From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Piotr Zielinski" Subject: Interpretation of priorities in org-mode Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:53:37 +0100 Message-ID: <3c12eb8d0707301053q29699a34qe0a6801bd0fbb7@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IFZR6-00052v-V8 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:53:40 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IFZR5-00052B-CW for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:53:40 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IFZR5-000524-4q for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:53:39 -0400 Received: from an-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.132.240]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1IFZR4-0003LZ-Np for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:53:38 -0400 Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id c25so261557ana for ; Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:53:37 -0700 (PDT) Content-Disposition: inline List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Hi. I'd like to find out how different people use priorities (#A, #B, ...) in org-mode. I've always assumed the standard interpretation (#A = high priority, #B = medium, #C = low). However, the problem with this approach is that what "high priority" means is not well defined, and if you are not careful, then all your items will quickly become high priority, which defeats the whole point. I've been recently experimenting with a different interpretation of priorities: #B = tasks to do today, #C = tasks to do this week, #D = all the rest, default. #A is reserved at the moment. One good thing about this system is a clearer interpretation of priorities. Another is that it separates the action of inserting new items into your todo list and that of assigning a particular priority to them. In particular, at the beginning of each day, you can look at your list of todos/deadlines/scheduled, and pick a few to complete on that day by giving them the #B priority. At any time of the day, the agenda will show you these #B items clearly separated from the rest. Previously, I had to do a mental rescanning of the agenda items each time I was wondering "what do I have to do now", which was rather stressful. Of course, I've tried this only for a couple of days, so my conclusions might be completely bogus. Maybe there is a better way than priorities to mark items as "to complete today". I'd definitely like to know what others think about it. One more thing: it is nice to be able to separate items with different priorities in an agenda view by some lines like '======= #A =======' or similar. I've also found it useful to separate deadlines from scheduled items. Your can use the following code to achieve this: (defadvice org-finalize-agenda-entries (before local-org-finalize activate) (loop for (text priority) in '(("Scheduled " 1400) ("Deadlines " 2000) ("This week (#C)" 2900) ("Today (#B)" 3900) ("Top priority (#A)" 4900)) do (push (org-add-props (format "=========== %s ==========" text) nil 'priority priority) list))) (defadvice org-agenda-get-deadlines (after local-org-get-deadlines activate) (dolist (item ad-return-value) (put-text-property 0 (length item) 'priority (+ 500 (get-text-property 0 'priority item)) item))) Thanks, Piotr