From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Richard Lawrence Subject: Re: Automatically Increasing Priority Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:37:39 -0700 Message-ID: <87egydrlm3.fsf@berkeley.edu> References: <87k385l2sv.fsf@quasar.esben-stien.name> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41194) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WzqEG-0007Ov-Mw for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:39:30 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WzqE8-0002NJ-CO for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:39:24 -0400 Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:58133) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WzqE8-0002N4-5x for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:39:16 -0400 Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WzqE7-0004Ob-94 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:39:15 +0200 Received: from c-67-164-45-159.hsd1.ca.comcast.net ([67.164.45.159]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:39:15 +0200 Received: from richard.lawrence by c-67-164-45-159.hsd1.ca.comcast.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:39:15 +0200 List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Hi Esben, Esben Stien writes: > Does there exist such a concept of automatically increasing priority > after a while? I'm not aware of any way of automatically changing the priority of a headline, though if you really need this, it looks like it would be fairly simple to do it in Elisp using the `org-map-entries' and `org-priority' functions. I have the same problem you do: the priorities feature does not really map well onto my work. I used to capture a priority with every item, but I've recently stopped doing that because I found it didn't make sense for me. I think it makes more sense to assign priorities manually, when you're in a context of figuring out which tasks to work on, rather than in a context of recording tasks to be done in the future. I suggest that, if you aren't doing this already, you put deadlines on your TODO items, rather than priorities, and then sort the agenda by deadline. This has the advantage that it `prioritizes' all your tasks in a natural way in the agenda: anything due soon (or past due) comes up before things that are due later on. So if you assign every task an initial deadline, its `priority' will go up automatically, as time passes. When it comes due, you can always readjust the deadline if your initial estimate didn't work out. It's also useful, I think, to make one of your tasks a recurring weekly review: go through all your other tasks, make sure you still want to do them, adjust deadlines as necessary, etc. If you find you still want priority cookies in addition to deadlines, you could assign them during this review for tasks due in the upcoming week. At that point, you'll be in a context where assigning priorities to these items makes more sense, since you'll be looking at the other tasks each task competes with. Hope that helps! Best, Richard (If possible, please encrypt your reply to me using my PGP key: Key ID: CF6FA646 Fingerprint: 9969 43E1 CF6F A646. See http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~rwl/encryption.html for more information.)