# the org-gtd package: opinions about Getting Things Done
Aldric
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Come see how org-gtd leverages org-mode to automate the GTD inbox
management. Stick around to see how the various org-mode tools get
connected by the package and how you can leverage them for yourself.
Bonus: there's even a few tests written for the package! We'll go
over those too.
<!-- from the pad --->
- Actual start and end time (EST): Start 2020-11-28T13.26.16; End:
2020-11-28T13.41.53
# Questions
## For how many years have you used Org?
At least five years, I don't know exactly how long.
## What about delegated actions of a project? Do they get moved to the delegated heading and moved back to the project when finished?
They stay where they are, because they belong to the project. Org-edna
will automatically mark it as NEXT when its time comes. The user can
mark it as WAIT easily through the agenda. I would like an org-gtd
command to queue up "mark as WAIT", "add the DELEGATED\_TO property",
and "schedule a check-in time", but I haven't yet done the research to
figure out a clean integration of such a custom action with the agenda
view.
## Are you only using linear next-task-method or do you use org-edna to mark tasks even in other projects as NEXT?
Currently I only use linear next-task-method, for two reasons. One is
a technical reason, another one is part of my current approach to GTD:
- I haven't yet had a reason to consider that, say, a project might
block another project, or that an action might block a project -
possibly I haven't tried to do complex enough things in my life yet,
and so I've always been able to simplify what I had to do into
linear projects, even if it was a simple linear project with a last
task of "create a new project based on what I've learned".
- I have zero idea of how I would intelligently display this, yet, so
I've stayed away from this. Contrary to most personal projects I've
worked on, this one has "ease of use" front and center, so before
implementing something like this, I'd need to know how to properly
represent this: if possible, in the agenda view, and if not, I guess
it would be in a HUD I would create for the package.
- <https://orgmode.org/list/87pn6zzoj7.fsf@localhost/> might be
relevant. The feature request suggest a way to show notes
dynamically in headlines.
## How do you make use of incubated items? Do they show up in the agenda for the whole day? That would be distracting, I guess.
I have a block of time, every morning, dedicated to processing the
inbox and seeing what's on my plate for the day. I would use this time
to decide what to do with the incubated item: incubate it again, make
it into a project, discard it, etc. My "incubate" file has a bunch of
top-level headlines like "To Read", "To Watch", "To Eat", "To Visit",
etc.
- That sounds similar to SOMEDAY-list, but processed on per-item
basis. If you decide to re-incubate an item, how to you chose the
new time?
# Notes
- [speaker] I forgot to mention this in my talk because it's fairly
recent: someone pointed me to screens that David Allen designed for
"the ideal GTD app", which means I've got some path forward for
making emacs the ideal GTD app (see
<https://github.com/Trevoke/org-gtd.el/issues/21> )
- Showcases org-gtd: <https://github.com/Trevoke/org-gtd.el>
- Custom org-gtd-capture, but reusing parts of org-mode.
- org-edna (state trigger) for automatically changing TODO to NEXT
after the previous task has been finished:
<https://www.nongnu.org/org-edna-el/>.
- Idea of having an actionable file.
- Maybe org-edna will automatically change TODO to NEXT in that
file(?)
- [speaker]: indeed :D Well, in projects, yes, it doesn't make
sense in other categories.
- Testing via buttercup
(<https://github.com/jorgenschaefer/emacs-buttercup>).
- I'm using org-edna as well and I want to point others to
<https://github.com/toshism/org-linker-edna> which is an enormous
help when working with edna.
<a name="transcript"></a>
# Transcript
00:00:01.680 --> 00:00:29.199
Hello, and welcome to my Org GTD talk. I
wrote this package because I was
overwhelmed with all the stuff I had to
manage working at home. I'd heard about
GTD. I saw someone using it with just a
small notebook. I wanted to do it in
Emacs because, well, Emacs can do
everything, right?
00:00:29.199 --> 00:01:12.640
I'm going to jump in quickly. Just so
you know, here's kind of a list of the
resources. Obviously, org-gtd, which you
can find there. You can open an issue,
ask me questions there about it. I use
org-edna, a package for state triggers.
I'm going to show this briefly when I
finish item in a project.
org-agenda-property, you will see in the
agenda. It's going to show to whom an
action has been delegated to. You will
see org-roam briefly as a reference
because that is what I have chosen for
my knowledge archival tool. You can
choose whatever you prefer.
00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:57.520
This is a quick, quick reminder on what
GTD is and how it works. This is not a
lesson on--a presentation on gtd because
that would be... Well, other people have
done it better than me. In short,
everything goes into the inbox. Then you
process the inbox, and you decide what
to do, if it could be actionable or not.
If it's actionable, it could be a
project or it could be a single action,
which you could delegate or schedule or
just do it. If it's not actionable, you
could just throw it away, incubate it
for later, or move it into your files,
reference.
00:01:57.520 --> 00:02:27.200
Over here, you can see the global
bindings for org-gtd. Those are the
actions, the functions I have made
available. This is in progress. There's
more to come. Some stuff is probably
missing. It's grown mostly from my own
personal use so far, so it doesn't have
things. In the bottom right, you can see
the agenda.
00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:54.319
One thing I wanted to do with this
package was leverage Org Mode as much as
possible. So I tried to not reinvent the
wheel as much as I could. That meant
reusing the agenda. You can see here a
couple of the things that are made
available or kind of customized or
configured for you, some of the opinions
that org-gtd has.
00:02:54.319 --> 00:03:49.280
Up here, for instance, you can see a
delegated action. So a delegated action
has someone to whom it's delegated. It's
my parents in this case. It has the name
of the action: ask parents what gift
they want. It's marked as the state of
WAIT because I'm waiting. It is
scheduled because you should ping people
or check on the status status of a task
when you're waiting for it, so you don't
forget about it or it gets lost forever.
I have a scheduled action to give a
talk. That's what I'm doing right now. I
have an incubated action which is also
scheduled: to make money through the
lottery. This is a thing to take a look
at for later, decide later what I want
to do. It might be actionable, it might
not be. I don't know right now, or I
didn't know when I processed it, so I
incubated it.
00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:59.360
Underneath, we have all the things that
are direct actions for me to take.
00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:33.384
All right. You see a little bit of the
preparation seeps through the actual
talk. I have here two... I have a single
action of "Steal Andrea's GTD
configuration" and an action to read the
GTD book. It's part of a project. So
most of the day-to-day operation with
with this package should come through
just having the agenda open and having
it be your source for the information
you need to know, so that you can do the
right thing.
00:04:33.384 --> 00:05:18.960
So let's take a look at what's
underneath all of this really quickly.
We have--There's three primary files. We
have the inbox. I'm gonna process it in
a second because there's two things
here. One thing to cancel, like an
action to not take. It's nothing. And
then something I will just put into
org-roam, just so you can see that there
is the incubate file. You can see here:
make money through the lottery,
captured, refiled here, and scheduled so
it would show up in the agenda right at
a given time. On the right, you have the
actionable file. This is the one that
has the most information, where most
things should go.
00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:37.919
So I have the single actions. They all
go underneath here. This is marked as
next because it's an action for me to
take. Delegated is marked as WAIT. It is
not an action for me to take. It's an
action for somebody else to take, but it
is scheduled because I may wanna... I
can check in at some point.
00:05:38.400 --> 00:05:53.840
Things that are scheduled, like "give a
talk," do not have a TODO or NEXT or
WAIT state because they are not bound
that way. They are time-bound, so they
will show up in the agenda when the time
comes. I shouldn't act on them or I
can't act on them beforehand.
00:05:53.840 --> 00:06:07.520
You can see here, I have two projects: a
test project (and I will do something
with this in a second) and then there's
this package "Make a GTD package."
There's a project here for me to create
this. It's made of a bunch of actions.
00:06:07.520 --> 00:07:03.840
I'm going to show you two things here.
One is: since I was trying to leverage
Org Mode as much as possible, I didn't
try to create very clever operations,
because Org Mode has a lot of very
powerful tools already. There's
automations I can add, but I thought it
might be better to leave more things in
the hands of the user. So here, in this
case, this test project we can just
archive. Right. That's just C-c C-x C-a
is the org-archive action. Save this. So
now if we go to... This will create an
archive file which will have this
information for later perusal if you're
interested.
00:07:03.840 --> 00:07:27.680
That's one thing. If we go back to the
agenda for a second, you can see these
things here. Org. So by the way, this
"parents" here was the org agenda
property. This is what shows here,
right? And here, if I finish "Read the
GTD book," I mark it as done. Now
refresh.
00:07:27.680 --> 00:07:57.280
You'll see that another item shows up,
and that is where org-edna comes in.
When an action is marked as done in a
project, the next to do action is
automatically marked as next, so your
agenda is automatically updated. This
was one of the nice things for me
because I didn't want to have to open my
file, go find the action, mark it as
done, find the next one, mark it as
next, and so forth. I didn't want to
bother with it.
00:07:57.280 --> 00:08:20.720
Oh, actually, you know what, let me show
you something else. This simple
project... I don't need this timestamp
to be here but I like having a capture
timestamp here, so I'm gonna make one
up. So this is the most convenient thing
that I think... This is one of the most
convenient things that I get out of this
binding.
00:08:20.720 --> 00:09:00.080
The next really convenient thing is the
way this gets processed. Let me show you
this. When you process the entire inbox,
what you see is the items one at a time,
so you can work with them. You can see
at the bottom... You can work with them
without being distracted. You can see at
the bottom the list of things you can
do, which are all the decisions you can
take from GTD, right? In this case, this
is one to throw out, so press t. You
have the option to make modifications to
this if you want to. If you have any
reason to store it, then you finish
editing. You can add a tag if you want
to, because this might still be
interesting,
00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:37.457
and then enter and it's done. Important
knowledge, I'm going to hit a for
archive it. I'm gonna start looking at
org-roam. So this is important
knowledge. I have to capture this.
That's it. I've captured it. It is done.
I go back to buffer, and I can mark it
with C-c. There's no archiving because
this is just knowledge. There's no
tagging. It's just knowledge.
00:09:37.457 --> 00:10:15.440
But then the simple project... I want to
show you this because there's some
automation that's pretty helpful. In the
simple project, I have my first action,
second action, third action. and you
see, this is all I'm writing. I'm not
adding any of the states, any of the
tags. They're going to be added by...
Here, I can add a tag if I want to this
project. I don't care right now, but you
know... I leave the tags to the user, so
they're not super relevant to me as a
package provider.
00:10:15.440 --> 00:11:04.880
This is where we are. This is the whole
thing. So now if we go back to the
agenda, I have a first action, right.
And if I go to the actionable file, and
now see, I have a simple project that
has my first action as NEXT, second
option TODO, third action as TODO. So
what I've... You know, as you can see...
I hope what I've tried to do is take all
of the tedium out of working with with
Emacs and Org Mode when working with
your actions so you could focus on what
you want to do, what you need to do,
what you care about, and the package
would take care of the rest.
00:11:04.880 --> 00:12:32.000
So the last thing I wanted to take a
quick look at was some of the the tests.
The code is available here. You can see
the code on... the code on Github if you
want. I've had some trouble writing good
tests for this because Org Mode was
written at a time before testing was
quite as important, I think, or valued
quite the same way, let's put it this
way. And as a result, a number of things
actually... It might also be a feature
of Emacs at the time, I don't know. But
a lot of things in Org Mode aren't very
testable, and so what I ended up doing
was just having an actual directory in
which I actually... with files, right?
So I don't have much mocking I can do. I
can't just do a bunch of fake files,
fake directories. So I actually go
through the process, actually create
files, and then actually have Emacs
pointing at this directory to process
and get the information. So I have to
define the key to test that it gets
bound properly. I have to set the
capture templates. The capture templates
are how things get added. I have a
wrapper control... org-gtd-capture
essentially is a wrapper around the
capture that makes sure the inbox is
there and then captures to the inbox.
00:12:36.240 --> 00:13:45.360
Making sure the items show in the agenda
when I'm done with the processing was a
little bit tricky. I had a bug and I had
to to fix it, so I just wrote this test,
but it's it's pretty convenient now to
have that, because it gives me a bunch
of sanity. So again, I have a capture,
and this is... I wanted to be able to do
this automatically but org-capture
itself is not super testable right now,
so the way it's... the way you test it
is just by programmatically calling it,
which is not exactly what I wanted,
because I wanted something more like the
user action, but I'll... You know, what
I can get. And then I can... I'll just
insert these words into the buffer and
then I'll finalize the capture. Then I
have another... I have a test package
here called with simulated input which
basically calls this and then enters
these user actions. Right, so like the
letter s, C-c c and then RET. And that
is, you know, choosing a single action,
then finishing the edit, and then adding
zero and not adding tags.
00:13:46.480 --> 00:14:05.040
As you can tell, there's a strong layer
of disconnect between the tests and what
they represent. That's a work in
progress. I have four tests. It's not a
lot, but I want to... I intend to add
more as I keep on adding more behavior.
00:14:05.040 --> 00:14:34.880
I would like this to be eventually a
sane starting point for GTD. There's a
lot of people like like Andrea, like
Rainer, like... I mean, if you search
for Org Mode and GTD, you'll find a lot
of blog entries, a lot of entries, a lot
of articles that explain how to connect
it together, how to think that way, how
to use all the tools that Org Mode makes
available.
00:14:34.880 --> 00:15:20.560
Hopefully, this package is a way to get
started without having to write too much
of your own code. Then eventually, you
can move away from the package if you
want, if you realize that you are
developing different opinions and you
don't want to... If GTD doesn't work
this way for you, if you have a
different way, it is a better fit for
the way you want to organize your life,
then move away from the package. In the
meanwhile, I welcome all thoughts. I
welcome contributions. I welcome
questions, bug reports, everything So,
you know, come say hi. Try the package.
And yeah, see you. I'll see you online!
