
Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text - gjvc
http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html
======
madballster
I see a lot of comments arguing that it's not "worth it" to spend dozens of
hours to "get into org-mode" when there are "intuitive tools" such as Evernote
or Trello or Todoist etc.

What some are missing is the fact that low barriers to entry sometimes turn
into barriers to growth at a later stage. After (!) one has sunk thousands of
hours into them. I used to keep my academic notes in Evernote and it turned
into hell after about 2,000 notes and a few years of work. I couldn't find
things when I needed them, it didn't support a non-linear mode of work. It
became my personal black hole that swallowed up information but never gave it
back.

With org-mode I have created my very own filing and research system. After
years of using it and thousands of articles I find things. Quickly. Now, with
org-roam, I create hubs of knowledge and ideas that I can come back to at a
later point without worrying about linearity or chronology. No longer do I
need to know where things are. I know what ideas are in there. If I don't like
a certain workflow, I can grow, develop or change my filing and note-taking
system as I see fit.

In my opinion, org-mode eliminates the risk of hitting any sort of barrier
after years of sunk costs.

~~~
CJefferson
Here were my "sunk costs" of org-mode.

1) org-mode makes a bad spreadsheet

2) No good Android interface, Orgzly is OK, but doesn't do advanced features
and often crashed for me.

3) Despite lots of trying, I couldn't get "into" using the Emacs shortcut
keys, which are different to every other application on Windows.

4) I like variable width fonts, and variable width fonts don't seem to work
with various bits of org mode (for example tables)

I'm sure you love org-mode, and that's great, but plenty of people over the
years have tried and failed to love emacs, and lost a whole lot of time in the
process.

~~~
allarm
1) org-mode makes a good spreadsheet 2) Not being Android user myself, I have
only heard good things about Orgzly from Emacs people around. What features
exactly are you missing? 3) you can use any keys you want with Emacs. I have
my own setup that I am using along with the Vim key bindings/text objects. 4)
pretty much everything else works well with fonts and colors; tables yeah,
tend to keep simple formatting.

Emacs is not ideal. But it is the most flexible and configurable piece of
software in the world - and org-mode is the best outliner ever created.

~~~
CJefferson
Thanks, I hope this will be useful for other people!

1) When I google for some advanced operations (like multi-column sort), the
advice seemed to be export as CSV and do it in openoffice.

2) While orgzly is a good attempt, if you google around you will find lots of
limitations (it's too long since I've used it), as it is a reimplementation of
org-mode so can't hope to be feature complete.

------
birracerveza
Org Mode keeps being pushed again and again, but honestly this title is one of
the boldest claims I've seen about it.

Just look at the document. It's a 400+kb HTML page of Emacs configurations,
keybindings and other stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless you've been
an avid Emacs user for years. Where is the Plain Text here? I see nothing of
the sort. Sure, the output might resemble Plain Text, but it's clearly not.

I have nothing against it or those who use it, more power to you, but please
be realistic.

Sorry about the rant.

~~~
spekcular
I agree. Why use Org Mode when, for example, Workflowy exists?

The latter is robust to your hard drive failing and downloadable in plaintext,
too. And it looks better. And you don't have to learn a billion key shortcuts
with silly names like "yank" to use it.

~~~
jbotz
If Workflowy does exactly and everything you want, then sure, use that. If
there are times though when you wish it did something a little different or a
little more or integrated better with some other tools you use then, well,
with emacs and org mode you could scratch that itch with probably just a few
dozen lines of elisp code.

Or if you later find some other tool that suits you better it may not be
possible to move all your data to the other system, or at least prohibitively
hard. With org mode, you can probably whip up an extension that mimics that
other tool, or else just port you data.

The attraction of org mode is that it it's probably close to the simplest,
most primitive way of solving that problem it solves, while also being one of
the most easily extensible and customizable (because, emacs).

~~~
spekcular
But, Workflowly literally does exactly and everything I want. It exports plain
text, so my data is always portable. It's great.

I don't want primitive, I want convenient and easy to use. I don't want to
have to think about how I'm taking notes or write in lisp or "rice" anything.

Also, Emacs is ugly and doesn't sync with my phone. I'm sure I could fix both
of those things with sufficient effort, but again, I want to put forth effort
solving actual problems, not remaking my Workflowy setup.

This entire topic is microcosm of goofy command line/unix fetishism.

If you want primitive, get a paper notebook. One page per day. That works
well, too (seriously).

------
nanna
Having been using Emacs and org-mode for about 4 years now, I've been thinking
a big mistake has been made in how the system is pitched. It's always
something about it being 'plain text', which makes non-Emacs users say 'Why
would I switch from my plain text editor? Or 'Why would I switch from a flashy
GUI webapp version of this particular feature?'

Emacs can't be appreciated for any one feature, even org mode, powerful as
that is. You have to take the entire system and all it's possibilities into
account. Org mode is particularly special because it integrates so many of
Emacs' features, from literate programming to keeping a Wiki, to scheduling,
to keeping a diary, to file browsing, to accounting, to emailing, to so much
more. But to try to judge one package like org mode is a bit like judging a
car by the quality of its seats.

The only thing I've experienced which compares to this is, perversely, the
Office 365 suite. Yes, of course, all the functions are completely different
and I'm not making a like-for-like functionality comparison. But in Office365
an email client (Outlook) is integrated with a team's documents (via
Sharepoint), chats (via Teams), calendar, etc, etc. The value of Office365
isn't in any one app, it's their integration. It's the entire system.

Obviously the Emacs system has a completely different and opposing design
philosophy to Office365's. It's ground-up, fully-extendable, initially
demanding, text based, exportable, self-hosted, free, and so on. All of which
increasingly goes against the grain of the trajectory of software today.
However for those who give it the time and effort, it really does offer to
organise your life, and yes, in plain text.

~~~
nanna
Another difference between emacs and Office 365. The code and functionality of
both are also sustained by an ecosystem.

For Office 365 that ecosystem is by and large constituted by the paid labour
of workers employed by Microsoft, together with a minor subset of plugin
contributors for certain applications.

For Emacs, the ecosystem includes everyone who adopts the use of emacs.

In other words, to Microsoft's system you are a customer. Microsoft may choose
to adapt their system to your use case if you are lucky enough to represent a
big enough user or use case. To emacs you are part of the very ecology which
sustains the whole system. That's where the sense of empowerment and 'freedom'
(I hate the term) comes from.

------
Syzygies
Starting in 2005, I've been keeping dated text files in a Log folder,
organized by year and month. Anytime I need digital "scrap paper" I make sure
I keep it. If I need to save files, I open instead a dated log folder.

There's a critical optimization problem here the young often get wrong. One
needs to "Huffman code" the work put into organizing on entry, versus the work
later in retrieving. For example, I save physical receipts into four rotating
bins by quarter, then I vacuum pack the old receipts and stash them in the
garage. Occasionally I save hundreds of dollars by proving I shipped something
(and that would be a receipt I probably scanned) but any more work than this
on entry would be a mistake.

It's the complete lack of organizational structure, other than date, that make
my log files so useful. I instead get good at including keywords, always
asking how I would find this later. I never have to wonder whether I filed
this under "garden" or "tomatoes", resorting to a system-wide search. And this
system has survived many editor migrations.

I agree with the arguments not to use a commercial system. That's like putting
an aspirational cookbook on your coffee table. Org Mode is also too structured
on entry to be optimal for me.

~~~
ebertucc
> It's the complete lack of organizational structure, other than date, that
> make my log files so useful.

A thread here about a week ago on bookmark management reinforced this idea for
me.[1] When it comes to general knowledge management, complex, predefined
taxonomies don't feel worth the overhead when retrieval is so often ad hoc and
messy. Grepping about in log files for keywords usually does the trick. Tags
are nice, but like you say, getting good at including searchable keywords
performs a similar function.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23228861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23228861)

------
iagovar
It looks like some people want to spend more time organizing their life than
living their life. IDK man, I already need some willpower to use Trello and
looks far easier.

~~~
truncate
Hah, as much as I wanted org-mode to work for me, I realized I'm spending more
time on building a framework for organizing my time than probably actually
organizing my time. And it's never over.

Sync all my calendars, OS notifications (considering the time it would take me
to walk/drive), sync all this in mobile/iPad and be able to edit effectively
there, and the list goes on. Laptop/Mobile notifications are the biggest ones,
as if I'm not reminded on what I've to do, I will probably miss it anyways.

I've found org-mode much more practical for taking notes while working, as I'm
already in Emacs writing code.

~~~
slothtrop
I imagine the difference is that tinkering is the appeal, for some. I like
optimization as a hobby within reason but if you aren't getting anywhere
quickly it hardly feels optimal. That said, I've yet to try org mode, just
emacs.

~~~
truncate
Yes. I'm definitely a tinkerer, and have spent hours configuring my Emacs just
the way I want. However, its super addicting and often you'll find yourself
doing things with little ROI. A 20 yo me, would have definitely hacked till
death, now almost 30 with job and hobbies outside tech I've to more thoughtful
about ROI about the things I do (I swear if Emacs LSP doesn't perform well in
emacs27, I'm going VSCode path -- and there's my unrelated rant).

------
tomcooks
Can I get a quick rundown on why Org Mode is better (easier/faster/more
organized/whatever you prefer) than a ~/TODO.md file?

I use this format:

```

## yyyy-mm-dd name of the homework

\- for tasks that have to be done

! for tasks that contain a warning, careful, beware

> for tasks I am waiting for others to give me output about

? for tasks I am not sure about

v for tasks I've completed

x for tasks i won't do, WONTFIX

```

so, for example, today i'd have: ```

## 2020-05-25 orgmode

> ask about orgmode on hn

v rant on hn about my own flatfile task management

x install emacs

? look if orgmode can be tested on vi ```

~~~
LandR
In org-mode I can stop and start time running against a task and when I'm done
get a breakdown of the total time spent on that task.

I can close tasks and it automatically update when I closed them. I can use
keyboard shortcuts to cycle through what state a task is in. e.g. TODO, DONE,
BLOCKED etc.

I can assign types to the task, and update these with a few simple keyboard
shortcuts.

If I have a list of tasks, e.g.

    
    
        TODO Foo [0/3]
          - [ ] A
          - [ ] B
          - [ ] C 

As I mark off A, B or C, the total on Foo [0/3] will auto update.

I can plan my week ahead org-mode agenda,where it will auto generate my week.
I can see reports based on what I did and didn't get finished. I can archive
this data off to an archive file.

I can easily create plaintext tables that will auto format for me to fit
stuff, I can do calculations in them (as these plaintext tables are basically
spreadsheets).

All through just typing text and learning some keyboard shortcuts.

And its always just plain text, I can open it in any editor and what I see
will make sense.

Can write code in line in a number of languages (e.g. Ruby, LISP etc) and have
it executed in the file.

~~~
darau1
Can I use org-mode without emacs?

~~~
LandR
I've never tried org-mode without emacs, but this says you can get an
equivalent in other editors like Atom and VS Code.

[https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-
mo...](https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mode)

I don't know how customisable it would be in those editors. My org-mode is
pretty customized via my emacs config and I don't know if they would support
agenda.

~~~
darau1
Thanks, I'll take a look

------
tams
The key to using org-mode effectively is ignoring most of the features and
using only a tiny subset that you actually need.

You aren't going to look like a wizard, but you are also not going to need to
maintain anything ever. These kinds of cookbooks are nice to have around, but
it's best to treat them as references, not guides.

~~~
karlicoss
In remember seeing this exact document five years ago and being completely
overwhelmed.

Now, looking at this, all of these features make sense to me, but I'm far from
using all of them. Agree it's more of a kitchensink reference.

------
tkuraku
I like the idea of Org Mode, but for me it is just a painful to use. Vscode
with the "Markdown All in One" does everything I could possibly need. It is
still plain text and it should be portable to any tool that can display
markdown files. The biggest draw is the keyboard shortcuts are far less
complicated and more ergonomic (though perhaps less powerful than emacs, but
that is fine with me).

edit: Also interestingly Vscode feels much more cross platform for me. I have
tried to get Emacs running on windows and it wasn't a good experience.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, unfortunately, while Emacs on Windows works, it kind of feels like a
fish pulled out of the water. What I do when I work on Windows machines is
build and launch Emacs under WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), and use an X
Server on the Windows side (VcXsrv) to get a GUI window.

------
yur3i__
I do use org mode for writing documents and presentations but I feel like a
lot of these 'organization' tools just result in spending more time tweaking
them than actually doing the work you set out to organize.

~~~
adimitrov
It's deceptive to look at a document like this and think that you'd have to
use all of that knowledge and configuration in order to use org mode for
planning your tasks.

Much like Rome, this document wasn't written in a day. You can start using
org-mode for task planning and agenda with a fresh
(Doom/Spacemacs/vanilla)-Emacs install and be productive from the get go.
That's what I did.

Then, you add things whenever you feel like it. You may never feel like it,
the default is already very powerful, and I don't have a lot of customization
around agendas, etc. in my configuration. The only thing I actually do is set
where my org mode files live, set a couple of keybindings, and add one agenda
view. That's it. I've been using that same setup for years now.

The rest of my config is merely making it a bit prettier, because default
Emacs is somewhat ugly.

~~~
yur3i__
Maybe my problem is I don't do complex enough work to warrent a tool like this
(I'm still a BSc student). I do use emacs for almost everything already but I
don't use anything for organization really because it just seems like a really
complex way of just setting a reminder somewhere

~~~
bcrosby95
I use org mode and my work is fairly simple. Never underestimate the power of
being able to go back to your thought process on something you did 1, 5, or
even 10 years ago.

------
pkalinowski
It looks insanely complicated for no reason.

Why do such super organisation, where you have great search at your disposal?

I just have everything inside Notes folder with subfolders if any project is
getting bigger. Anytime I want to look for something, I just do global text
search for the whole Notes folder.

~~~
taylorlunt
There are lots of features I don't use in org. In fact, in the beginning I
only used the most basic feature of keeping a foldable hierarchical text file
of notes, which is basically the same thing as your Notes files, but with some
nice structure editing and folding keybindings built in. But I have been
slowly integrating org features into my system when I think they would be
useful to me.

First I started scheduling things. With org, you can schedule items and have
them show up in your agenda regardless of what org file they are in. Org
agenda gives you an outline of your week, and your current day, and it says
how many days you have left until certain items are due. This has replaced my
calendar, and feels superior to a calendar to me.

Then I started using org-drill, which lets you drill org notes, emulating the
spaced-repetition behavior of Anki. You could just use Anki, but it's nice to
have all of your personal information management in one place, and have it
editable from your text editor.

I've also started using hyperlinks to make links between my org files and also
to any other file on my computer, to web URLs, to executing a script, to
mailto links... This has been helpful.

I still don't use plenty of features, like the literate programming stuff,
tables, tags, capture, etc. But I don't need to. They're there for me if I
feel they would be helpful. But they're invisible to me otherwise. Org isn't
"insanely complicated" because it's mostly just a text file, and the features
are there for you to use if you need them, but there's no cluttered UI that
actually adds any complexity.

------
souterrain
Former org-mode user here. One of the anti-features of emacs/org-mode for
certain people, particularly those who get obsessed with tooling, travel down
technology rabbitholes, and are subject to crippling bouts of procrastination,
is the extensibility and the common paradigm that one should do everything in
emacs.

Ultimately, I switched to using specific tools for specific tasks. For
example, I found Zotero a much better way of managing research, while still
allowing export to BibTeX.

I still can organize in plain text, I just avoid getting tripped up with
endless tool maintenance and customization.

------
mark_l_watson
I surprised myself when I stopped using org-mode when I "retired" (ha!) March
2019. At my last on-site job, I had to juggle managing a small deep learning
team, work on 100+ US patents, and all of my own technical work and research.
Org-mode was perfect to keep everything organized.

Now, I rely heavily on Apple Notes (this required discovering a little app
that exports the notes for backup, and also realizing that I can use the web
apps in iCloud.com on my Linux laptop).

This reliance on Notes may change however as just recently I have developed
the habit of keeping a Mosh (like SSH) session always open between my iPhone
and iPad to my remote server, with appropriate tmux setups for each device. I
was just thinking yesterday about how I could now always keep a tmux pane open
to emacs+org-mode.

~~~
bwbmr
Big mosh user here myself. How do you deal with tmux limiting window size to
the lowest common denominator device? I usually run a little bash script
manually to disconnect other tmux sessions whenever I switch devices, which
gets annoying.

Also which app for Apple Notes exports do you use?

~~~
nmarriott
tmux can be configured not to limit the window size since tmux 2.9, and it is
the default since tmux 3.1.

~~~
bwbmr
Thanks- was using through byobu wrappers, need to check what version is on our
company machines. Edit: 2.7, so that explains it.

------
dpbriggs
Recent CS graduate here. Used org-mode for every assignment and report. Used
it at every internship. Will be using it in my full-time work. Use it at work
to automate pull-request bureaucracy and notes. Use it for design notes and
render into other formats.

It's the highest productivity format I have ever encountered, and we haven't
even touched org-agenda.

~~~
throwaway286
How do you use org-mode to automate pull-requests? Do you make the pull
request inside emacs? Are you using it to compile a note from all of the
commits in a certain branch? Or something else?

~~~
dpbriggs
Preface: I like very detailed pull-requests. For me this includes JIRA
information and implementation notes. Most of my recent work has been backend
API stuff, and org-babel/restclient [0] lets me do fast test-driven-
development in the same file. These inputs / outputs are included in the PR
render so it's easy to see what the API is doing.

> How do you use org-mode to automate pull-requests?

I have a script called 'new_jira $JIRA_NUMBER' which pulls relevant JIRA
information from the REST API and generates an org-mode file. I do my work and
list implementation details, gotchas, and generally narrate work done. Details
are light for easy tickets, and heavy on complex ones. Finally, render it as
markdown and copy/paste in the GitHub PR field.

I also include tips / tricks if it's not appropriate to comment directly in
the code base. I come back and search for these later (knowledge base).

> Do you make the pull request inside emacs?

I've usually faced admin issues trying to get the necessary tokens to make PRs
in emacs. Just render, copy & paste in the PR title/description field.

> Are you using it to compile a note from all of the commits in a certain
> branch?

That's right. All work relevant to a particular ticket is captured in a single
org-mode file. I keep my git history clean and well documented so it's not
necessary to use these files to understand commit history though.

> Or something else?

For work unrelated to the JIRA flow (e.g. security bug hunting) I use org-mode
to track the entire narrative and use org-babel to inline code necessary for
the exploit. This makes security reporting easy as I just render as PDF and
shoot it off to the security people.

[0]
[https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el](https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el)

------
mcshicks
I've been an org mode user since 2012. When I started using it, I was learning
emacs at the same time, really didn't know anything about lisp. But I had used
a lot of other organizational systems going back to palm pilot days, I knew
what I wanted. This website gave me everything I needed and I was able to
start adding pieces one at time to my config file to get them working. It's a
big part of my setup and I'm really grateful for the person who put it up that
they did it (and kept it up to date) for a long time.

------
amake
I take all my work notes in org-mode and had a hard time viewing them on my
iPad, so I made a cross-platform mobile reader app:

[https://orgro.org](https://orgro.org)

(It's FOSS but available on the App Store and Google Play for convenience. It
will be available on F-Droid soon as well.)

~~~
tra3
It'd be great if there's was a trial option.

~~~
amake
I wish the stores let you do that easily :(

If you're on Android then you can wait for F-Droid, or you can get an
automatic refund from Google Play if you uninstall it shortly after purchase.

Otherwise you can always build and install from source, since it's FOSS.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
My life is now organized just in time to die of old age learning this system.
I'm the most organized dead-guy I guess.

When my scroll bar turns into a tiny square in the top right of the window for
something as trivial as a note-taking system I nope right out of there.

~~~
jeromenerf
Org is not a note taking system. It’s an emacs app that can do a lot and that
you can use and tweak as you want. Note taking, todo list, calendar,
scientific notebook, literate programming, bibliography, ... It allows to mix
static (what you insert) and dynamic (code execution, graph generation,
tables, images, spreadsheets).

The author logged how he customized his setup to do whatever he needed and
shared it. I found great tips there.

I fail to understand the negativity in the comments for such hacker friendly
system and submission.

~~~
gjvc
> I fail to understand the negativity in the comments for such hacker friendly
> system and submission.

One would have thought that a programmable editor (using LISP, no less) would
be held in high regard by the majority of people on here.

Just goes to show that you can't please all of the people all of the time.

~~~
jeromenerf
> Just goes to show that you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Maybe these people are hackers who hack as-in "hacksaw", to punch a hole
quickly. There is no sense of urgency in the french synonyms etymology.

------
ftwynn
So I started taking a course recently based on an HN post about putting
everything in org-mode: [https://tasshin.com/blog/implementing-a-second-brain-
in-emac...](https://tasshin.com/blog/implementing-a-second-brain-in-emacs-and-
org-mode/)

What I found pretty quickly was that org-mode is great for organizing things
in emacs. BUT if you ingest any meaningful amount of ideas from outside of
emacs, it gets orders of magnitude more difficult to put your "whole life" in
there. Emacs was built in a pre-web, pre-mobile world, and it's a frustrating
experience to try and wire those up to emacs.

There are some helper packages, to be sure, but tools like Evernote have
seamless capture built across all the platforms without any effort on my part.
I found once I'd decided to switch from using org-mode to using Evernote as my
life organizing destination a whole class of challenges simply disappared.

In my opinion, we should use the right tool for the job. Org-mode, by the
nature of living in emacs land, is very difficult to actually get you whole
life _into_ , even if it would be nice to organize once you did so.

------
dpweb
Favorite all time personal productivity tool: ClipX (last version 15 years
ago). Besides being an clipboard manager, you can save all clipboards to a
text file. I have a file running 3 years and just text search it to find old
information.

------
gexla
Lots of comments about Org mode being complicated. This link shouldn't be
representative. This is the culmination of an iterative effort over years. I
don't know the history behind it and not a hardcore user. But I would suggest
start out with basics and building slow. Bring in what's useful and learn that
well before moving on to other things. I would not drink in this entire doc
all at once.

------
glxxyz
This is what procrastination looks like.

~~~
contravariant
Nicely organized procrastination though.

------
ashtonkem
Org mode has always been too flexible for me. The lack of constraints on what
could be done made it very hard to actually create a system that was reliable
for me.

Also, I stopped using Emacs as my daily driver when I started working in Java
professionally.

------
ropeladder
<rant>I've been trying out orgzly as a note dump replacement for Trello on
mobile. It works ok but I tried setting up actual emacs the other day in order
to convert the Trello json output to .org, and the experience was horrible. I
couldn't install plugins because I needed to install a plug-in manager, and I
couldn't install that because I needed to install another plugin or change
some obscure GPG setting. On top of this you have to learn not only a whole
new set of overly complicated commands but new vocabulary as well. I finally
did get it working but oof. I'll stick with vim.

~~~
RaycatRakittra
Sounds like you got an amalgam of bad first impressions. Sorry to hear that!

So, something that helped me get pass that inertia was learning where init.el
resided and how it is loaded. After I read about that, installing a package
manager that's not constrained to the minibuffer was a 3-4 line endeavour
(use-package). Save, reload. After that, you might get a notification of Emacs
warning you about trusting an unknown source. (I always accept here.) After
that, it was a matter of using M-x use-package and installing packages that I
remembered from Spacemacs: which-key, restart-emacs, swiper/counsel/ivy, and
hydra were enough to get me up and running.

Regarding the overly complicated commands, I agree that they're a bit lengthy
but you are able to change the ergonomics of your keybindings at will. My
config is heavily inspired by evil-leader and I put a lot of functionality
behind "C-;". So, "C-; f p f" will open a search dialog for all of the files
in the current VCS repo. This might be lengthy for some but it feels right to
me. I like that about Emacs.

Sorry for the rambling! If you ever decide to try it out again, feel free to
message me and I'll help where I can.

------
olivierestsage
YMMV, but Emacs and Org Mode have made my life finally seem manageable after
basically a lifetime of struggling to keep track of everything. If that sounds
like you, it might be worth your time to try.

~~~
mr_spothawk
would you be willing to put up a few screenshare videos describing your
workflow?

------
madballster
I do all my research, note-taking and idea brainstorming in org-mode. Couldn't
live without it.

------
kmstout
I've been playing with org-mode as the basis for a literate programming
workflow. So far, the results have been nice, though tangling is slow. (For
that, I wrote little tool to do the tangling for me, including following the
noweb references. Combined with inotifywait, this gives me tangle-on-save.)

The most detailed org LP example I have is at

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reindeereffect/reindeereff...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reindeereffect/reindeereffect.github.io/master/2020/05/05/index.org)

the tangled products are at

[https://github.com/reindeereffect/reindeereffect.github.io/t...](https://github.com/reindeereffect/reindeereffect.github.io/tree/master/2020/05/05)

and the "woven" HTML is at

[https://reindeereffect.github.io/2020/05/05/index.html](https://reindeereffect.github.io/2020/05/05/index.html)

Sometime in the near future I'll split the LP tools off from the rest of my
configuration so that others can use them more easily, if they're so inclined.

------
amphitheatre
I love the concepts and workflow that org-mode, as well at surrounding
extensions, promote. What I rue, however, is how tightly it is married to
Emacs. vim extensions for it aren't up to the same level yet, and the mobile
apps for org-mode are quite lacking, after trying them.

It just seems like it has so much promise, and people have done a lot of
interesting things with it, but it's clouded behind this learning curve and
toolchain.

------
albmoriconi
I can feel this deeply because even though I'm an Emacs user, and thoroughly
like the Emacs + Org experience, I was never able to keep a working system
organized with Org mode.

I ended up using OmniFocus for my tasks and Notion for "information and note
storing"; they have great, built-in support for the things I need to do and I
spend very little time managing them and keeping them in order, so they simply
do "what I need them for". They also play nice with mobile devices, images and
external documents, and integrate with my Outlook calendar (something I am
forced to use for work).

I have no doubt that a proficient Emacs user could create something similar,
even better, using only Org mode; I don't use third party configurations and
keep mine to one hundred lines, more or less; when things get more
complicated, I notice that I mostly end up in a game of min/maxing without
getting the same amount of "useful" that I get from other systems.

The big problem is that, the way I'm running now, I don't own my data;
OmniFocus worries me particularly because, as already said in other comments,
it's Apple-only. Notion worries me too: I wish them all the best, but what
happens if they go out of business? Sure, I can export everything in plain
text, but the structure of my data would be pretty hard to recreate in another
system.

Even though configuration + Org files amount to some amount of complexity, I
can have trust that their format is long lived and that they are stored where
I decide. This is a sort of "peace of mind" I can relate with, and that I have
somehow lost when I decided to use these other systems; however I am
infinitely more satisfied with two systems that do "exactly what I want"; I
hope to find a way to reconcile these ends sometimes, but for the moment Org
mode is "only" my outlining tool of choice.

------
AlexAffe
As many in here mention, org-mode has a few very good features but is much too
complicated to get into. My absolute favorite for self organization is Joplin:
\- self hosted \- markdown \- file attachments \- cross device \- lean
interface \- encryption

Those are my core must haves, but there is much more which really motivated me
getting into Joplin.

------
michaericalribo
Org mode is a fun note taking tool built on top of emacs, and it’s great that
it works so well for some people. But, in my experience, the hard lock-in to
emacs makes it impossible to make a central part of my workflow.

Plus, org mode encourages so much planning to be productive and customization
that I end up without any time to get any real work done

------
enitihas
I was a big fan of org mode, and I still think nothing beats it for free form
note taking. But if your use cases are very simple todo tracking, you might
want to try OmniFocus. I have bene using OmniFocus and found a very easy to
use replacement. It doesn't match the flexibility of org mode but gets the job
done.

~~~
dijit
The wider implications of recommending a proprietary application (worse: a GUI
based one which costs money and is only available on one platform) is that now
your documents are tied to a particular time of reference in an ecosystem.
Something which moves.

For context I have lost files because the old version of the software which
could read the formats would not run on my operating system, and purchasing a
new license for the updated version was no guarantee that it would work either
as the format had changed.

Yes, this is a stupid qualm to have when Excel/Word exists, but in those cases
the alternative is not easily digestible plain text documents.

The case for making things more proprietary and costly should come with
serious considerations.

Especially at $10/mo. That's more than I pay for Netflix.

(FD: I'm not an org-mode or emacs user, and this was written on a Mac)

Information on the '.ofocus' file format here:
[https://github.com/tomzx/ofocus-format](https://github.com/tomzx/ofocus-
format)

~~~
enitihas
I think OmniFocus can export in a wide variety of formats, including plain
text formats, so you can always take backups of plain text files.

I agree that a FOSS solution is preferable to a proprietary one, however, an
easy to use software with a GUI is also preferable to one with a good amount
of learning curve. I don't have any issue with the GUI.

I also don't have any issue with costing money. Quality software can cost
money, since it costs money to create it. The alternative is software which
spies on you and serves you ads. I don't know any other model by which a note
taking app can make money.

What's wrong with costing money anyways. A vast majority of HN earns fat
salaries writing software. Either those salaries have to come from selling
software or from tracking users. I much more prefer software being charged
for.

~~~
dijit
It's not about costing money, it's about costing a lot of money and being a
proprietary format.

The idea of locking myself out of my data is unappealing.

And as I replied to the sibling: the ability to export to a format does not
mean that it's the default, that it's optimal and not lossy.

If you were able to change the output format permanently to .taskpaper and the
software "just worked" I would have less of an issue.

I don't mind software costing money (I pay for an all-license JetBrains
account) but that doesn't lock information away in proprietary formats
requiring me to renew my subscription or lose my data.

~~~
enitihas
What information is lost in OmniFocus when backing up to a textual format?

~~~
dijit
Inside the link to the .ofocus teardown you can see references to task
parallelisation, along with "rankings", "project"-scopes and so on.

All of this is lost on export/import from .taskpaper, since there's no easy
taskpaper representation of such data.

Representing this as a "backup" implies that it can be completely recovered,
but that would certainly not be the case, this is an export, a new, lossy,
representation of data.

That is also assuming that you consistently export to .taskpaper and not just
rely on the default format - which is what everyone and there mum is going to
be doing. Because consistently exporting to plaintext is not a common
workflow.

------
its-tony
It's interesting, never used it although it looks like it would require more
time than it could actually save. The very best products I've encountered are
the exact opposite, so easy to use that they feel like they're essentially
useless.

Organising life is an abstract monster that no one has ever gotten even close
solving it. The question of how do make the most out of our time in our short
and unpredictable lifetimes has become somewhat intriguing and boggling to me.

Over the years I've been playing around with a architecture of a tool that
would take a crack at this ambiguous challenge.

If someone's interested in trying out an early version, feel free to leave
your email here.
[https://forms.gle/tqpuNpfdpdB3DZLi9](https://forms.gle/tqpuNpfdpdB3DZLi9).

------
jypepin
am I bad for not having a personal notes system or even not taking notes about
anything? I feel like any time I take notes on something, I rarely (read,
_never_) go back to them, mostly because I don't care or just forgot I took
those notes.

------
christiansakai
I use vim, so what is my alternative? Not gonna learn emacs for the sake of
org mode.

~~~
quazar
You should try. I also was a loyal vim user, but OrgMode was so wonderful I
switched to two-editor solution. Emacs for OrgMode and vim for everything
else.

Remember, that you don't actually have to learn Emacs, like you had to learn
vim to use it. It's just an ordinary text-editor, no huge upfront time
investment is needed, especially if all you are after is OrgMode.

~~~
christiansakai
Okay, I'll consider giving it a try!

------
iixmiix
nice! thx, that is exactly what I need right now!

Since remote work happened, I use a big single org file, with headers and a
date here or there.

Now I have the opportunity to fix this and a guide to how.

------
xvilka
There is orgmode plugin also for Vim[1].

[1] [https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode](https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode)

------
shanemhansen
I love org mode and use it every day. It's killer misfeature for me is I can't
collaborate on wikis or Google docs with org mode.

I've seen a great org mode webapp here, but Google drive permissions means you
are forced to grant the webapp read/write to everything (not just a folder or
mimetype).

In spite of that I still use it because I've never seen anything like it in
terms of functionality.

------
zelphirkalt
One very special use-case for org-mode I have in "my life" is literate
programming. I've not used any other tool, that can do this as well as org-
mode.

(1) I can export to many formats.

(2) I can choose what to code export (source blocks).

(3) I can choose what code to run on export.

(4) I can give names to source blocks and then link to them in other source
blocks, basically building a code dependency tree with them, allowing me to
focus on one aspect at a time.

(5) I can link to other source blocks out of order.

(6) I can specify how the output should be put back into my document.

(7) I get syntax highlighting for any language, that is usually highlighted in
my Emacs.

(8) I can use multiple (programming) languages. For example I could output a
data table and then have another source block using GNU Plot to make a nice
diagram.

(9) I can write explanations next to the source blocks in a lot of detail.

There is probably more, that does not come to mind just right now. Then there
are some git hosts (notabug), which can render org-mode files like the usual
hosts render markdown files (readme.md). So when you upload into git, you get
instant readability in a rendered version, plus possibly syntax highlighting
on the website.

That is only one aspect where org-mode really shines. I find it also
indispensable for to-do lists. Using shortcuts to check or uncheck items and
recalculating done/to-do count or percentages in a higher level of the to-do
list. One can prioritize headings and use tagging, to enable later filtering
of headings and narrowing down visible content.

One can also render Latex formulas inline for preview. If you need only
standard document classes, you can go ahead and output to latex. Or you can
create your own document class in your init.el file and customize everything
as you would in writing Latex yourself, only that you get the benefit of
writing org-mode instead. Much more focus on the content.

And then of course everything is plain text, which makes this even better and
easy to manage in version control.

I just love org-mode! For me, easily one of the huge selling points for Emacs.
The only other easy to use plain text format, that could get close was
reStructuredText for me. Unfortunately there are few good reStructuredText
parsers in many programming languages.

------
ericsoderstrom
As a vim user, I've wanted to learn org mode for years. I kept thinking I had
to start by learning vanilla emacs and _then_ progress to org mode. Recently
I've tried starting with doom emacs which emulates the vim keybinds and found
it to be much easier going. I'd recommend it to any vim users wanting to get
in to org mode.

------
M2Ys4U
I tried to use Org Mode at work last year, to take meeting notes, track time
spent on the 12 different projects I have to chip in to and to organise my
calendar.

It was _okay_ , but I didn't (and still don't) use Emacs for anything else.

I get the impression that unless you live your life entirely in Emacs then
it's just not worth it.

------
brnt
It's not the same, but I'm using a QOwnNotes based setup. It does document-
tocs, images, and a git versioned history if you wish, and a freeform fs
layout for your notes which are saved as plain markdown. If emacs is what's
stopping you from using orgmode, QOwnNotes may be something for you.

------
sudhirkhanger
Is there something that could sync text/org files as seamlessly as
Evernote/Google Keep does?

~~~
noidesto
Syncthing

~~~
sudhirkhanger
Don't two devices have to be online at the same time?

------
Darkstryder
The first section of this article is called "How To Use This Document" and it
immediately reminded me of: [https://xkcd.com/1343/](https://xkcd.com/1343/)

------
streb-lo
For people who just want a very simple CLI to manage tasks/todos I would
definitely recommend task warrior:
[https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/)

------
clircle
A very simple org-mode workflow that I use to great effect is to just use org-
capture and org-agenda and basically ignore all the other features.

------
cachestash
Yet another org mode will change your life post.

------
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
does anyone know a simple app that allows hyperlinking between notes? I want
to create a roam-style knowledge base, but org-mode is too heavy for my
purposes.

------
Altheasy
No thanks

