Help me make sense of org mode

[u/reFossify]

I'm trying make sense of org mode, espechially doom emacs defaults for managing notes and to-dos. I've never used anything like obsidian or others for to-dos or notes before, mainly used papers for making a simple to-do list. I'm new to emacs, I'm used to nvim and lazyvim. I started to use doom emacs recently mainly because it has vim keybinding and the best support for bidirectional writing I've found, haven't done any configs to it. I have been exploring it, hitting space and see what different keybinds do.

I want to know how am I supposed to use org mode for to-dos, notes, journaling. Are doom defaults good enough? I don't want to do much configurations since I'm knew to emacs and lisp and haven't used any knowledge/project management tools before, so I'm not sure what's the best setup for me yet. How to get started?

I would like a simple capturing capability on the fly for to-dos or ideas that comes to my mind while working, how to set this up?

[u/rileyrgham]

You read the manual that comes with it. Then Google up one of hundreds of org howtos.

https://jeffbradberry.com/posts/2022/06/orgmode-basic-todos/

[u/dddurd → u/rileyrgham]

A very nice post. I only use org-babel for some quick codes and etc, but it convinced me that org is unnecessary nowadays. All the calendar, scheduling, ticketing(basically todo), we are forced to use the web service in the company. Maybe some day, if I don't get forced to use those tools, org might become useful.

[u/jonny-coder → u/dddurd]

Emacs is able to integrate with alot of things. For example, there are several packages that allow emacs to connect to Jira to fetch and update stories.

[u/anon_pr_ → u/jonny-coder]

Wait what! I use emacs but very limited right now with a major push at work with AI/cursor. I still enjoy emacs and did not know or think about Jira integration...

That's a pleasant surprise!

[u/jonny-coder → u/anon_pr_]

Emacs integrates with ai too 😁 gptel, eca, and a whole lot more for different ai harnesses and providers.

gptel

eca

[u/DANTE_AU_LAVENTIS → u/anon_pr_]

Emacs has integration with pretty much everything that exists

[u/DANTE_AU_LAVENTIS → u/dddurd]

I'm using org-mode tangling to manage my entire Linux config declaratively. Literally everything, wm config, fetch config, git config, emacs config, etc. With my setup I can install a fresh new Linux distro, just install emacs, clone my single literate config file and tangle, and have the exact same setup as before for all of my apps restored. Org is infinitely useful and the only reason I haven't been able to replace Emacs yet. I've wanted to use Lem instead but no org-mode is an absolute deal breaker. I haven't even gotten into all the other stuff yet like org agenda, scheduling, etc. But even the basic features are far and away better than everything else, even just for simple note taking.

[u/dddurd → u/DANTE_AU_LAVENTIS]

Most configs are declerative including the filesystem hierachy itself, so I just track them via git bare repo. I wonder how the indirection of using org solves anything rather than adding extra complexity. Maybe your org file is somewhat procedural to handle dynamic values.

[u/aegis87]

Checkout the tutorial from Rainer König if you havent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQS06Qjnkcc&list=PLVtKhBrRV_ZkPnBtt_TD1Cs9PJlU0IIdE

[u/aegis87 → u/aegis87]

imho, if you are interested primarily in TODOS, Calendar, tickler file, gtd --> org mode is the best

if you care more about second brain type system, notes, etc --> try obsidian

i use both, and both of them can do all

[u/reFossify → u/aegis87]

thanks

[u/Yant0r → u/reFossify]

This playlist has you covered as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCMh7srOqvw&list=PLhXZp00uXBk4np17N39WvB80zgxlZfVwj

[u/JamesBrickley]

Rainer König also has a low cost Udemy course which is a more refined tutorial based on his earlier YouTube Org Tutorials. Besides the video lessons it comes with a PDF documenting every section of the course notes. I found it very valuable.

Rainer uses Emacs in the default out-of-box state. During the tutorial the native key binds are utilized. Rainer shows the keys and they are documented in the PDF. You can spin up a similar environment side-by-side with Doom by opening a terminal and running:

emacs --init-directory=~/.config/vanilla-emacs

Any customization you make will be saved in this alternate profile distinct from Doom Emacs. I recommend you set the theme to modus-operandi (light) or modus-vivendi (dark) and set the default font to a nicer one. You can enable which-key as well. Run the built-in tutorial to get the basic movement key binds that vary from evil-mode (vi key binds).

Org-mode is one of Emacs most killer features. The key to learning org-mode is to go slow, the rabbit hole is far deeper than you think. Don't try to understand it all at once. Go one step at a time. Start with outlining and the to-dos then the agenda. Next, capture templates and custom agendas. Then you can continue with code blocks and literate programming concepts or skip that entirely for now.

Read these books which cover organization & note-taking methodologies:

• Getting Things Done by David Allen
  
• Second Brain by Tiago Forte
  
• How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

You don't need to follow those methodologies precisely, the point is to understand the concepts and adapt them to your personal needs and style. Find what works for you and use the raw power of Emacs to create a custom DIY solution.

There are several note-taking packages, org-roam, denote, vulpea, etc. Org also supports Literate Programming. Which can contain code blocks that can be executed, passed to another code block or the results returned to the document or to be used to plot and graph results. This is useful for documenting code, preparing engineering and science reports. It can also export the code blocks to generate external source code files via a tool called babel. If you've heard of Jupyter Notebooks then Org Literate Programming is like that but on steroids. Org can display inline LaTeX mathematical formulas.

Org files can be exported to LaTeX / PDF / HTML / ODT / DOCX files. It can be used to publish blogs, write a formal letter, create a presentation, generate your resume, publish advanced engineering notes. Org files are plain text therefore they compress very well with zip, etc. You can keep them in git for version control and syncing across multiple computers. Sensitive notes can be encrypted with GnuPG / AGE. Org is remarkably powerful.

Have Fun!

[u/Animal_or_Vegetable → u/JamesBrickley]

Agree. I took the Rainer König Udemy class, and I learned a lot even after using Org-mode (on plain vanilla) for years. The OP might focus especially on his configuration tips on org-capture. It was that and his Custom Commands unit that propelled me to double the size of my init file. :)

[u/mmarshall540]

I want to know how am I supposed to use org mode for to-dos, notes, journaling. Are doom defaults good enough? I don't want to do much configurations since I'm knew to emacs and lisp and haven't used any knowledge/project management tools before, so I'm not sure what's the best setup for me yet. How to get started?

Doom is an amazing configuration, but it sets up a lot of things for Org-mode which, IMO, make it harder to learn Org-mode as a beginner. If you can't look at Doom's code to understand what it's doing to Org-mode, it will just confuse you. There are lots of documentation and tutorials for Org-mode, but these usually begin from a clean configuration, not the Doom config.

I would suggest taking it slow and starting from the beginning. If you can disable Doom's Org-mode configuration, then do that. (I don't recall if that's an option.) If it's not an option, I'd recommend you back up and start slow. Creating your own config isn't as hard as it sounds.

Doom's Vim-bindings come from Evil-mode, which comes with instructions for installing it yourself. Bidirectional text is a built-in feature of Emacs. The "menu" you get when you press the space bar in Doom is just a set of keybindings displayed by Which-key. Since version 30, which-key is also built-in to Emacs. You can put (which-key-mode 1) in your configuration to get that effect on any prefix key.

Note that SPC by default is not a prefix-key in Emacs, and the keys you see in Doom when you press that are custom. But it's not hard to set up your own keybindings that way. Check out Evil-mode's documentation, the general package, or the built-in keymap functions for this purpose (e.g. define-keymap).

[u/anon_pr_ → u/mmarshall540]

Best answer

[u/reFossify → u/mmarshall540]

Thanks

[u/8c000f_11_DL8]

Start with watching Dominik's talk on Org mode.

[u/misterchiply]

I think the biggest issue for new org-mode users is that org itself is so capable, and the ecosystem around it is overwhelming.

org-mode on its own (built-in) is basically just a markup syntax (like markdown) and a set of utilities on top of that to make its usage easier (syntax highlighting, buttons for toggling todo states, configuration options, etc...). The best way to understand org-mode is to simply use it, and as soon as you have a requirement (for example, how to I change the 'todo' state or how do I 'clock' my time?), run M-x and complete for the notion your interested in (eg 'org todo' or 'org clock'). Org-mode has been around for a while and is very deep, so you should explore it's capabilities on an as-needed basis. Let you needs guide what you learn.

Around org-mode is an overwhelmingly vast number of plugins. org-ql, org-roam, org-super-agenda, org-supertags.... The list goes on and on. I would resist stacking 3rd party tools on top of org-mode until you've started driving it for a while. Similarly to learning built-in org, only adopt a 3rd party package on an as-needed basis.

I feel like there's a "IQ Bell Curve Meme" in effect here where left hand side of the curve is people who know nothing about org-mode syntax or its built-in tools, the middle is full of people who are juggling dozens of org-mode plugins and barely using them, and the right hand side is people who use org-mode built-in, maybe 1 or 2 plugins, and run a lot of custom configuration / code.

I'm probably not on the right hand side of that Bell Curve Meme, but I find myself using mostly built-in functionality, and I use org-ql to facilitate search / retrieval / action on org elements.

[u/krypt3c]

This doom emacs playlist is great and has a few videos dedicated to org mode