[emacs-wiki-discuss] planner-accomplishments.el --- Accomplishment reports

[Sacha Chua]

I had insomnia last night (this morning), so I wrote
http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/emacs/dev/planner/planner-accomplishments.el
. It produces a task/status breakdown. For example, running it on my
date page for today results in

(sorry about the wrapping)

Accomplishment report for [[2004.06.02]]

Link                       | Unfinished | In progress | Postponed | Completed | 
Total
nil                        | 4          | 0           | 0         | 1         | 
5
TaskPool                   | 2          | 1           | 1         | 0         | 
4
PlannerMode                | 1          | 0           | 2         | 1         | 
4
ResearchPlan               | 2          | 0           | 0         | 0         | 
2
WearableMemoryAugmentation | 1          | 0           | 0         | 0         | 
1
SocialInteraction          | 1          | 0           | 0         | 0         | 
1
EmacsWikiMode              | 0          | 0           | 1         | 0         | 
1
Total                      | 11         | 1           | 4         | 2         | 
18

which tells me that I haven't done anything useful for a couple of my
projects. <sheepish grin>

The headings are configurable, and you can tell it to display only a
handful of tasks. FEATURE/BUG: The totals per link reflect the totals
across _all_ status marks, not just visible ones. I guess this is a
good thing, because if you feel really paranoid you can use the totals
to make sure no tasks are missing. Maybe I should just have a separate
column for "Unknown". Actually, well, it's too much trouble to code
right now anyway... <laugh>

I wrote this because having lots of tasks on my TODO freaks me out. I
also feel the need to maintain constant (even small) progress on my
major projects. Scheduling tasks all over the place didn't quite work
for me, because after a while I started procrastinating them all the
time. <grin> I've adopted a few ideas from the GTD methodology
mentioned on this list previously. That is:

- I use planner-cyclic.el to create tasks that point to my plan pages.
  To reduce clutter, they're not actually linked, but they reference
  the page. This reminds me that I should work on those projects. Nag
  is on, so tasks build up if I don't finish them.

Example cyclic tasks file:
*/*/* #A0 _ Do some SchoolWork
*/*/* #A0 _ Work on FurtherStudies
*/*/* #B0 _ Work on PlannerMode
*/*/* #B0 _ Work on CoursesSubmission

- To work on my projects, I then select one of the plan pages, pick a
  likely victim among the tasks, and schedule it for today. When done,
  I mark both it and the main task as completed. Scheduling the task
  for today allows me to keep track of what tasks I've actually
  completed, and helps me factor it into my schedule. Sometimes I
  skip scheduling the task until I've actually finished it. ;)

This doesn't stop me from doing extra little tasks here and there, of
course, but at least I get reminded to work on stuff for school
instead of spending all my time on Emacs hacking... <grin>

And look, it's actually documented in the info file as well. =)

Hope other people find it useful! You can find it in the usual dev
places.

-- 
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: 0xE7FDF77C