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Comment by brandonmenc | Hacker News Reader

What I mean is that most people can get most of what they need from something like org-mode by instead using Evernote, Asana, etc.

My experience is that I'd set up something like org-mode thinking, "wow, I can't wait to save hours a week by being able to juggle todo lists around at high speed without taking my fingers off the home row!" and like, that would just never be the case. In reality, all I needed was something a little bit better than a dumb text file.

ymmv. I'm sure there are power users out there who really exercise these tools to the max. But even then, I question how much time they're saving.

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"time saving" and "without taking my fingers off the home row" is an extremely shallow view of why people pick emacs and org-mode as a major portion of their computational environment.

Broadly it's about creating a sort of fabric of textual context around your all of your personal and professional projects. It's about owning your tools as a professional.

Orgmode allows you to capture your thinking around a project in a way that's extremely adaptable to whatever structure you need.

You can create an outline of arbitrary depth with todo items, appointments, executable computation or latex.

There is literally no other environment available with that level of power.

Now even if you can assemble this from the bits of flavor of the month web services which of us will still be able to read and use our environment in 2 years? How about 25?

Cheers.

> Now even if you can assemble this from the bits of flavor of the month web services which of us will still be able to read and use our environment in 2 years? How about 25?

I am sympathetic to this.

If I were working alone on a decades-long project - for example, as a researcher, or academic - I'd be hesitant to use something like Evernote. I probably would use org-mode.

But, when working with other (potentially non-technical) stakeholders on projects that clock in under five years, Evernote and Asana would be my go-tos.

How do you manage your personal projects and notes though? Evernote - or any SaaS - seems to me too risky a proposition for something like this.

For brainstorming and architecting I use whiteboards that I take photos of before erasing. If there's no whiteboard available, I use pen and paper - yellow legal pads - which I also take photos of.

Text files and Evernote I use for snipping web pages, organizing bookmarks, and taking meeting minutes. For todo lists, I use text files, Evernote, and increasingly, Asana.

I don't do any brainstorming with the computer.

Yeah, I agree. I use emacs avidly. I still think for editing raw text it's a fairly nice experience. I like a lot of the features in emacs but I rarely need some of the more advanced ones. In order to leverage them, you need some highly specific use cases. Maybe my brain-meats aren't as myelinated as others, but most people don't want or need the universal pocket knife.

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