Hey Tim, Some things to consider: - Org Roam - Org Brain - Even the philosophy of taking ideas from "Getting Things Done" to get a good system of tasks Also, I would label your headers for todo list items as "tasks" rather then "todo list items". Why? Because its a different mindset altogether and way more inviting. I do this for my work and personal org todo lists. I am in the camp where you have a giant org docs, since I think having multiple files for the same overall structured goal is a bit silly and unnecessary. I recommend having a giant todo list org doc for your work stuff. And then have a separate one called 'life.org' where you keep all your personal notes. This is so that in the future you can quickly search through your notes for anything you might have done but you forgot about. This helps me a ton as I record a lot of ideas that sometimes turn into cool projects either now, or later. Plus, organize your headers accordingly. Ex: * Things To Do ** Week Of (Current Week) * COMPLETED_TASKS: 2021 ** Week Of (Week That Has Already Taken Place) If you learn how to shuffle entire headings around your Org document accordingly, you can get a good workflow going. This means that you will have to learn how to use 'org-refile', as it will help you move tasks around and refile them in the "Getting Things Done" easily. You can even make org capture templates to quickly insert your ideas (Lord knows how many times I almost went to sleep and had amazing ideas that I'm super thankful that I wrote down). I also recommend using the Helm package, as its auto-completion and other features help SO much when it comes to org-mode tasks, and blows the other packages out of the water. Hope this helps :) ~ Sam On Sat, Jun 19, 2021, at 9:58 AM, Jeremie Juste wrote: > Hello, > > The thread is going far from the original post, and I'm pushing it > further. Eric, sorry for that. > > But this is an interesting topic so just to have some more thoughts on this I'm jumping > in. Org-mode has enhanced my organizational skills and I have still a > lot to learn here. To continue this conversation, we need a philosopher > here one I'm far from being one, so please take my comments lightly. > > On Saturday, 19 Jun 2021 at 09:26, Tim Cross wrote: > > A major pitfall with todo lists and priorities is that we fail to make > > the distinction between important and urgent tasks. What ends up > > happening is that all our time gets consumed by urgent tasks and we > > never get time to address important tasks. Unfortunately, it is the > > important tasks which, once completed, will reduce the number or time > > taken to deal with urgent tasks - we end up being more reactive and > > proactive. > > First how do we make the distinction between urgent and important tasks? > Many tasks are important because they are urgent but who and what > defines their urgency? > > > > > In our case, we all hated having to update/edit the course guides in MS > > Office because it was painful and time consuming, but urgent. However, > > nobody belt they had the time to fix matters, despite us all agreeing it > > was important. > > This reminds me of the Aesop fable the [1] Mice in Council, which pushes the > importance part to the extreme. > > [1]: https://aesopsfables.org/F184_The-Mice-in-Council.html. > > A way to solve this might be identify some heroes and compensate them for > doing their job. Too many heroes never have their inner calling. > > > > > What would have been really great is if we had more Emacs users. We > You are in good company here. > > > could then just have used org mode for the base format and even less > > work would have been required to convert from MS Office, but that will > > never happen. On the up side, I do see more and more ideas originally > > germinated in an Emacs environment finding there way into other tool > > chains, so perhaps the environments of the future won't suck quite as > > much as they might if MS Office had been the only source for > > inspiration! As the Beta v VHS war demonstrated, great technology is not > > enough, you also need to factor in marketing and advertising budgets of > > the competition! > > [2] Monday.com raised $574 Million, in an IPO this month. Many times > I'm forced to use pictures as replacement for > table and I am still struggling to add more DONE states there. > > [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-10/monday-com-prices-u-s-ipo-above-range-at-155-a-share > > I suspect that it would be difficult to compete with a front-end with > org-mode at the back, but again, I'm telling more than I know. > > Best regards, > -- > Jeremie Juste > >