How to use Emacs for personal time Management (GTD)

1. Introduction 1.1 What is GTD

Get things Done (GTD) is a set of time management methods that face life in the following situations:

• Have a lot of things to do
• Every thing has a primary and secondary point
• Limited personal Energy

We need to be readily aware of what we are going to do next, make reasonable arrangements for our limited time, and focus on the more important things.

"GTD helps you to better track and manage your thoughts, what needs to be done, and what you want to do, so that you can calm down in the right situation and focus on the most important tasks. ”
"GTD is not a overnight. GTD is a continuous system that requires constant practice to make you better at mastering and thus becoming a trusted system. ”

GTD principle:

• Collect
• Processing
• Management
• Perform
• Review

1.2 What is Emacs

Emacs is an open-source, cross-platform editor with powerful features, see Chenbin, a year of the Great God (using the Editor as God).

With the help of the rich plug-ins, Emacs can be said to be the most powerful GTD tool not one, this article will focus on how to get Emacs after the configuration as a possible GTD system . If you want to know some detailed EMACS-GTD methods, see Using Org-mode to implement GTD

1.3 What is tomato working method

Said GTD must mention the tomato work law, the core of the tomato work law is to focus , the specific practice is:

• Set tomato clock, a tomato clock includes 25 minutes of continuous working hours and 5 minutes of rest time
• Estimated number of tomato clocks per task
• During the 25-minute working hours of the tomato clock, forcing yourself to be extremely focused, giving up on cell phones, knowing, etc.
• During the 5-minute break of Tomato bell, look through messages, mails, etc.
  • If there are 3 minutes to solve the matter, immediately resolve
  • If you need more time to resolve, then join GTD agent matters

2. The GTD configuration of Emacs Org-mode

The environment used by the author is:

• Manjaro 17.1.10
• Gnome 3.28.2
• Emacs 25.3.1
• spacemacs configuration file

2.1 ORG Agenda2.1.1 Add Agenda path

Our core function of Emacs as a GTD tool is the agenda function, a feature that allows you to see in real time what tasks you have and the progress of each task, and we can M-x org-agenda open them or customize the shortcut keys (my Yes C-c a , with the help of (define-key global-map "\C-ca" ‘org-agenda) ). But first you need to create a directory that is dedicated to your GTD files, and org-agenda specify the directory as the directory.

I am using the Spacemacs configuration, so I need to .spacemacs add the following command to the function in the file dotspacemacs/user-config :

(setq org-agenda-files ‘("/Path/To/Your/GTD/File/"))

2.1.2 Customizing Agenda templates

Open agenda can be found that there are currently only a few of the presentation channels:

• List the daily, weekly agenda
• List all Todo items
• Search by Tag
• Search by keyword
• 。。。

We can add some templates to the presentation, and refer to the 子龙山人 configuration method in Spacemacs rocks to show the tasks at different levels:

(setqOrg-agenda-custom-commands ' (("W"."Task Schedule")          ("WA" "Important and urgent task"Tags-todo"+priority=\"A\"")          ("WB" "Important and non-urgent tasks"Tags-todo"-weekly-monthly-daily+priority=\"B\"")          ("WC" "Unimportant and urgent task"Tags-todo"+priority=\"C\"")          ("W" "Weekly Review"((Stuck"");; review stuck projects as designated by Org-stuck-projects(Tags-todo"Project") (Tags-todo"Daily") (Tags-todo"Weekly") (Tags-todo"School") (Tags-todo"Code") (Tags-todo"theory")            ))          ))

The instructions are actually very well understood, such as:

• ("W".) "Task Schedule") indicates the setting of the shortcut key "W" Display task schedule
• ("WA" "important and urgent task" Tags-todo "+priority=" a ") indicates that the set shortcut key" WA "shows important and urgent tasks, the filter condition is the priority equals" A "
• ("WB" "important and not urgent task" Tags-todo "-weekly-monthly-daily+priority=" B ") filter criteria are: Exclude weekly, monthly, daily label, and priority equals B
• ((Stuck "") indicates a task that has not yet been managed
• The following "project", "Daily", represents the tasks under this category of labels

2.2 Introduction to the. org file 2.2.1 Org file in the Agenda directory

Emacs Org-mode is often used for rich text writing, very powerful, and I now feel that the most advantageous place relative to Markdown is:

• Structure can be expanded and contracted, very clear
• code block function, direct text running inside (I admit that some MD plugins are OK, but not as good as this)
• Latex formula, rendering very beautiful, in-line display
• Easy to export and diverse types
• All the advantages of inheriting from Emacs

Task keywords

With the. org file can be very convenient GTD, his body can add the key words of each task, such as Todo means to do, done means finished, shortcut keys are C-c C-t , we can add the following command in the Init.el file to customize the keyword:

(setq org-todo-keywords    ‘((sequence"BUG(b!)""|""FIXED(f!)")      (sequence"TODO(t!)""SOMEDAY(s)""|""DONE(d!)""CANCELED(c @/!)")     ))

Additional options can be defined in (), including:

• Characters: Shortcut keys for this state
• ! : Time stamp is added automatically when switching to this state
• @: Require text description when switching to this state
• If you set both @ and!, use @/!

You can also use S-左方向键 and S-右方向键 make adjustments, s for the Super Key, which is the SHIFT key

Task priority

Second, he can add priority to each task, which shows a B-C three priority, which you can S-UP/DOWN adjust by

Child task Completion condition

Insert or track the completion of a sub-title after each level of the title, which indicates the percentage of completion of the [%] task, [/] which indicates completion progress, and the value changes when the task changes

Insert Time stamp

in Org You can insert a timestamp for each task, C-c C-s insert a schedule time, C-c C-t insert a deadline time, or C-c . insert a normal time directly.

Time stamp can be added to the specific time, such as:

<2018-05-29 II 10:00>

You can also add a time range, such as:

<2018-05-29 II 10:00-11:00>
<2018-05-29 two 10:00>-<2018-05-30 three 10:00>

You can also add time that you want to repeat, such as:

<2018-05-29 II 10:00-11:00 +1d>
<2018-05-29 II 10:00-11:00 +1w>

Repeat daily and repeat once per week, respectively

An example

Here is a simple example of a master task, subtask, subtask status, subtask priority, subtask deadline, master task completion progress, and modification time for each state

* TODO Work[1/3]- State "TODO"       from ""           [2018-05-29 二 09:51]** TODO [#B] 代办事项1                                          :school:DEADLINE: <2018-06-10 日>- State "TODO"       from "FIXED"      [2018-05-28 一 23:28]- State "FIXED"      from "TODO"       [2018-05-28 一 23:28]

2.2.2 Org file with GTD

Org-mode is the text carrier of all matters, from which agenda reads, archives, summarizes, and counts. I have added the following. org file in my GTD folder:

• Task is used to hold temporary tasks
• Calendar to hold daily, weekly, monthly fixed tasks
• Notes are used to store some notes while waiting to be archived
• Finished is used to store tasks that have been completed.
• Canceled is used to store canceled tasks.

the configuration of the Org-mode can be implemented in the header file as an example of task, my org header file is as follows:

#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage{xeCJK}#+LATEX_HEADER: \setmainfont{"微软雅黑"}#+ATTR_LATEX: :width 5cm :options angle=90#+TITLE: Task#+AUTHOR: 杨 睿#+EMAIL: [email protected]#+KEYWORDS: GTD#+OPTIONS: H:4 toc:t #+PROPERTY: CLOCK_INTO_DRAWER t#+TAGS: { code(c) theory(t) school(s) easy(e) project(p) }

The last line specifies the label category, the penultimate line all time information in a drawer (: LOGBOOK), the other unimportant (you want to know also can amount, the first two lines to ensure that I can export the Chinese latex everywhere, the third line set up my latex format, The next few lines are the basic information for the document, and the penultimate line indicates that the directory needs to be automatically generated.

When you're done, just add the appropriate tasks to each type of file, as well as Todo and other keywords, and then run M-x org-agenda , I'll bind Org-agenda to the accelerator C-c a , and here's a Org-agenda demo.

2.3 Org-agenda Demo 2.3.1 Org-agenda view daily Quests

Steps:

1. C-c aEnter Org-agenda
2. aGo to daily, weekly quests
3. The default is to show the daily tasks in a week, press the d task to enter the day, press the w return weekly task
4. Press R (note uppercase) to see the completion time of each task for the day
5. Press r Refresh Status

2.3.2 Org-agenda View Custom templates

Steps:

1. C-c aEnter Org-agenda
2. wEnter a custom template
3. aSelect a task with priority A to list
4. C-c a, wb Select the task with priority B to list
5. C-c a, W list the agent tasks in all templates

2.4 org-capture Configuration 2.4.1 How to configure

We often encounter some temporary tasks, arrangements, ideas, etc., and we need to add them to our GTD system in the quickest way, org-capture providing this capability.

You can M-x org-capture also bind shortcut keys by opening, I am C-c c . When you open it, you can see that there are very few task types that can be added by default, and I added the following in the configuration file:

;; binding keys(Define-key Global-map"\C-CC"' Org-capture);; This is where you assign a value to the path.(DefVarOrg-agenda-dir"" "GTD org files location") (Setq-default Org-agenda-dir"/path/to/your/gtd/file/")  (setqOrg-agenda-file-note (expand-file-name"notes.org"Org-agenda-dir)) (setqOrg-agenda-file-task (expand-file-name"task.org"Org-agenda-dir)) (setqOrg-agenda-file-calendar (expand-file-name"calendar.org"Org-agenda-dir)) (setqOrg-agenda-file-finished (expand-file-name"finished.org"Org-agenda-dir)) (setqOrg-agenda-file-canceled (expand-file-name"canceled.org"Org-agenda-dir)); Add task types that you can add each time you open(setqOrg-capture-templates ' (("T" "Todo"Entry (File+headline Org-agenda-file-task"Work")"* TODO [#B]%?\ n%i\ n": Empty-lines1)          ("L" "Tolearn"Entry (File+headline Org-agenda-file-task"Learning")"* TODO [#B]%?\ n%i\ n": Empty-lines1)          ("H" "Toplay"Entry (File+headline Org-agenda-file-task"Hobbies")"* TODO [#C]%?\ n%i\ n": Empty-lines1)          ("O" "Todo_others"Entry (File+headline Org-agenda-file-task"Others")"* TODO [#C]%?\ n%i\ n": Empty-lines1)          ("n" "Notes"Entry (File+headline org-agenda-file-note"Quick Notes")"* %?\ n%i\ n%u ": Empty-lines1)          ("I" "Ideas"Entry (File+headline org-agenda-file-note"Quick ideas")"* %?\ n%i\ n%u ": Empty-lines1)          )        )

I have added the following task types:

• Todo: Tasks that need to be completed
• Tolearn: Knowledge points to learn
• Toplay: Tools to play, etc., with the lowest priority
• Todo_other: Other tasks that do not know what class to be assigned to
• NOTES: Temporarily generated notes for finishing
• Ideas: A temporary idea, waiting to be studied carefully

Each task in the code is given the file path of the archive, and the first-level header name in the corresponding org file (such as work,hobbies, etc.)

2.4.2 Demo

Steps:

1. C-c cOpen Org-capture
2. tNew Todo Task
3. Fill in your task name
4. C-c C-dIncrease deadline
5. C-c C-cConfirm Add, then this task appears in task.org

2.5 Custom Transfer Org-refile

When you have completed a task and you want to move it from task.org to finish.org, how fast is the time, which requires the use of M-x org-refile commands, which are transferred internally by default, if you want to move to another file that needs to be customized:

;; 绑定键位  "\C-cr" ‘org-refile)    ;; 添加finished和canceled两个文件路径，并且只转移到一级标题  (setq org-refile-targets  1)                             1)                             ))

Tomato working method Plugin: Pomodoro

Emacs provides a convenient tomato work method plug-in, Spacemacs, move the cursor to the next thing to do the entropy, through the M-x org-pomodoro start, then you will see your spaceline on a timer, OK, the next 25 minutes do not do anything, seriously do your thing.

If you want to stop temporarily, you can M-x spaceline-toggle-org-pomodoro-off turn the tomatoes off by ticking.

Of course, if you do not want to choose the tomato timing, but at random start and stop, then you can run under the corresponding task:

• C-c C-x C-iStart the clock (not shown on spaceline)
• C-c C-x C-oTurn off the clock

You will find a more timed message under the corresponding Org file task:

: LOGBOOK:
CLOCK: [2018-05-29 23:39]--[2018-05-29 two 23:39] = 0:00
: END:

Postscript

This is basically the completion of my GTD system setup process, and then there can continue to add, my tomato clock to the time ~ ~ ~

If you need my spacemacs detailed configuration file, you can access my GitHub spacemacs configuration, feel good, don't forget to give a star Oh ~

How to use Emacs for personal time Management (GTD)