[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: Remembering: Thoughts on PlannerMode as an organizer

[Sacha Chua]

address@hidden writes:

>   Sacha> I don't have to switch to another application to create a
>   Sacha> task. I can just hit a keyboard shortcut. Planner uses a
>   Sacha> minibuffer to get the task description. My windows are not
>   Sacha> rearranged in any way, and I can look at the data that's
>   Sacha> relevant to a task. Not only that, tasks automatically pick
>   Sacha> up context clues, like whom I'm talking to on IRC or the file
>   Sacha> I'm editing at the moment. This cuts down on the explicit
>   Sacha> context I need to include and makes it easier for me to bring
>   Sacha> up the task again.
> Can you perhaps explain how this works? I'm in the process of
> re-evaluating the way I work, and am leaning heavily (as a result of

In general
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I don't like having to switch to a different application and losing
the context on my screen. I have a small-screen laptop, so I run
everything maximized. Evolution takes too much time to load for the
first time, and I don't use it that much. On the other hand, I use
Emacs all the time.

Chat
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I hang out a lot on irc://irc.freenode.net/%23emacs
(irc.freenode.net#emacs). Every so often someone there comes up with a
cool idea.

Pre-planner: Vaguely remember cool ideas I'd like to implement.
Code it. Forget whom I'm supposed to tell about funky new feature.

With planner: Create task from ERC buffer. This gets annotated with
the nick and channel of the person asking me this. (The channel is
useful because the people in this channel might be interested in
finding out about the new feature, too.)

Mail
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Pre-planner: I used to lose a lot of mail through the cracks. I'd
start a reply, but then forget to check my drafts folder (it's out of
the way!) until the mail was so outdated that it would be pointless to
send a reply. This is _not_ good. Also, I don't reply to most of the
mail I receive (mailing lists, etc.) but there are some that I
_really_ should reply to, and it's hard to keep track of those in a
full mailbox. I could organize my mail into mail.toanswer and
mail.noanswer and mail.answered folders, but that breaks threading.

With planner: Create a task based on a mail message. This nags me to
reply and allows me to keep track of what I'm supposed to do.
Sometimes I tag tasks "Bugfix:" or "Feature:".

(Hey, now there's an idea: automatically changing a task's priority
depending on user-defined rules...)

Source
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Pre-planner: FIXMEs galore, and lots of grepping.

With planner: Create a task and calendar it for some date. I don't get
bothered by too many FIXMEs in grep, and people can see what I plan to
do and when I plan to do it.

> My current e-mail life is in exmh, but I'm thinking of emacs and
> wanderlust for IMAP instead and trying to figure out BBDB for
> contacts management.

BBDB is tons of fun. =)

>   Sacha> PlannerMode's notes, however, are what really convinced
>   Sacha> me.  I can hit a keyboard shortcut from anywhere and
>   Sacha> type my notes into a buffer which automatically keeps
>   Sacha> context information. After typing the note, I can then
>   Sacha> categorize it.
> Hmmm, how does this work?  I mean, the automatic maintenance of 
> context?

It picks up the same annotations a task would. =) So if you create a
note from an IRC buffer, you also get a link that tells you nick,
channel and server. If you create a note from mail, you get a link to
the message. I'm thinking about how to get it to pick up even more
context... <evil grin>

>   Sacha> I can just pop up a remember buffer, stow that thought away
>   Sacha> somewhere, and go back to it whenever I want.
> I'm becoming more and more intrigued.  If I can learn to do all this 
> within Emacs, and have a single, textual view of my world, I can do a 
> lot with a lot fewer windows on my desktop, and perhaps become a 
> more organized person.

No guarantees on becoming more organized, but I do know it's helped me
store a lot more than I would have if I had been using other tools. I
frequently search my blog (M-x planner-search-notes or M-x
planner-notes-index-*) for interesting things I M-x remembered before...

-- 
Sacha Chua <address@hidden> - Ateneo CS faculty geekette
interests: emacs, gnu/linux, making computer science education fun
http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: BE2D08EC