my simple GTD setup

[David O'Toole <dto@gnu.org>]

I read through some of the available articles by people who use org
for GTD and decided to try it myself.

Two days ago I put together a very simple setup. 
Screenshot at http://dto.freeshell.org/notebook/images/menu-shot.png
Elisp snippets at bottom of message.

Details: 

 - I use the TODO keywords as a "task status". 
   These are TODO, MAYBE, WAITING, NEXT, DONE.
   "NEXT" is specially fontified so that it stands out.
   I find it convenient to use org-mouse to change keywords.

 - I use tags for contexts. I don't worry about not having a precise
   definition of what a context is; it could be a place, a tool, a
   person, a project, or whatever.

 - I put almost everything in One Big Org File. This is the biggest
   change from my old style. I used to have one org file per project,
   with the "webpage" stuff in the top half, and the TODO items jammed
   all at the end of the file in a huge mess. 

   Now I am using foo.org as the webpage and notes file, whereas the
   workflow structure and scheduling for "foo" go into the foo section
   of my main file "dto.org". I think this separation will help each
   file be cleaner, and bring together all my workflows into one
   hierarchically organized clickable buffer. 

 - I am having trouble with searching for all the "NEXT" keyword
   items, which is all I really need to complete my setup. I can see
   the list of NEXT actions, but not what project they come from or
   what tags they have. So it can be tricky to understand what the
   task means out of context. Should I use a tag to represent each
   project, or properties, or what?

There is so much other stuff like tables, properties, etc that I'm not
sure what to do with yet, but I'm sure I'll find something :-)

> (setq org-hide-leading-stars t)

> (setq org-todo-keywords '((sequence "TODO" "MAYBE" "WAITING" "NEXT" "DONE")))

> (setq org-tag-alist '(("STUDIO" . ?s)
> 		      ("COMPUTER" . ?c)
> 		      ("MAIL" . ?m)
> 		      ("HOME" . ?h)
> 		      ("PROJECT" . ?p)
> 		      ("READING" . ?r)
> 		      ("DVD" . ?r)))

> (setf org-special-ctrl-a/e t)

> (setf org-todo-keyword-faces '(("NEXT" . (:foreground "yellow" :background "red" :bold t :weight bold))))


-- 
David O'Toole 
dto@gnu.org
http://dto.freeshell.org/notebook/