For more than 3 years, I am using emacs org-mode to get organized. A lot of people will ask why! It's not clear but one reason is because got excited for how many functionality exists with simple text.

In the beginning it was a completely mess and it took a lot of itteration to get the structure that has today. So now I' m feeling more confident to share the structure, the application stack and the workflow that I am using.

The application stack is of course emacs in desktop, with owncloud for syncing and orgzly for mobile.

The lifecycle of a note is like that. While commuting or just have a shower thought about something (from "I need to by milk" to "I would like to check that movie" or "it would be nice to play with that framework") adding it to mobile at a file called 0_backlog.org through orgzly. The orgzly sync the file at a place where are owncloud files. The owncloud is syncing the backlog. Every 2-3 days I have a repeated note where taking notes from backlog and adding them to the appropriate file. I have different seperate file for each category of notes e.g. for house chores I keep a file called ecotzirko.org and a file for learning new things learning.org.

Every file is divided in different parts which are Backlog, Crons, Sprint MonthXX and sometimes a part called Description. In Crons I am adding repeated task for a cluster of notes. In backlog I add things that are related to the file but it's not a rush to do them. In Sprint followed by month and a number of week, adding things that needs to be scheduled, and in description the scope of the file.

All the files are under one directory, so orgzly will display them accordingly.

In some files I hava a Buying List part in the file which is having a tag :buy:, so I can eazily keep a query in orgzly to check what I have to buy if it happens to be at the supermarket.

A feature of org-mode is The spreadsheet. Yes! We can add spreadsheet in plain text. I am using it also in the koukoumas.org file where I keep track my expenses, incomes ledger things.

One problem with org-mode is that everything is in text and was tiring to check every day the agenda and read the notes, tasks that have to do until explore UTF-8 emojis! Yes since the day I used emojis org-mode changed a lot!

That's all for that post! If you would like to learn more, or have an experience with org-mode send me an email to savvas@alexandrou.eu