Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

Emacs + org has the potential to be the dream environment for everybody with a hacker mindset: Automate everything that has to do with text: Journaling, writing todo lists, parsing your Kindle highlights file (`My Clippings.txt'), writing project outlines, doing web research and saving your searches, notes, thoughts, summaries in Emacs via org-capture, drafting papers in org-mode, creating (text-based) tables and overviews, writing tech documentation with embedded screenshots, and many many more.

What ties all these notes and files together is Emacs Lisp: Write Lisp functions to automate most of what you do. - Previously I used Python for that, but Elisp is so much more fun to automate text-based workflows.

I would have to write a book to summarize all the ways this can transform your interactions and workflows with your computer and especially with everything text.

Edit:

After twenty years of using all sorts of text based databases and PIMs (AskSam, NetManages ECCOPro, various outliners, Outlook, Evernote, Omni{Focus,Outliner}, Bear Writer App, Ulysses App, and half a dozen other tools) I have come to realize that nothing beats Emacs + Org + Lisp.

I hate org.

I use emacs 25/7, I hate org.

Something about it rubs me the wrong way, yet I use it but only the basic parts. I think it's that I can't wrap my head around the mental model of it, and since it encompasses 2000 topics (trees, timing, workflow, states, agenda, journaling, tagging) it's like a mountain of mud before my eyes.

I started using it as an outliner. Then I added org-agenda to it, and migrated all my tasks from Things3 to it. Next I added repeated tasks, then org-habits, org-journal and some more. Incrementally.

I choked at outliner level

Well you don't even have to understand it fully, that is what is great about it.

What it is good for is that it gives you maximal freedom in organizing things the way you want. When I start out with a new org file, I just make lists and add functionality when needed.

While with most other todo/organizing applications you tend to be forced in some framework. This is how you should organize, and when you want to deviate things become cumbersome.

And then the other good thing is that editing is FAST (I use evil mode), in most other organizing/productivity tools you have to click a lot. Simple things become a chore quickly.

Freedom + speed = gold

oh you're assuming that not using org means using another organizer[0].. I just stopped organizing :D

who knows, maybe one day I'll finally see the light

[0] and I fully agree that most systems are way less ergonomic than emacs

Haha yeah I also never planned, I hated it. Still do actually. But one day I was fed up with the chaos in my life, dirty house and minimal productivity that I decided.. I need structure. I realized that the time I invest in structure pays itself out, because I spend less time goofing around. And so started the great journey in finding the best todo system. I started with paper, then google calendar/tasks, todoist and load of other apps until I finally went back to paper. The apps were just too cumbersome. Paper was simple and worked, but unfortunately paper itself is difficult to organize. I always avoided orgmode because well.. I was scared of emacs but eventually decided to give it a go, see what happens. And it was what I have been looking for all along: a simple and flexible system. And vim keybindings are a big bonus :)

You can use as much or as little of org as you want. It's perfectly allright to use only a subset of it. I do. I only use what I need.

I feel ya, my friend.

I also have read the org manual a few times, and it feels so big you can't hold a mental model for long enough to make sense while incorporating all its features. As you know, org mode has too many features to use them all at once (like emacs itself).

What (kinda) worked for me was, after knowing "I've read it all", to purposefully "downgrade" to a very very basic workflow. I thought then I would start adding features on a need basis, because I had the perimeter of what it can do.

But it turns out I haven't added anything else to the trivial workflow. There's a bit more info here ( https://puntoblogspot.blogspot.com/2018/12/3-basic-org-agend...), but essentially the trick was to use just one capture template for everything that just schedules the current task for today (so it appears in agendas until I mark it as done), and one single file, without different subtrees.

       ("t" "Todo" entry (file+headline "~/org/tasks.org" "Tasks")
    "* %^{title} \n  SCHEDULED:%t\n  %?\n %i\n  %a\nAdded: %U")

I feel safe because in that file, down means "later", so I still can rely on my basic common sense.

Dude: It's just a simple outliner with features built on top of it. There's not much of a mental model beyond the outline aspect (headings and text). Everything else is just a feature which you don't need to know to use the basics. As your needs go up, you merely learn the feature you want to use. Most people use only 10-20% of Org's features.

Seriously, M-Ret, TAB and S-TAB are all you need to get going.

I watched the Google Tech Talk on it and was immediately productive. Don't bother with the Org manual until you want to do more.

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