Re: [Orgmode] How you ORGanize yourself? (aka: Why not one file to rule'em all?)

2010-04-16 Thread tycho garen
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 12:41:19AM -0500, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote:
 This is a thread to share your org dir (you have one right) file structure.
 The title is because I see many of org users prefer having big monolithic
 files, and I have a slightly different line of thought.

I've blogged about this before, as I think our systems change a
bit as we use them and tweak slowly. I'm not a GTD user in the formal
sense, though I think I've learned a lot from the whole GTD thing.
My setup is as follows: 

- codex.org - General file, global inbox, and day to day chores, and
  other notes. Many org-remember templates file here and are later
  cleaned up to other files

- five .org files for fiction projects in various state of
  incompleation.  These include outlines, project management and task
  setting, and other assorted notes. Think Outline++

- data.org, clippings.org, annotations.org, and links.org. These are
  all fed from org-remember and mostly don't have internal
  hierarchy. I think of these files as a database, and I often dump
  the text of articles that I'm interested in reading and reflecting
  on in the long term with citation information so I can be sure that
  I'll have access to them long term. I've written about this on my
  blog as fact files.

- events.org - schedules and big things that I'm doing. Mostly minimal
  and the way that I make sure that my agenda view can tell me that
  I'm going out of town for something or other. 

- I have org-files for managing website/writing projects, for
  tychoish.com and cyborginstitute.com. These tend to be more
  notes+tasks centered than the other finite project based files for
  fiction things, as these are enduring projects with shorter
  narratives, as it were

- I have technology.org and fiction.org which I must confess I haven't
  really touched in months, but theoretically there for tech-related
  todos (hack emacs to do something new, add a keybinding here) and
  smaller fiction related tasks that don't fit into the bigger
  projects (short stories, new projects that I don't know if I want to
  commit to etc.) 

- I have research.org and employment.org which are both career
  related, and I haven't touched very much in the last year or
  so. Alas. 

- I have an employer specific org file for my current company, which
  allows me to separate out my work tasks into it's own silo without
  affect other tasks, while still being a part of my larger org
  system. 
 
Everything is in one directory which is git controlled. Everything is
agenda-ized. I often just work in org files making outlines and doing
my planning there, but often actionable items come in via
org-remember. I toggle between the org-todo-list agenda view and the
org-agenda-list, and use the -todo-list to get a big picture of
everything I'm working on and to create deadlines and schedule tasks,
and then use -agenda-list to work from. Relevant sections of my
config:

(global-set-key (kbd C-c o a l) 'org-agenda-list)
(global-set-key (kbd C-c o a t) 'org-todo-list)

(setq org-agenda-include-all-todo nil)
(setq org-agenda-skip-scheduled-if-done t)
(setq org-agenda-skip-deadline-if-done t)
(setq org-agenda-include-diary t)
(setq org-agenda-columns-add-appointments-to-effort-sum t)
(setq org-agenda-start-on-weekday nil)
(setq org-agenda-default-appointment-duration 60)
(setq org-agenda-mouse-1-follows-link t)
(setq org-agenda-skip-unavailable-files t)
(setq org-agenda-use-time-grid nil)
(setq org-agenda-todo-ignore-deadlines t)
(setq org-agenda-todo-ignore-scheduled t)

I hope this helps

Cheers,
sam

-- 
tycho(ish) @
ga...@tychoish.com
http://www.tychoish.com/
http://www.cyborginstitute.com/
don't get it right, get it written -- james thurber


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[Orgmode] How you ORGanize yourself? (aka: Why not one file to rule'em all?)

2010-04-14 Thread Marcelo de Moraes Serpa
Hello list,

This is a thread to share your org dir (you have one right) file structure.
The title is because I see many of org users prefer having big monolithic
files, and I have a slightly different line of thought.

Well, I'm a GTD proponent. GTD, excluding the hype behind it, is pretty
simple. If you take into account only the mastering workflow (low level
next actions), then it's just a matter of capturing, procesing, organizing,
reviewing and doing. The Weekly review is also a very important component.

So I have:

* org/
** gtd/
*** GTD.org - main projects and next actions lists
*** GTDInbox.org - unprocessed captured stuff
*** GTDHorizonsOfFocus.org - horizons of focus, goals and visions
*** GTDSomedayMaybe.org - projects an actions I'd like to do someday (big)
*** ReferenceNotes.org - quick notes that I'd like to keep as reference
*** BlogPostIdeas.org - Ideas for blogposts and pseudo-projects for blog
posts write-ups and drafts)
*** CodingExperiments.org - List of open source projects and other
sandbox-like stuff I'm acting or would like to act on
** wiki/
*** Lots of files. Mostly stuff I update regularly. Also considered
reference.
** diary/
*** Lots of files. One for each day I write on my journal. All have .org
extension too, of course.
** attachments/ - any binary attachments. That I'd like to keep.

The only file in the agenda list is GTD.org. This is the front-end of the
system. I know many of you will tell me I'm not using agenda the way it's
supposed to be used, and probably I'm not. I'm willing to learn more
efficient ways though; what I could probably do is setup more agenda filters
and tag wisely, but my knowledge of elisp and org's internals don't allow me
to do that yet.

I have a pretty simple trick though. I have a custom rgrep function that
searches across all these files. So, except the gtd stuff, mainly the
GTD.org (which should have only actionable tasks and respective projects),
all the rest is a big network of information, really -- I keep inputting
information (in the form of a entry on ReferenceNotes.org or a new wiki
page) and try to tag (just by creating a * tag headline item and tagging
each file in the case of a wiki page or just tagging the item on
ReferenceNotes.org) properly, then forget about it.

I'd say I don't put other files on the agenda in order not to pollute the
front-end. You see, I wouldn't like to see Inbox items (from GTDInbox.org)
on the agenda for example, as they are not actionable. If I want to see
them, I just open the file (and I have a shortcut for that, C-x r j i (a
register)), but in the case of GTD.org, the agenda really makes the
difference, because I have items tagged as context (@home, @call), projects,
categories, etc, as well as my calendar.

The big question here is: Why not using only one file (Maybe stick to only
ReferenceNotes.org) ? Well, to be honest, it still seems awkward for me. For
quick reference data (like I used to use tomboy for) the ReferenceNotes.org
feels great -- I'm it as a big file for static reference data, data that
doesn't change often or doesn't evolve (which I'm going to improve by
implementing Jan's system, thanks for the post, Jan!) and also one for GTD
(GTD.org), but the rest is spread around many files. I know org can manage a
big blog of text in a way multiple files wouldn't be needed (you can narrow,
etc), but I still think that keeping the diary and the wiki in mutiple files
is a batter approach. Also, swithing files and searching for files in emacs
is very fast, and I'm still not that fast on org commands ;)

On top of this, I've installed howm-mode, and it's quite neat. If you are
writing on a file and then type something like:

wiki/myarticle.org
  MyArticle

On any other subsequent file you edit, it will highlight that very word and
allow you to follow the link to the file. Nice to keep a wiki ontop of org,
like this:

wiki/anotherfile.org

*MyArticle* -- gets underlined and allows you to follow the link

As for the wiki -- I don't want a wiki to be published, i.e: online. Back on
my Windows days (long time ago :)) I used to use wikidpad for reference data
and it worked very well. What I have here is an attempt of getting near the
functionality of wikidpad (a real-time wiki for the desktop).

Again, I probably could simplify this a lot, and I'm open to suggestions ;)

Marcelo.
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