Now that I have more control over the tools I use, I use Emacs for more of my planning. I’m back to using Org Mode to manage my task list (hooray!), and it has grown by leaps and bounds. I’m looking forward to getting even deeper into it.

Here’s where I am in terms of Emacs

I’m still on Microsoft Windows 7 because I like some of the drawing programs that I can’t get to run on Linux, so my Emacs experience is less than ideal but still okay. It’s one of the first applications I start after a reboot, and I keep Emacs open almost all the time. I’ve pinned Emacs to my task bar (right-click on the icon and pin it) and moved it to the first slot, so Win+1 gets me back to Emacs.

When I’m at my client site, I use the laptop they provided to do work, and I use a wiki page to manage and publish my task list. I use Emacs during the early morning, the evening, weekends, and personal days.

I use org-capture to quickly capture tasks and notes. Here are some of the templates I use:

(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("t" "Tasks" entry
         (file+headline "~/personal/organizer.org" "Tasks")
         "* TODO %?
SCHEDULED: %^t")
        ("q" "Quick task" entry
         (file+headline "~/personal/organizer.org" "Tasks")
         "* TODO %^{Task}
SCHEDULED: %^t"
         :immediate-finish t)
        ;; other entries go here
        ("r" "Notes" entry
         (file+datetree "~/personal/organizer.org" "Inbox")
         "* %?\n\n%i\n"
         :clock-in :clock-resume)))

The Org agenda helps me check what I need to do. I have it set up to display the time grid so that I get a relative sense of where things are. I use a 2-day view so that tomorrow is in my peripheral vision.

Here are some things I want to explore:

• Improve the integration of Org and my self-tracking system at quantifiedawesome.com
• Use Org for blog posts with images (I don’t quite trust it yet, although I’ve used it before)
• Take notes in Org Contacts instead of stuffing notes into BBDB
• Read the Org Mode mailing list and Planet Emacsen more often to get inspiration, maybe contribute patches
• Get MobileOrg working for me smoothly on my Android – need to get the hang of the workflow
• Use Org’s literate programming support to annotate my Emacs configuration