Anyone using org-mode here? It’s free, cross-platform, and also has links (to arbitary files!), outlines (actually, the whole thing is mostly about hierarchical headings), you can use it using mostly the keyboard only, and there are also some Android / iPhone apps (however, I haven’t tried them yet).
It has the added benefit that headings have nice colors (especially with a white on black color theme), so if you put it on full screen everyone gets the impression that you’re doing something complicated and useful thing. (Even if you’re just churning out notes about how to improve your time management as a quite nice & recursive way of procrastination.)
(And yes, it’s an emacs mode, actually this is the reason I ended up using emacs for all kinds of other things...)
Additional note: linking to all kinds of files can be an awesome tool when building maps of big and ugly software systems.
I have probably sunk something like 300 hours in org-mode and ultimately abandoned it in favor of a system incorporating Evernote and Nozbe. Org-mode has been a source of much frustration for me. It seems so great, it seems to have all the features one could ever want, but every time I’ve tried to implement it (three separate attempts, each time starting from scratch and thinking I knew “what I was doing wrong last time,”) the system has grown huge and unweildly, leaky and unreliable, and missing key features that I needed.
On the plus side I learned how to use emacs really well.
edited to add: The iPhone app is pretty bad, for the following reasons: It is ugly and navigation is unintuitive, and the text-wrapping is essentially broken. Furthermore, you have to manually synchronize every little thing you do both pushing and pulling to your central repository or you’ll quickly end up with inconsistencies which are a disproportionately huge pain to correct.
I actually still use org-mode if I’m simply going to be outlining a complicated project, but I’ve given up on using it as a task manager. I really wanted to like org-mode.
Late the party, and actually found this thread googling around for “Org-mode file/organization strategies.” I’ve been using Org exclusively for work notes, and am finding myself in a similar situation re. being unwieldy. I constantly struggle with choosing one file per project, one big file with one headline per project, or files dedicated by type (one for todos, one for daily journal logs of experiments/efforts, references, etc.).
Org seems like it should be great for moving stuff around, but I find it not that easy. Refiling a mess of headlines seems to be cumbersome, and how do I know that my new strategy will last/work?
I’d love to know how Evernote solves the unwieldy issue for you. I’ve tried Evernote, Wunderlist, TiddlyWiki, todo.sh, Zim, and I’m sure others I’m not remembering.
What I’ll never give up is the ability to intersperse prose and code. I love, love, love writing all my work reports with embedded R code for analyses in Org-mode, exporting to really nice looking PDF reports. Super awesome, and soooo easy vs. writing all the code elsewhere to generate plots and then inserting them one by one into a ppt. In that respect, Org is awesome. I just haven’t figured out an information hierarchy/taxonomy that makes me happy.
It looks like I wrote the grandparent comment over two years ago and I am still primarily using Evernote and Nozbe. Evernote is invaluable for its ability to capture practically any form of information very quickly and then search it later. I can also intersperse “capture” items like reminders with “work” items like drafts of writing.
Nozbe is a fully functional GTD application and it’s the backbone of how I manage my tasks.
Theoretically org-mode is great because it combines capture with workspace, but in practice I always found it impossible to smoothly transfer between those two functions.
I tried the Android app just after I read your comment (it’s a thing I’ve been putting off for a long time), well… it really doesn’t include the “creating nested outlines easily” part I like org-mode for, and the synchronization part also seems to be kind of… strange. Just as you said.
What I really like about it is the minimum effort that it needs to, for example, create a todo item (compared with web-based solutions). Too bad that these todo items usually end up really unorganized. Would be indeed nice to have some interface between, e.g. Nozbe and org-mode, and use each of them for the task it is better suited for.
(I also agree with your point about learning emacs really well… or in my case, at a relatively acceptable level :))
As much as I like org-mode (and I like it so much that I don’t see myself changing systems unless someone comes along and refines the hell out of org-mode under a new name), I’ve wished for more from it. Perhaps I ought to just get to work learning more emacs, but some trivial inconveniences and vague desires I’ve encountered so far:
I’ve not been able to get the Android app working. Ever. Maybe if I go back and put 40 more minutes into getting it to work.
I’d love to work with a high-contrast, white-on-black background. I’ve still not learned how to do this, even with a fair bit of looking
If I could switch to a full-screen (not just maximized, but distraction-free, maximum visibility full-screen) that would be fantastic.
I sync my org-file (yeah, I only use one, and it’s huge) with Dropbox. Don’t have to worry about losing it if anything goes dead. But I really just wish that Evernote did all the same stuff. Because Evernote has a slick look, and a pretty great Android app. And I’d be willing to pay money for such a slick implementation of my huge org-file.
I use Astrid as a todo-manager. It’s not a bad system (even though I’ve had some obnoxious database corruption issues every month or so), but what I’d really like is a similar system (and there are so many todo managers out there that have the same features, and they’re always adding more) that could just read the TODOs out of my org-file and append the appropriate tags, etc. I could see myself someday knowing enough emacs lisp to figure this out on the org-mode end, but right now I don’t plan on learning enough programming to work this out as a supplementary app, and it looks far, far simpler to just offer a bounty on this kind of thing that someone else can program.
Oh, yes. I do Dropbox syncing, too (this is the other good thing about org-mode: plain text files). And there might be some truth in the statement that while org-mode is excellent for a single file, things start to be less seamless when it comes to more of them… inter-file links don’t seem to be that reliable, for example. Is this the reason for your One Big Org File?
For white on black, it’s just (setq default-frame-alist ’((background-color . “black”) (foreground-color . “white”))) in your .emacs.
Actually, it’s kind of typical lesswrong that I started off with a comment popularizing org-mode, but ended up changing my mind about it (well… kind of), the newest experiments include Notational Velocity (they seem to be good at the global search stuff org-mode is lacking, but not so nice indented lists locally), and also this system:
which includes paper notebooks, maps of your thoughts and similar fancy stuff, but I haven’t yet finished reading it (it’s long and not exactly the most organized stuff I’ve ever read… but it has good ideas.)
For links, I switched to the org-id module and a unique ID for any new links. It works as long as the file containing the target headline is in the same directory as the file containing the link.
Yes, and mostly love it. Just not happy with the structure of my information management strategies, at least for daily work documentation. Put “X” under the specific project I’m doing it for? Or what if the learning seems more general… should i start a new tree for longer-term reference knowledge? Or summarize the specific knowledge more generally and keep a copy of both in separate areas? Or write only one and link to it in the other?
Stuff like that.
Other benefits I’ve really appreciated:
embedded/executable code blocks. This is my favorite, favorite feature, and I will never go back (if I can help it) to running analysis code (I do a lot of data analysis/viz with R/ggplot2), generating plots, and then having to insert them into a .doc or .ppt.
on that note, being able to export in general is a fantastic feature of Org. HTML, PDF, markdown, whatever. I love not having to futz with image placement manually. Get something you like with some #+attr_html/latex arguments, and then insert a bunch of images really easily by just linking to their location on disk.
org is the only, or one of the only, applications that lets you mix and match notes and todos. I used to use TiddlyWiki for all of my work notes and really liked it. But I had to manage todos in something else. But why? Todos often come about in the context of notes, say in a meeting, or for some home project. I really like being able to keep the todos in Org right with whatever prompted the need for action (then view just the actions you need to complete with agenda views).
Clocking/time tracking is another aspect that seems awesome, but I haven’t started using. I’d love to get to the point where I record what I work on, and especially an estimate + logged hours. Not sure what I’d do with the data, but having it vs. not at least makes post-analysis a possibility.
Still, my various attempts at org file structure seem to end up cluttered and with things structured really oddly. I’ll kick off a project with my estimate of what “categories or knowledge” it will require, and as the months or years go on, I’ll be in a rush and just resort to keeping a date tree and stuffing the stuff in there like a journal instead. Now I have project-specific info scattered around through monthly journal trees. Harder to archive/find, and end up unfolding a bunch of headlines to find stuff.
Anyway, neat to find other users, so I thought I’d comment even though I’m really late to do so!
Anyone using org-mode here? It’s free, cross-platform, and also has links (to arbitary files!), outlines (actually, the whole thing is mostly about hierarchical headings), you can use it using mostly the keyboard only, and there are also some Android / iPhone apps (however, I haven’t tried them yet).
It has the added benefit that headings have nice colors (especially with a white on black color theme), so if you put it on full screen everyone gets the impression that you’re doing something complicated and useful thing. (Even if you’re just churning out notes about how to improve your time management as a quite nice & recursive way of procrastination.)
(And yes, it’s an emacs mode, actually this is the reason I ended up using emacs for all kinds of other things...)
Additional note: linking to all kinds of files can be an awesome tool when building maps of big and ugly software systems.
I have probably sunk something like 300 hours in org-mode and ultimately abandoned it in favor of a system incorporating Evernote and Nozbe. Org-mode has been a source of much frustration for me. It seems so great, it seems to have all the features one could ever want, but every time I’ve tried to implement it (three separate attempts, each time starting from scratch and thinking I knew “what I was doing wrong last time,”) the system has grown huge and unweildly, leaky and unreliable, and missing key features that I needed.
On the plus side I learned how to use emacs really well.
edited to add: The iPhone app is pretty bad, for the following reasons: It is ugly and navigation is unintuitive, and the text-wrapping is essentially broken. Furthermore, you have to manually synchronize every little thing you do both pushing and pulling to your central repository or you’ll quickly end up with inconsistencies which are a disproportionately huge pain to correct.
I actually still use org-mode if I’m simply going to be outlining a complicated project, but I’ve given up on using it as a task manager. I really wanted to like org-mode.
Late the party, and actually found this thread googling around for “Org-mode file/organization strategies.” I’ve been using Org exclusively for work notes, and am finding myself in a similar situation re. being unwieldy. I constantly struggle with choosing one file per project, one big file with one headline per project, or files dedicated by type (one for todos, one for daily journal logs of experiments/efforts, references, etc.).
Org seems like it should be great for moving stuff around, but I find it not that easy. Refiling a mess of headlines seems to be cumbersome, and how do I know that my new strategy will last/work?
I’d love to know how Evernote solves the unwieldy issue for you. I’ve tried Evernote, Wunderlist, TiddlyWiki, todo.sh, Zim, and I’m sure others I’m not remembering.
What I’ll never give up is the ability to intersperse prose and code. I love, love, love writing all my work reports with embedded R code for analyses in Org-mode, exporting to really nice looking PDF reports. Super awesome, and soooo easy vs. writing all the code elsewhere to generate plots and then inserting them one by one into a ppt. In that respect, Org is awesome. I just haven’t figured out an information hierarchy/taxonomy that makes me happy.
It looks like I wrote the grandparent comment over two years ago and I am still primarily using Evernote and Nozbe. Evernote is invaluable for its ability to capture practically any form of information very quickly and then search it later. I can also intersperse “capture” items like reminders with “work” items like drafts of writing.
Nozbe is a fully functional GTD application and it’s the backbone of how I manage my tasks.
Theoretically org-mode is great because it combines capture with workspace, but in practice I always found it impossible to smoothly transfer between those two functions.
I tried the Android app just after I read your comment (it’s a thing I’ve been putting off for a long time), well… it really doesn’t include the “creating nested outlines easily” part I like org-mode for, and the synchronization part also seems to be kind of… strange. Just as you said.
What I really like about it is the minimum effort that it needs to, for example, create a todo item (compared with web-based solutions). Too bad that these todo items usually end up really unorganized. Would be indeed nice to have some interface between, e.g. Nozbe and org-mode, and use each of them for the task it is better suited for.
(I also agree with your point about learning emacs really well… or in my case, at a relatively acceptable level :))
As much as I like org-mode (and I like it so much that I don’t see myself changing systems unless someone comes along and refines the hell out of org-mode under a new name), I’ve wished for more from it. Perhaps I ought to just get to work learning more emacs, but some trivial inconveniences and vague desires I’ve encountered so far:
I’ve not been able to get the Android app working. Ever. Maybe if I go back and put 40 more minutes into getting it to work.
I’d love to work with a high-contrast, white-on-black background. I’ve still not learned how to do this, even with a fair bit of looking
If I could switch to a full-screen (not just maximized, but distraction-free, maximum visibility full-screen) that would be fantastic.
I sync my org-file (yeah, I only use one, and it’s huge) with Dropbox. Don’t have to worry about losing it if anything goes dead. But I really just wish that Evernote did all the same stuff. Because Evernote has a slick look, and a pretty great Android app. And I’d be willing to pay money for such a slick implementation of my huge org-file.
I use Astrid as a todo-manager. It’s not a bad system (even though I’ve had some obnoxious database corruption issues every month or so), but what I’d really like is a similar system (and there are so many todo managers out there that have the same features, and they’re always adding more) that could just read the TODOs out of my org-file and append the appropriate tags, etc. I could see myself someday knowing enough emacs lisp to figure this out on the org-mode end, but right now I don’t plan on learning enough programming to work this out as a supplementary app, and it looks far, far simpler to just offer a bounty on this kind of thing that someone else can program.
Oh, yes. I do Dropbox syncing, too (this is the other good thing about org-mode: plain text files). And there might be some truth in the statement that while org-mode is excellent for a single file, things start to be less seamless when it comes to more of them… inter-file links don’t seem to be that reliable, for example. Is this the reason for your One Big Org File?
For white on black, it’s just (setq default-frame-alist ’((background-color . “black”) (foreground-color . “white”))) in your .emacs.
Actually, it’s kind of typical lesswrong that I started off with a comment popularizing org-mode, but ended up changing my mind about it (well… kind of), the newest experiments include Notational Velocity (they seem to be good at the global search stuff org-mode is lacking, but not so nice indented lists locally), and also this system:
http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/nb/book.pdf
which includes paper notebooks, maps of your thoughts and similar fancy stuff, but I haven’t yet finished reading it (it’s long and not exactly the most organized stuff I’ve ever read… but it has good ideas.)
For links, I switched to the org-id module and a unique ID for any new links. It works as long as the file containing the target headline is in the same directory as the file containing the link.
Yes, and mostly love it. Just not happy with the structure of my information management strategies, at least for daily work documentation. Put “X” under the specific project I’m doing it for? Or what if the learning seems more general… should i start a new tree for longer-term reference knowledge? Or summarize the specific knowledge more generally and keep a copy of both in separate areas? Or write only one and link to it in the other?
Stuff like that.
Other benefits I’ve really appreciated:
embedded/executable code blocks. This is my favorite, favorite feature, and I will never go back (if I can help it) to running analysis code (I do a lot of data analysis/viz with R/ggplot2), generating plots, and then having to insert them into a .doc or .ppt.
on that note, being able to export in general is a fantastic feature of Org. HTML, PDF, markdown, whatever. I love not having to futz with image placement manually. Get something you like with some #+attr_html/latex arguments, and then insert a bunch of images really easily by just linking to their location on disk.
org is the only, or one of the only, applications that lets you mix and match notes and todos. I used to use TiddlyWiki for all of my work notes and really liked it. But I had to manage todos in something else. But why? Todos often come about in the context of notes, say in a meeting, or for some home project. I really like being able to keep the todos in Org right with whatever prompted the need for action (then view just the actions you need to complete with agenda views).
Clocking/time tracking is another aspect that seems awesome, but I haven’t started using. I’d love to get to the point where I record what I work on, and especially an estimate + logged hours. Not sure what I’d do with the data, but having it vs. not at least makes post-analysis a possibility.
Still, my various attempts at org file structure seem to end up cluttered and with things structured really oddly. I’ll kick off a project with my estimate of what “categories or knowledge” it will require, and as the months or years go on, I’ll be in a rush and just resort to keeping a date tree and stuffing the stuff in there like a journal instead. Now I have project-specific info scattered around through monthly journal trees. Harder to archive/find, and end up unfolding a bunch of headlines to find stuff.
Anyway, neat to find other users, so I thought I’d comment even though I’m really late to do so!