RE: Day workflow: need your opinion

From: Jonathan Arkell <jonathana@criticalmass.com>
To: Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org>,
	"emacs-orgmode@gnu.org" <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>
Subject: RE: Day workflow: need your opinion
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 10:53:31 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <7EA78739DB6FF044926304E83668BF8222E02FCF@brewer.cmass.criticalmass.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87y6q0dsts.wl%xma@gnu.org>

I'll take a stab at this...

Lets say you have the following TODO tags defined:

TODO STARTED | DONE
And
PROJECT | CANCELLED FINISHED

And lets say you have project A defined like so:

*** PROJECT Project A
**** TODO Some Larger Task
     - [ ] DO the thing
     - [ ] That other thing
     - [ ] More stuff
**** TODO Complete project
     - [ ] Log hours

When you are ready to start work on project A "Some Larger Task", you mark it as "STARTED".  As you go through the steps in project A, you would tick off things as they are completed, and mark larger tasks as done.  When the interrupting task comes in, decide whether or not it is a one off, or deserving of a project.

If it is a One-off task, you might put it in a larger Tasks headline.  Again, I would split out what needs to be done here as a series of smaller todo steps or checkboxes.

*** PROJECT Interrupting Cow
**** STARTED Put out the fire.
     - [ ] Find the fire hose
     - [ ] Wear Suitable Rubber Boots
     - [ ] Put out fire
     - [ ] Save the day.

Now, if there is another interruption, you can Add another entry:

*** STARTED yet another one-off task.
    - [ ] Give molly the frobniator
    - [ ] send widget to fred.

Now, let's say it's lunch time, and the last thing you want to do is fart around with org files.  Great.  Go for lunch.

When you get back from lunch, or your break, run a quick agenda command to see what tasks you have started:

C-a T STARTED

Now you can take a peek at your started tasks, and you know what is currently holding your immediate attention.

I have a custom agenda set up for work that displays the started tasks right after the Scheduled tasks and my weekly view.  This makes the following things immediately apparent:
  1) Any time commitments are at the forefront of my mind and attention
  2) Any work I am currently doing is immediately visible.

When I am being diligent about working with org mode, I keep track of what I am doing directly into the TODO task, either as a series of checkboxes, or at the very least, a log of what I have done.  This makes it really easy to get back to what I am doing.  For instance, if I am knee-deep in hacking some SQL queries, I'll try em out on my sql buffer, and copy the relevant ones back to my currently working org buffer.   You can also use org-store-link and org-insert-link to keep track of your place, which obviously works better if you are working on a file.  I have found it especially useful for working with shell commands as well, to keep track of which commands I used, and sometimes the output of the commands.  Again, this makes it easy to deal with interruptions, because you can easily  follow your breadcrumb trail back.

Hopefully that helps!

-----Original Message-----
From: emacs-orgmode-bounces+jonathana=criticalmass.com@gnu.org [mailto:emacs-orgmode-bounces+jonathana=criticalmass.com@gnu.org] On Behalf Of Xavier Maillard
Sent: August 3, 2009 11:58 PM
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: [Orgmode] Day workflow: need your opinion

Hi,

I am not a serious org-mode user but I am trying to use it again
for daily task planning (which everytime I tried, failed at ;)).

I did my lectures thanks to the worg project (Bernst and John
lecture were a real pleasure and sort of a non hittable dream to
me) but I still not clear how I could take advantage of all I
read (Bernst project concept is rather hard to understand for
me, it lacks examples IMO).

My main problem is that, at my work position (DBA), urgency is
not given by what I plan to do but by whom is calling me -i.e if
someone is calling me, it often means "forget what you were doing
and do this instead".

Given my fabulous talent of procrastination, this does not really
help get organized and thus this does not help in getting things
done.

How would you use org-mode in this situation ?

Ex:

a) I doing some non urgent (planned) DBA tasks (call this project A)
b) someone calls me (interrupting Project A)
c) I am doing what urgency of b) is needed
d) when c) is finished, I get back to project A

At my job, they often rules the "retro planning" concept which is
bloat. So how would you "manage" such situation in org-mode ?

Thank you,

Xavier

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