path: root/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--10-lead-your-future-with-org--andrea.vtt

WEBVTT

00:00:00.220 --> 00:00:03.400
Welcome to my talk, Lead Your Future with
Org.

00:00:03.400 --> 00:00:04.680
Who am I?

00:00:04.680 --> 00:00:05.680
I'm Andrea.

00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:10.060
I work as a Scala software engineer somewhere
in the Netherlands, and I inherited my passion

00:00:10.060 --> 00:00:12.340
for Emacs from my PhD supervisor.

00:00:12.340 --> 00:00:15.050
From that moment on, I got in synergy with
it.

00:00:15.050 --> 00:00:19.830
You can find more about me and my interests
at https://ag91.github.io.

00:00:19.830 --> 00:00:27.150
That is the place where I keep my blog and
I blog on a weekly basis.

00:00:27.150 --> 00:00:29.449
Let's get into the bulk of the talk.

00:00:29.449 --> 00:00:31.679
Why I needed a vision.

00:00:31.679 --> 00:00:34.360
The main, main problem is that I have too
many interests.

00:00:34.360 --> 00:00:37.740
I like a lot of things, and these things take
time.

00:00:37.740 --> 00:00:44.000
Then I have too little time to do other things
that are very important as well.

00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:46.430
And so I need priority.

00:00:46.430 --> 00:00:51.750
And the vision in my mind is both an ambition,
something that I want to do with my life,

00:00:51.750 --> 00:00:59.220
and at the same time, it's a way to focus
my efforts and get rid of some stuff that

00:00:59.220 --> 00:01:03.350
fundamentally is not something I really care
so much about.

00:01:03.350 --> 00:01:09.400
Even if you come up with a vision and so with
a smaller scope of things that you want to

00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:17.150
do, even then, you have to take this ambition
of yours, this vision, and disassemble it

00:01:17.150 --> 00:01:19.310
in very small steps.

00:01:19.310 --> 00:01:28.950
Org Mode is very good at taking care of this
because you can keep track of TODOs in Org

00:01:28.950 --> 00:01:29.950
Mode.

00:01:29.950 --> 00:01:36.740
So let me show you how I keep an agenda that
also keeps track of my vision.

00:01:36.740 --> 00:01:40.250
For this talk, I have a running example.

00:01:40.250 --> 00:01:42.990
Vision will be "I want to bring joy to people."

00:01:42.990 --> 00:01:45.730
and "I want to live in synergy with the planet."

00:01:45.730 --> 00:01:49.740
Okay, so, given these two visions, let's open
the agenda.

00:01:49.740 --> 00:01:59.560
You will see on the right that now I have
some tasks, both on Tuesday and on Friday.

00:01:59.560 --> 00:02:04.560
Things to notice is that we said one of our
visions is synergy with the planet, so some

00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:13.010
tasks are annotated on the left with this
category and some with "Bring joy to people."

00:02:13.010 --> 00:02:16.730
In this way, you can distinguish where are
my...

00:02:16.730 --> 00:02:20.100
In this day, where my effort is going in this
day.

00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:27.950
The other thing is the specification of these
tasks, and then at the end, you can notice

00:02:27.950 --> 00:02:42.690
a tag on the right that is essentially a guess
of how long this task will have an effect

00:02:42.690 --> 00:02:43.750
over the future.

00:02:43.750 --> 00:02:53.970
So, for example, installing solar panel onto
my roof is going to have an effect of 10 years

00:02:53.970 --> 00:02:57.180
over my life, if I manage to achieve that.

00:02:57.180 --> 00:03:01.230
That is my rough guess.

00:03:01.230 --> 00:03:08.180
You will notice that the ones that have a
bigger amount, so 10 years over the 5 year

00:03:08.180 --> 00:03:15.879
one, because I order my day so that the tasks
that are more important or that I believe

00:03:15.879 --> 00:03:21.540
are more effective over my future, I sort
them so that they appear at the top.

00:03:21.540 --> 00:03:26.420
In this way, I can basically decide, okay,
today, what should I...

00:03:26.420 --> 00:03:36.379
Find a video on Youtube, but I should take
into consideration when I look at my agenda

00:03:36.379 --> 00:03:42.379
that I've traded that small fun for today
with something that could have had an effect

00:03:42.379 --> 00:03:45.890
over a longer period of time.

00:03:45.890 --> 00:04:03.909
Let me show you how I also exploit the facilities
that Org Mode comes with.

00:04:03.909 --> 00:04:05.190
I will...

00:04:05.190 --> 00:04:07.830
I have two templates available to me.

00:04:07.830 --> 00:04:09.330
I will choose one.

00:04:09.330 --> 00:04:13.970
The first thing that it asks to me is "How
long will this affect your life?"

00:04:13.970 --> 00:04:20.660
So I like ... It will affect a long time,
if I manage to produce only for myself.

00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:23.400
So I choose 10 years.

00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:24.750
And then I specify the task.

00:04:24.750 --> 00:04:29.080
So, "Learn how to keep bees."

00:04:29.080 --> 00:04:30.080
I collect this task.

00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:35.870
It will now appear in the middle because 10
years is between 20 years and 5 years.

00:04:35.870 --> 00:04:40.860
So I know that if I put some effort in learning
how to keep bees, I should be quite happy

00:04:40.860 --> 00:04:41.979
for today.

00:04:41.979 --> 00:04:43.060
Okay.

00:04:43.060 --> 00:04:50.470
So, say that I do it, say that that's it...

00:04:50.470 --> 00:04:52.490
Once I've done this task, how can I be...

00:04:52.490 --> 00:04:58.000
How do I know how much progress I am doing?

00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:07.100
The way I can do that is by retrospecting
weekly or monthly about the successes or the

00:05:07.100 --> 00:05:09.520
progress that I am doing.

00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:14.949
How I do it is simply by running this kind
of snippet that shows me that for this month,

00:05:14.949 --> 00:05:23.350
I have done three tasks for bringing joy to
people and three tasks for synergy with planet.

00:05:23.350 --> 00:05:30.300
This is useful because you can repeat it and
it will be appended, so every time you run

00:05:30.300 --> 00:05:38.040
it again, you can compare if you are... how
you are working towards your goal and if you're

00:05:38.040 --> 00:05:43.830
focusing more on bringing joy to people or
if you're focusing more on synergy.

00:05:43.830 --> 00:05:45.990
Balance the effort.

00:05:45.990 --> 00:05:51.850
A thing that I want to share that I think
will be useful to you is this function I use

00:05:51.850 --> 00:05:55.789
that I made for myself to create these statistics.

00:05:55.789 --> 00:06:04.509
It's a wrapper around the very enjoyable library
org-ql, which allows you to query and group

00:06:04.509 --> 00:06:13.650
headings, do analysis on headings, or restructuring
and view headings in a SQL fashion.

00:06:13.650 --> 00:06:19.120
The syntax is very similar to SQL.

00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:25.390
You can manipulate your headings and visualize
them or just get statistics as I have done

00:06:25.390 --> 00:06:26.390
here.

00:06:26.390 --> 00:06:36.540
Finally, for this talk, say that you are doing
progress, that progress most likely will generate

00:06:36.540 --> 00:06:39.950
some useful knowledge for yourself.

00:06:39.950 --> 00:06:46.050
My way to store this knowledge is through
org-roam, another interesting mode that is

00:06:46.050 --> 00:06:54.759
very... that is becoming very relevant and
known today.

00:06:54.759 --> 00:06:56.020
The idea is that I simply...

00:06:56.020 --> 00:07:08.470
If I learn how to make, how to install solar
panels, that can be useful knowledge.

00:07:08.470 --> 00:07:15.800
I can link to some other knowledge that I
have and so create my own knowledgebase, and

00:07:15.800 --> 00:07:19.020
save it for later use.

00:07:19.020 --> 00:07:25.160
My later use is typically, in this case, my
blog.

00:07:25.160 --> 00:07:31.630
In here, I have a few notes that are basically
a synthesis of knowledge that I have collected

00:07:31.630 --> 00:07:34.550
doing my tasks towards my vision.

00:07:34.550 --> 00:07:39.440
With this, this is all I wanted to show you
for this talk.

00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:47.490
You can follow me on my blog at https://ag91.github.io
. That is also where I am going to share a

00:07:47.490 --> 00:07:55.370
version of this Org Mode file that allows
you basically to create the same kind of configuration

00:07:55.370 --> 00:08:02.950
I have here, and you can create an instance
by running this snippet of Emacs in which

00:08:02.950 --> 00:08:04.790
you can just run this example.

00:08:04.790 --> 00:08:11.890
An extended example I will also add, to just
play around safely with this kind of configuration.

00:08:11.890 --> 00:08:13.300
So enjoy the rest of the conference.

00:08:13.300 --> 00:08:14.460
Catch you later!

00:08:14.460 --> 00:08:15.650
Nice to meet you!