stuff, taking notes on things that I research, and using the habit tracking. Nothing extraordinary, as I'm fairly new to org mode, I just started learning emacs in Jan-Feb and started actually using org-mode late Feb.

This search will give you lots of suggestions for guides, better than what I can tell you: https://www.google.com/search?q=get+started+with+org+mode+site%3Areddit.com Next, you might want to ask here (or similar like stackexchange, etc.) for your specific situation, level, knowledge, use-case, etc. "What's a good org-mode guide to for a programmer that knows vim?" might be different than someone else. One thing I did which was useful. I would search for things like https://www.google.com/search?q=org+mode+for+beginners or org mode basics or something similar, and just run through a lot of them, because each beginner tutorial/guide will tend to cover similar things, but then have some interesting little difference or perspective or command or focus that adds to your understanding. Another strategy, look at people's published "cheat sheets" and see what you know or don't know. They tend to be a summary of the most basic things. Some people really like videos, but they go too slowly for me, and are hard to review multiple times. I like to review text, search text, etc. Videos are just too linear and restrictive for me. But I did get started with Rainer König's series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQS06Qjnkcc&list=PLVtKhBrRV_ZkPnBtt_TD1Cs9PJlU0IIdE. My style of learning is to start with a particular tutorial, then I'd run into question or problem, branch off to another topic in another chrome tab, then branch branch branch down a rabbit hole of searches and topics, then work my way back out of that rabbit hole, back to the tutorial and then continue find from there. It's very difficult to do that with a video because it's hard to re-establish yourself. But that's me. I used org mode to document what I learned in org mode. That's a pretty good and sensible place to start if you don't have any other project. Basically, making my own cheat sheets. And see my other answers on this topic, within this post, as well. But ultimately, each person has to find their own way through it, what works best for them. What suits your own sense of motivation to stick with it until you start feeling like you've got wheels underneath you.

No judgement—I’m curious about what you do that you could dedicate 2+ months to learning about a package for a text editor? Edit: perhaps poorly worded, truly I am envious and wish I could dedicate as much time to my tools.

He's saying that the majority of vocal, hardcore org-mode users are non programmers. He's referring to religious canonisation, elevating something to the skies. I'm also ADHD, and can assure you he didn't say bad things about you (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria suck).

Thanks, for translating, lol. I have to disagree with them then. At least in my case, I'm a programmer and I think org mode is wonderful.

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Sure! File setup - a journal file for daily notes. - one file per project - one file for incubating project Task management: - Scheduling and deadline for real deadline - otherwise use a NEXT status At the beginning of each day, I look at - my agenda - an org ql view with all next grouped by parent headings - I make a list of task for the day from this. I call it my daily sandwich. Et voilà !

> I noticed one common thread throughout the innumerable accounts canonizing org-mode: the authors are all non-programmers. I volunteer as counter-example.

Can you share your config?

I would have anonymize it a bit, and I am Very busy this month. Can you ping me later ?

Me too.

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Sure :)

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What features of org-roam do you use that would be hard to do in plain org?

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Emacs/org mode user also :)

Wow, this comment is dripping with self projections. Damn.

No. I used the various guides exactly as I described above. There are really a few guides that come up over and over again in the recommendations. Those are the ones I used. Use your best judgment on which guides seem to work for you.

As a person with ADD (similar just not the hyper part) I use org roam to have only the relevant part that I am focusing on in the text file I can link to other projects with minimal effort without loading them so I don't go down a rabbit whole with other projects, and just focusing on the current one. Also if if I do create another project because I am distracted it will be in another file and picking the pieces is faster as I have less to search to find my current project, and I can see what I have done not what I have thought about doing. Just to clarify it was org-roam that attracted me to trying emacs. I still use atom to code but aim to switch that soon.

That sounds like stuff you can do with just org.

Going from Markdown to Org was such a wonderful change

Much better!

> I’m curious about what you do that you could dedicate 2+ months to learning about a package for a text editor? Software dev here, dedicated much more than that so far for Org Mode and Emacs in general. It's not about what you do, it's about investing in your tools and processes. My time spent on Emacs paid for itself many times over, both professionally and privately.

I like org-roam but it feels like it just goes about the wrong way of indexing files. It's designed for managing personal notes. There's no granularity with what you can push to the database. It doesn't cache clocks, for example, because it is considered junk data so you can't query the org-roam database for a view, of say, what you spent most of your week doing. You can of course modify your local copy of org-roam to do this but it doesn't make sense to make a database more general purpose from a package that imposes artificial limitations to what its database can store. What org really needs is a centralised database for indexing org files.

This has been removed, as it is not very civil; please attack ideas, not people.

Welcome to the club :-)

Thanks! Glad to (finally) be here!

Where could I see a video demo or org-ql? Thanks!

OrgMode and Org Agenda are my "gods" -- and with what I am currently doing managing a lot of action items, being able to prioritize them, mark them as WORKING, DONE, MOTHBALLED, etc. My workflow is a bit chaotic, but OrgMode is perfect for my chaos, as strange as that sounds. Truly and honestly, I don't know what I'd do without it. Other methods of organization are way too rigid for my tastes. I would like to explore some of the "add-ons" for OrgMode and Org Agenda, but I will take my time, pulling them in as it makes sense. Hell, I am not even using Agenda to its fullest extent yet!!!

Sounds a LOT like me. > Truly and honestly, I don't know what I'd do without it. Live a life of floundering. Which is what I have done B.O. (Before Org).

And eventually get sacked. :D