Comment by comfypotato
3 years ago
You made a big jump from note taking to presenting something from a pine book. (And I’m upset by your comment because it’s ignorant.) The article’s author is much further down the rabbit hole than most.
People don’t use org mode because it tickles their brain; I don’t at least. I use it, just to take notes and manage tasks, because nothing else worked. I didn’t start using org mode planning to be a devotee. It was just another iteration of trying a note-taking and time management solution. Noteable other failed approaches include Todoist, an old school paper agenda and notebooks, or an attempt at using the iPhone’s built-in reminders and notes. Finally I’ve stuck with something. It’s a testament to how good org is that it delivered enough value while I was still picking up Emacs (for the purpose of using org) that I stuck with it.
Contrary to your point about org mode getting negative comments from management, my notes and scheduling in an org doc have gotten praise from my managers during Zoom screen shares. It probably only evokes comments because it’s different (as opposed to particularly impressive) but they are definitely positive comments.
What didn't work for you with Todoist? I'm using along side orgmode to quickly write down tasks on my phone.
Todoist was too much of its own ecosystem. (I use reminders for mobile task generation because Im comfortable in Apple’s ecosystem.) I wasn’t willing to learn the Todoist ecosystem with the risk of them changing it on a whim. (I’m also elisp-savvy so I can hack org mode to do exactly what I want, but that’s not the real issue/selling point.)
It’s mostly not wanting to learn Todoist. I’d rather learn org mode knowing it’s mature. It drives me nuts when corps change the tools I use. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, you know? The risk of having a workflow-breaking change at an annoying time stresses me too much. Org mode changes at a much slower pace, and it’s much easier to use an older version of org while I adapt to the changes.
There’s definitely nothing I do in org that can’t be done in Todoist. So theoretically Todoist would actually be better right now because of the mobile integration. I really like knowing that there’s a lot of room to grow with org mode, though. The workflow I aspire to is much more possible with org mode in the long run.