Notes by Cory Doctorow on a talk by Danny O’Brien in 2004 on living life in text files

 

I’m always interested in ways of working smarter and over the past year I’ve been trying out a number of the productivity tips espoused by the LifeHacker and 43Folders websites. Many of their suggestions are designed to declutter your working life and reduce information overload, allowing you to focus more completely on the task in hand and get it done more effectively.
The most ambitious of these suggestions grew out of observations by Danny O’Brien about the work habits of technologists – he noticed that many of them worked from one single large text file. Everything they did (and wrote) was put in there.

I wasn’t sure about this one as it seemed ridiculous and highly constraining but decided to give it a go anyway. One year on, I now have to admit that it’s really grown on me as a way of working.

This a 15 year-old interview with the person who first popularized “living in a text file”, filing this with Org-mode stuff.

This document assumes you’ve had some exposure to org-mode already so concepts like the agenda, capture mode, etc. won’t be completely foreign to you. More information about org-mode can be found in the Org-Mode Manual and on the Worg Site.

I have been using org-mode as my personal information manager for years now. I started small with just the default TODO and DONE keywords. I added small changes to my workflow and over time it evolved into what is described by this document.

I organize myself and my work using emacs’ org mode. It has served me extremely well over the past few years and has helped me better organize both my working and personal life. In this post, I describe how I use org mode for everything from long-term projects to appointments and ideas.