A simple, all-in-one workflow system for regular Emacs.
Includes a useful GTD system (Getting Things Done), time management system, habit management system, contact management system, Zettelkasten, and mobile app synchronisation out-of-the box.
Using only stock Emacs, I want to build a lightweight, straightforward, and useful GTD+Zettelkasten workflow system that is tailored specifically to my needs for daily tasks.
I’ve looked into and utilised a few GTD systems, and I found them to be overly complicated for what I needed.
The configuration also comes pre-configured with Zettelkasten, Contact Management, and Habit Management systems in addition to GTD workflow.
The workflow configuration aims to create a functional GTD system using only stock Emacs and a small number of packages.
The bbdb v3 package is the only custom package that can be installed via
MELPA/ELPA to enable and support CMS. The configuration will function without
the package, but the CMS menus in the org-capture menu won’t show up. The
package is optional.
Add the next line to your init.el file for installation.
The org-directory needs to be adjusted to your preferences.
Additionally, include the complete path leading to the practical.org.el file.
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/jjuliano/practical.org.el.git ~/.emacs.d/pkgs/practical.org.el
# Append the following lines to your init.el file
cat << EOF >> ~/.emacs.d/init.el
;; org directory
(setq org-directory "~/Documents/Emacs/org")
;; mobile-org directory
(setq org-mobile-directory (expand-file-name "~/Dropbox/Apps/MobileOrg"))
;; 12 hours format
(setq org-timestamp-12-hours t)
;; hide all non scheduled items from agenda view
(setq org-hide-all-non-scheduled-items t)
;; don's source the tags/context from the context.txt file
(setq org-disable-context-file t)
;; practical.org.el GTD+Zettelkasten workflow
(setq practical-org-mode-el
(expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d/pkgs/practical.org.el/practical.org.el"))
(load-file practical-org-mode-el)
EOFCopy the supplied files to your org-directory after that. Check out Included org files for further information.
The “notes/” directory must be created as well for your Zettelkasten notes. For further information, see Zettelkasten.
# Make sure that the org directory & the zettelkasten notes directory are created
mkdir -p ~/Documents/Emacs/org/notes
# Copy the included files into the org directory
cp ~/.emacs.d/pkgs/practical.org.el/files/*.{txt,org} ~/Documents/Emacs/org/.Start Emacs next, and then hit C-c.
When the org-capture menu appears, start typing the first letter.
For the Contact Management functionality, you might want to install the bbdb
package. To accomplish this, simply execute M-x package-install followed by
bbdb.
Once Emacs has been restarted, pressing C-c will display the CMS menu.
The parent nodes used in this workflow setup are predetermined.
The files/ directory contains the preferred org file templates.
To your org-directory, simply copy those files.
A context.txt file that contains all the system-wide tags and context that you
can use in the org file can also be found in addition to the org-files.
The behaviour of this configuration can be altered by changing a number of variables.
They are the org-hide-all-non-scheduled-items, org-disable-context-file, and
org-timestamp-12-hours.
You can provide the org-timestamp-12-hours variable to specify the timestamp
format that will be applied to your org-agenda-files.
If the current timestamp has a value of t, American time format will be used;
otherwise, set it to nil or do not specify the variable.
;; Setting this variable to 't' will use the American style (12-hour) timestamp,
;; otherwise if you did not define the variable or set the value to 'nil', it
;; will use the default European (24-hour) timestamp.
(setq org-timestamp-12-hours t)By default, all unscheduled items, including those in your inbox and notes, are displayed in the Agenda view. You can then see every item that was created at that specific timestamp.
Set the org-hide-all-non-scheduled-items to t to hide all non-scheduled
items in agenda view.
;; Setting this variable to 't' will hide all the non-scheduled items such as
;; 'inbox' and 'notes'. If you did not define the variable, or set the value of
;; this variable to 'nil', it will show all items in the Agenda view.
(setq org-hide-all-non-scheduled-items t)The context.txt file allows you to add, remove, and change context and tags.
All of the additional context/tags that you can use in your org entries will be contained in this file, which will be sourced.
Set the org-disable-context-file variable or simply skip copying the
context.txt file to disable this feature.
;; Setting this variable to 't' will disable sourcing all the context/tags from
;; the context file. If you did not create this file, or set the value of
;; this variable to 't', it will use the tags defined on per-file basis
(setq org-disable-context-file t)You begin by launching the capture menu.
You can choose the GTD or Zettelkasten actions you want to perform from this menu. All of the options that will be available in the capture menu are listed here.
Pressing C-c a brings up the org agenda.
| Action | Description | File | Keystroke |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inbox | Add new inbox item | inbox.org | C-c c i or C-c i |
| One Step Task | Create a single step task | projects.org/One Step Tasks | C-c c T or C-c T |
| Meeting | Create new Scheduled meeting item | agenda.org/Recurring | C-c c m |
| Recurring Meeting | Create a new recurring meeting item | agenda.org/Meeting | C-c c r |
| Routine | Create a new routine item | projects.org/Recurring/Routine | C-c c R |
| Habit | Create a new habit item | projects.org/Recurring/Habit | C-c c h |
| Note | Create a new note entry to notes.org | notes.org | C-c c n |
| Brain dump | Create a note as a new org file | notes/<file>.org | C-c c b or C-c b |
| Brain dump at point | Create a note as a new org file at point | notes/<file>.org | C-c c N or C-c N |
| Search Tags | Search all tags including tags from notes/*.org | C-c c t or C-c t | |
| Edit context file | Add/Remove/Edit context or tags | context.txt | C-c c E or C-c E |
Scheduled repeated items that will show up in the agenda view are those marked as Recurring, Routine, and Habit.
There is a pre-set schedule value in the capture menu.
| Type | Description | Initial State | Pre-defined schedules | File |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring Meeting | Meeting schedules | MEETING/APPOINTMENT/CANCELLED | Every day | agenda.org/Recurring |
| Routine | Tasks that needs to do repeatedly | TODO/NEXT | Every day | projects.org/Recurring/Routine |
| Habit | Repeated tasks with a visual graph | HABIT/GOAL/REFLECTION | 2 to 4 days | projects.org/Recurring/Habit |
When a habit task is finished, it switches back to TODO from DONE and the
moment it was switched to DONE is recorded in the LOGBOOK folder.
Habit tasks start counting on the start date.
Achievement Goals and Habit Goals are the two different categories of
habits.
Achievement Goals are results-based, whereas Habit Goals are
process-oriented.
You can create items with the tags GOAL or HABIT that represent either an
achievement or a habit.
Additionally, a physical place or location will be asked, which is where you
will carry out the habit. The drawer labelled :LOCATION: will have the
location value.
Achievement goals are habit items with a deadline and will be closed after a deadline is passed. Think of achievement goal as a one-time deal that you don’t want to repeat.
To set a deadline on a habit item, type C-c C-d.
Achievement items can also be the resulting goal of an habit item.
An important thing to remember in Habits is that you need to think of the 3 W’s, the What, When and Where.
If your achievement goal is to “Loose weight”, then your habit item will have a title of “Jogging 30 mins a day”, scheduled “every 7AM” in the morning, with a location of “At the park”.
You might also want to create a refinement habit, which you can create with a
tag REFINEMENT habit type. Refinement habit allows you to re-evaluate your
goals, and see and adjust it to fit you.
It is important to keep a streak of your habits in a consecutive intervals, however, there are instances that you might miss your goals. Missed goals have a visual graph highlighted in RED. Keep a positive hopeful attitude when you missed your goals so you can go back to it again with determination, be reasonable about it. With a recurring refinement habit, you can re-evaluate all your goals so that they “works for you” instead of “against you”.
Zettelkasten is a note taking method where notes are grouped together with similar tags. The way the configuration implement Zettelkasten is using the built-in tags property, which will be asked each time you create a new note or a brain dump.
To search for all the tags, press C-c c t or C-c t, then you can press TAB to
expand all the tags from all the agenda files and note/*.org files. After
selecting the tag, it will present a list of all files associated with those
tags. To open the selected file, press TAB.
You can also create a new brain dump note on the current point by pressing the
C-c c N or C-c N, which will create a new org file, with the current buffer or
point. The URL of the point or buffer will be stored in the :LOCATION: drawer
property, which you can visit via C-c C-o to visit the referring file and point.
If you installed the bbdb version 3 package (The Insidious Big Brother
Database), the capture menu will have additional items, namely:
| Action | Description | Keystroke |
|---|---|---|
| All Contacts | Show all contacts | C-c c B |
| New Contact | Create a new contact | C-c c c |
| Search Contact | Regexp search all contacts | C-c c s |
While on bbdb window, you can add, remove, insert entries and copy each
contacts. Here are the most useful bbdb keystrokes, note that they don’t
require the control keys to be pressed.
| Action | Description | Keystroke |
|---|---|---|
| Create | Create a new contact | c |
| Edit | Edit contact | e |
| Insert | Insert a line | i |
| Copy | Copy the contact | Cr |
| Save | Save the contact | s |
To link to a BBDB record, just create a link in your org-files with the following format:
[[bbdb:Joel Bryan Juliano]]
To visit this bbdb record, just type C-c C-o.
For most workflow, everything starts with an inbox. You can start your day
with filing up the inbox items and refiling them into projects or agenda.
Each item will be prompted for an initial state, and each item state has it’s own progressions.
Here’s the table of the initial states. Changing states can be performed via
C-c C-t.
Inbox items starts with a TODO, then each states can be toggled to NEXT,
DOING and DONE. Toggle the task to WAITING if the task is awaiting
dependency, or ARCHIVE to completely hide it from agenda view,
see Archive items for more information on archiving.
| State | Description |
|---|---|
| TODO | Starting state |
| NEXT | Next priority item to begin working |
| DOING | Currently doing / Work in progress |
| DONE | Mark as done (ignored in agenda view) |
| WAITING | Awaiting dependency task or being hold |
| ARCHIVE | Tag as archive the item (ignored in agenda view) |
Other states are useful to provide more information about the task. Additional
metadata and properties will be added If it is created via org-capture C-c c.
| State | Description |
|---|---|
| REVIEW/FEEDBACK | Item is being reviewed or awaiting feedback |
| BLOCKED/CANCELLED/POSTPONED/CLOSED | Item is blocked, cancelled, postponed or closed |
| MEETING/APPOINTMENT | Meeting or Appointment agenda |
| NOTE/TITLE/REFERENCE/SUBJECT | Note item |
Over time, you can accumulate items that can clutter your agenda files. You can clear up your todo/agenda items by archiving them.
There are 2 ways to archive an item.
- If you set the item tag as
ARCHIVE, it will be ignored in the agenda view. - Permanently move the item to archive by pressing
C-c C-x C-a.
Number 2 will move the item into a .org_archive file, which will not be
displayed in the org agenda.
To toggle the display of all the archived files in org agenda, press
C-c a n v a. Take note that DONE archived items will not be shown, you would
need to press C-c a t then select DONE then r.
Items can be refiled to and from the agenda files. To refile an item press
C-c C-w. This configuration can refile to an org agenda file with a parent
heading at the same time. If the heading does not exist, it will be created.
There are variety of ways to provide more information on an item, such as it’s prioritization, schedule, context, time spent and effort on an item.
This section, we’ll discuss how to set priority, context, estimated efforts and keep a record on time spent on an item.
Items can be prioritized by pressing C-c , or S-<up>/<down>, the priority
will appear next to the item name for example * TODO [#A] Study for Exam,
where the priority is displayed as [#A], [#B] or [#C], where [#A] is the
highest.
Effort estimation helps with planning the required time to perform the task. With estimated effort, it will give you an idea what is the initial perceived time to consume on an item.
To estimate the effort on an item, press C-c C-x e, which will present a
prompt to ask about the estimated time on the item. There are predefined effort
on each org agenda files. Press <TAB> to display all
the predefined time.
Like Tags, items can have context that will help you get more information where
those items are associated. By GTD convention, context is a tag that starts with
an @. There are predefined contexts per each org agenda files, such as
@home, @work, @mail, @comp and @web. You can add additional contexts
by modifying the #+TAGS: line on top of each agenda file.
If you have a context.txt file in your org-directory, it will source this file
instead. There is a capture menu item that edit this file. To edit this file,
press C-c c E or C-c E. See the sample context.txt file in the files/
directory.
To add a context on an item, press C-c C-c, then select the context of the
item, which will be added to the item’s existing tags.
Items can be scheduled to a date or with a time which will appear significantly
in the agenda view as Scheduled:. To schedule an item, press C-c C-s.
You can also set a deadline on an item by pressing C-c C-d, which will display
a Deadline: line in the agenda view.
Those information presented in the agenda view will help you plan, focus and prioritize on the item.
Another time management feature that you add to the item is using the Clock
in/out functionality, which can give your item more information on how much
time did you spend on it. Clocked in items are highlighted in the agenda
view and will disappear when Clocked out. To clock-in or out the item,
press C-c C-x C-i and C-c C-x C-o. Times and it’s sum will be logged in the
LOGBOOK drawer.
If you want to sync your org agenda files to your mobile apps such as MobileOrg,
beOrg, Orgzly, etc. All you need to do is set the org-mobile-directory
pointing to your mobile sync directory, and the configuration will setup an idle
timer sync every 5 minutes.