Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>]

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On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Ali Tofigh <alix.tofigh@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm a new user of org-mode, and seeing the great potential, I am
> trying to switch to org-mode for handling my day-to-day tasks. I'm
> going to start off by using org-mode to handle my projects and I need
> some advice.
>
>
I'm new to this as well and started in a very similar way:
- begin with just notes
- ramp up to todo tracking
- continue to ramp up to scheduling/full-fledged work data capture system


> I like to keep my projects self-contained. Therefore I use one
> org-file for each project. Each org-file contains two main headlines:
> journal and tasks. Under journal I collect all kinds of information:
> meeting notes, relevant stuff I've read, urls, etc. I also write down
> what I have done every few days. The journal entries are sorted
> chornologically. Under tasks I keep all todo items.
>
>
I started with separate, then went to all-in-one file, and think I'm going
back to one-per, mainly because of issues with being too deep in an outline
already by having one file; in other words, I blow a headline with project
name, then another with either 'journals' or 'todos', etc., and only then am
I in day-to-day notes...

Anyway, your setup sounds similar to what I'm leaning toward as well.


> Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
> anyone have any advice on how to handle these?
>
>
I'm very 'idea' centered as well. See some 'ideas' below :)


> I don't want to keep them as todo items in the journal since I like to
> keep changing the todos (e.g., dividing them into subtasks) and I
> don't want those changes to appear in the journal.


I agree with this -- my idea for a 'journal' is a record of my work, meeting
notes, etc. Ideas are usually equivalent to 'off-topic concept to try later
that came up in the context of this meeting but that will develop
separately.'


> My initial thought
> was to create one headline for each idea and tag it with ":idea:". I
> could then easily go through all ideas in a project and choose the
> ones I want to work on by creating todo items. Those ideas would then
> be further tagged with ":handled:" or something similar. This way I
> could search for unhandled ideas in my projects. As an alternative I
> could use separate todo keywords for todos and ideas.
>

What about:

### IDEA 1 ###
--- file: project_name.org ---
* Journals
** Title <date>
Notes about stuff

* Ideas
** TODO idea 1 <date>
** WORKING idea 2
** DONE idea 3 <date>

Something like this? This could track ideas in each project and if you do
use them as TODOs you can pull them up with agenda to check ideas across all
projects.

### IDEA 2 ###
- a remember template for ideas?
- file keystrokes set to set the file to a particular project's file with a
simple key entry?
- or... one file called 'ideas.org' divided by projects (or just tag idea
headlines with the project name)
--- then use remember-mode to add ideas to that file when you're in
meetings/taking notes in a different, dedicated project file?


> Any specific advice or just general thoughts are most appreciated.
>
>
I'm so new I can hardly believe I'm proposing these ideas as I don't even
know that I know everything necessary to implement them! But... these are
things i ponder so I thought I'd share...


> Cheers,
> /Ali
>
>
John


>
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