Emacs org-mode
Welcome to the Emacs org-mode category.
You can subscribe to this category only via RSS!
I am working on restoring some of my related posts from my old blog, so keep checking here for new content.
More problems with my projects and meetings in org-mode
In my capture templates, I now use prepend, which works well and puts my captured header at the top of now.org, which is what I want. The problem is that I barely use the meeting capture template I’ve made. I refile from my calendar file 95% of the time, and Refile places headers at the bottom of now.org bottom. The results: new projects are at the top, and new meetings are at the bottom. Chaos.
I know I can reverse how Refile works, but I’m not sure I want this to work globally. I can start hacking things and write functions to refile meetings the way I want, but I’m starting to think my problem is bigger than that.
See, the above is just the latest issue in the last week. When I was sorting through tasks on now.org I saw a bunch of TODOs that were tied to a project at one point on the project level; that is, TODOs are filed among the ACTIVE project level, floating out of their parent projects, and as some of those get old I have no idea what projects they were used to be a part of. Why did that happen and why, I don’t know.
On top of that, I just had the issue yesterday where some of the headers lost their “**” at the start of the header, non-headers.
I can’t trust my now.org like this. I’m frustrated, and I just want to throw every single project into its own file at this point, just because of this mess.
I need to calm down get back to the basics and define my main workflows (meetings vs projects vs quick tasks etc.)
How I handled projects in Emacs org-mode in 2024
I mentioned my projects file, now.org, is getting a little bit out of control. I’ve been playing around with a few ways to organize it since.
This is firstly a conceptional problem, one that has to do with how I organize things mentally before I can go into the technical level of how to tell Emacs to do it: a “what do I want to see?” question before a “how do I do it?” one.
Let me start by showing you what my project file looks like now:
As you can see, a lot is going on.
One of the issues that are already fixed in this image is having the “DONE” or “CANCELLED” projects at the end of the file. This looks more organized than having them mixed with the “ACTIVE” projects all over, and it also allows me to focus on the things I’m currently working on as soon as I open the file.
By default, org-mode adds newly created headers at the bottom of the file. This means that every time I add another project or a meeting (an “ACTIVE” or “MEETING” in the image), it goes to the bottom of the list, right under the last header. I have to fix this manually by standing on the header I just created and moving it up with (M+↑) all the way to the top. However, I recently looked for a solution and found it: adding prepend: t to my capture templates. This reverses the order, so this problem will automatically sort itself out.
In my image, you can also see that some headers start as “Project:” and then the project’s name. This is redundant, and I hope to get rid of this soon because anything that is marked as “ACTIVE” is a project - which is defined by having sub-tasks (marked as “TODO”) under it; the idea is that a project is a large undertaking that has to be broken first to manageable parts:
I write notes under each one of those sub-task headers (as you can see under the first one). I also find it helpful to attach relevant files (in this example, the Reserved IPs header has an Excel sheet containing details). I find that it’s easier to find files through Dired on Emacs than it is looking for them in my work’s OneDrive because they are tied to the project in the right place and arranged by date at the same time by my header’s ID (I changed that from random slugs to date-formatted IDs in the past). I can also jump directly to the directory with those files with C-c C-a F, and then use the open command on macOS (M-x !open) to open it with the default application.
Most of the projects in both images have a percent to completion next to them. Since I usually don’t know what a certain project requires to complete when I start it (what subtasks are required or how many), this is more of a general guide, if anything. Still, I like knowing how much of a project is already done. The percent cookie is an feature built into org-mode1.
Not in the images yet are emojis. I’m playing with the idea of including a small person emoji (🙋♂️) in “MEETING” headers to make them stand out a bit more. Meetings, as it turns out, are a special kind of project. It’s a place where a lot is going on at once, and I mark a “MEETING” as “DONE” only after all the actionable notes are distributed to tasks. Meetings can include tasks that start a whole new project or fit into existing ones. It’s also possible to meet about a certain project, so the “MEETING” header needs to be refiled under an existing project later as one of the subtasks. Meetings can take a long time to break down and follow up on, making them a project in themselves: this is why I found that giving them a dedicated keyword is a good way to handle them2.
Another thing I added to the projects’ capture template is clocking in as soon they’re created with :clock-in t. I often forget to clock out later, but I want to keep trying and build this as a habit. If I create a clock with a project, Emacs creates a :LOGBOOK: line for me with the time I started working, and I can correct the hours later. This is another area where it’s more of a guide than critical information: it’s often inaccurate (because I forget to clock out and then in again), and also, it doesn’t matter to me if I work half an hour more or half an hour less on something. It’s more of an indication of how much time a certain project took and how often I worked on it during the week.
Projects are also tagged with people I regularly work with. I know some folks (and I get to know many more) personally. When this happens, it’s helpful to see recognizable projects and tasks tagged with names I know. Since tags are hereditary in Emacs, an entire project can be tagged with a person if it’s required, but usually, I need different people for different subtasks of a certain project, depending on what I do. This is helpful to see how much I am working with a certain person, what on, and what that person does. I also have another file for people I work with, along with their names, their ID, their department, and what they do; it’s my useful “I know a guy” file I can tap into when I need someone to do something or when someone else asks me if I know how to handle a certain thing. I then can say, “I don’t, but I can find someone who can for you.” Helpful.
I can add a couple more things here, but this is probably a good place to stop. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment! I’d love to hear from you.
Footnotes
1: It’s also worth noting that half of the time, I need to “re-ACTIVE” a project marked as “DONE” because of a new development or because it would happen again and might become more of a routine. This means new “TODO” tasks are added below, and the percentage goes back down from 100%, so, yes, this is more a visual guide than anything concrete.
2: I use at least two (but sometimes more) datestamps in a “MEETING” project. The first time stamp is usually before the meeting takes place: this is where I write down a list of bullet points I want to bring up and discuss. The second timestamp takes place during the meeting (I type while people talk, and I ask them to slow down or wait if I need to (by the way, this is something that worked horribly for me with a notebook: my attempts and my attempts at something that looks like handwriting in meetings while rushing were laughable at best. I missed critical points that way). The second timestamp then becomes an indication to look for actionable items later. Since I write these notes in bullet points, it’s also easy to copy them back into Outlook with minor editing to leave a summary or meeting minutes later.
my Emacs projects file (which I call now.org) is becoming too big. The agenda is still snappy, and I can work with it, but it just looks like a pile of “stuff” that I need to do or did. I want to organize it better somehow…
#emacs #orgmode
I just typed away in my journal for an hour:
Region has 32 lines, 16 sentences, 1574 words, and 8124 characters
Man, I have to use more periods. Too many run-on sentences.
Not something I could do in my handwritten journal. It would take me a week, especially if I want to be able to actually read what I wrote, and not have crazy cramps in my right hand.
I still want this to be physical somehow… maybe I should just print it? I don’t know.
Filtering org-agenda to *exclude* a category
Back in July, I explained how I use Beorg to sync my calendars. To recap, Beorg continuously exports the iOS calendar into a read-only org file, which I then sync to my Mac’s desktop through iCloud.
The calendar.org file shows on my Emacs agenda, where I can see both my Outlook (work-related) meetings and my Gmail (personal) events. This is very nice, but because the calendar.org file is read-only (as it should be—it keeps being overwritten by the Beorg every time the iOS calendar syncs), I can’t use it for anything besides this visual information.
If I want to create a project from a meeting and add notes and sub-tasks, I have to copy the event from my calendar.org file to Now.org, where I keep my current projects and tasks. There, I can add notes and headers.
But then there’s another problem: when I copy my headers over to Now.org, my agenda shows duplicates - one event header comes from calendar.org, and the other comes from Now.org after I copied it there. Here’s what it looks like:
When I start my day, it’s important that I see calendar.org so I can copy over details to now.org. Once I’m done, however (clearing the Calendar tag, adding a keyword like MEETING, and cleaning the text under the header from details I don’t need), I no longer need to see calendar.org, and I want it to disappear.
I was looking around for a solution to this problem, and of course, it was right under my nose. Org-agenda comes with the option of narrowing down (filtering) the agenda to a category at the point with <. What I didn’t know is that C-u < does exactly what I want: the opposite of the above. It hides the category selected. Problem solved.
Irreal on my writing habits
Irreal commented on my recent posts about writing (analog vs digital). Irreal doesn’t understand why I’m hesitant:
To be honest, I don’t understand his ambivalence about the matter. He lays out the case for both and shows that, except for a vague feeling of attraction to writing with pen and paper, the digital method is more efficient and satisfying. The digital product is so much more useful and flexible that it seems there should be no question as to which to use.
Spoken like a true sysadmin. But he’s mostly right.
Pen and paper convey an intimate feeling and a connection to what I write that I can’t get out of typing on the keyboard. It’s not about how fast or clear it is. But that’s the thing, it’s a feeling. At the end of the day, if I need to capture information and have it available to me whenever I need it, digital wins by a large margin.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve started to reap the benefits of returning to digital and fully utilizing org-mode.
Meetings notes full of details, organized by date and time; Projects I’m working on are broken down to smaller manageable tasks; floating emails and quick reminders quickly tie into a workflow that I can find later and connect to a system and don’t get forgotten or lost. I can slowly breath again, and I’m starting to find the fun in work again.
Meanwhile, I’m also able to write more on personal events. I don’t have to fully reflect on every event, as I would do in the hand-written journal. Instead, I now have an option of including a list of places I visited with a friend last night or perhaps a picture showing a fun activity. Sure, I could do that in my written journal, but it feels too special: I don’t want to “waste” the page on a simple list of locations. Digital just makes more sense for that, since my agenda with its events listed with details is not the same as my journal.
I don’t know, I guess we’ll see. I do miss the idea of the written journal just enough to pick it up again sooner rather than later.
New emacs org-mode category in place…! Actually, it was there for a while, but now it’s in the navigation bar, complete with my own AI illustration of what the Emacs GNU looks like. Check it out: taonaw.com/categorie…
Digital Notes vs. Analog notebook
The other day, I needed to copy some notes from my pocket notebook to my project file in org-mode, which is synced to my iPhone with iCloud. I was on the subway on my way downtown with a friend.
I played around with Beorg, which allows me to work with org-mode files on the go. Not only did I manage to get all the items in, but I also figured out how to display my active projects on the app so they show neatly on my weekly agenda.
It was relatively painless to transfer my handwritten notes into the file. I was also able to add a few more to-do items with the app, something that would be nearly impossible to do with my notebook on a moving and shaking train. My handwriting is terrible enough as is.
When I got home, the updated file with the tasks was already waiting on my Mac, synced.
I spent my reading time in bed reading into Beorg’s documentation. I was excited but also conflicted. Should I even bother with my pocket notebook when capturing notes with my phone (and watch, with Reminders) is so easy? Is there any sense in transcribing and deciphering my handwritten notes into dates and checklist items when those can be created semi-automatically for me?
The speed alone, not to mention the clarity and search capability, would increase my productivity to a new level—one that I definitely need at work right now.
Back to digital journaling once more...
For the last week or so I’ve been journaling on my computer again instead of in my notebook. This is a cycle for me I keep going through.
The urge to write in a handwritten journal is there, and I love the feeling of sitting down at a desk with a good pen and paper pages. The problem I’m having is the amount of details I need to put in—and with it, the time I need to spend on writing—and the references I need to make while writing.
Unsurprisingly, the culprit is my work. There are so many to-do items each day that, combined with my personal tasks, Start to cause me to lose track of the big picture. While I still have my projects organized in big bullet points with all the references I need in org-mode, I am missing the “so, what does this make me feel?” aspect of it all—the reflection of looking back on what I did last week or last month.
This is where my written journal would have fit in, but a written journal cannot link to my projects directly. Meanwhile, when I want to write about a fun hangout I’ve had, I want to include a list of places and map snippets, and while I can do that in my notebook, I just don’t have the time to find the locations, write down the addresses, and print out maps snippets - all are things I do within minutes in my digital journal.
Another issue is that my hand cramps if I keep writing for a long time, especially as I start writing faster or get excited. My handwriting becomes sloppier and I can’t fix my spelling mistakes without crossing out a word. Sure, I can use write out (or Tipp-Ex, depending on where you’re from), but that introduces even more time and more friction.
I started to realize that instead of just writing, the first thought I have is if I should write, where, and when. The option of taking out a personal notebook filled with intimate details is not realistic in most cases most of the time, so I can only reflect on my day at specific times that I don’t always have or want to spend on something else. I miss the availability of “just writing” what I need.
Ironically, I use a notebook, my pocket one, to write quick ideas or summaries. Again, it comes down to speed: taking my pocket notebook out of my pocket with my pen to write something down is faster than doing it on the phone.
So I guess I came a full circle. Journaling is digital, and quick ideas I want to capture are handwritten in a notebook. 📓 🤷🏼
Emacs-plus PATH in macOS Sequoia
Important: this is for emacs-plus for macOS via Homebrew.
After the upgrade to macOS Sequoia, Emacs’ Dired didn’t find gls, which made it impossible to navigate to folders and open files this way. When a program can’t find another program, it’s usually a sign something is wrong with the path environment.
On Mastodon, Jumile directed me toward a discussion about a similar error on Github. Seems to be a path issue indeed, from what I can tell. Something with PATH injection in Emacs (I don’t know what this is yet, but from the name, I get a vague idea. This seems to be an interesting read)
Two solutions and a workaround.
The workaround is to launch Emacs from the terminal, which loads the environment correctly.
Something more permanent is manually doing what emacs-plus does automatically: copy and apply the PATH in the init file, as explained in the GitHub above. To do that, you want to go into Info.plist inside the Emacs package: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/emacs-plus@[your version number here]/[version number]/Emacs.app/Contents and locate the PATH string (search for “PATH”). On my system, it looks like this:
<string>/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/System/Cryptexes/App/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/local/bin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/bin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/appleinternal/bin</string>
And copy it into the init file, telling it to set the environment like so:
(setenv "PATH" "/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/System/Cryptexes/App/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/local/bin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/bin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/appleinternal/bin")
(setq exec-path (split-string (getenv "PATH") path-separator))
Something even better came from David Hagerty: exec-path-from-shell. This package is “copying important environment variables from the user’s shell: it works by asking your shell to print out the variables of interest, then copying them into the Emacs environment.”
I tested it out, and it works as advertised. This is a more reliable solution than copying the path manually each time, though it’s important to understand what’s going on and what it does.
On Reddit, slashkehrin added the actual path issue on Github.