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Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

It looks like some people want to spend more time organizing their life than living their life. IDK man, I already need some willpower to use Trello and looks far easier.

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Hah, as much as I wanted org-mode to work for me, I realized I'm spending more time on building a framework for organizing my time than probably actually organizing my time. And it's never over.

Sync all my calendars, OS notifications (considering the time it would take me to walk/drive), sync all this in mobile/iPad and be able to edit effectively there, and the list goes on. Laptop/Mobile notifications are the biggest ones, as if I'm not reminded on what I've to do, I will probably miss it anyways.

I've found org-mode much more practical for taking notes while working, as I'm already in Emacs writing code.

I think beorg[1] solves a lot of your problems? It integrates with your calendar, shows you notifications and allows you to properly edit your entries.

I found out about it through HN, iirc, and it’s how I got started with using org-mode.

[1]: https://beorg.app

I imagine the difference is that tinkering is the appeal, for some. I like optimization as a hobby within reason but if you aren't getting anywhere quickly it hardly feels optimal. That said, I've yet to try org mode, just emacs.

Yes. I'm definitely a tinkerer, and have spent hours configuring my Emacs just the way I want. However, its super addicting and often you'll find yourself doing things with little ROI. A 20 yo me, would have definitely hacked till death, now almost 30 with job and hobbies outside tech I've to more thoughtful about ROI about the things I do (I swear if Emacs LSP doesn't perform well in emacs27, I'm going VSCode path -- and there's my unrelated rant).

I spent less time figuring out my org mode system than anything else I've tried.

I just stick it all in a single file. Well, two: one for work, one for personal. It's still fast. It's still easy to pull information up when I need it.

Yeah. Many times over the years I have decided to be organised about something, or just my life in general, and made notes, taken research clippings, etc. using whatever system I designed at the time. Sometimes I look back at these years later and realise that I spent so much time creating them, never really used them, and now they are completely irrelevant or useless.

For me, organizing stuff is something I enjoy to a point where I'd consider it "living my life". I get a lot of joy out of using emacs/org mode every day, but I can also totally understand someone who doesn't.

Which isn’t always a bad thing! Having a good system to collect and organize information can be a high value skill. But org mode is not much of a tool meant to get out of your way to let you get shit done...much more an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine to tune

Trello will forever be the relatively slow, clunky, time-sucking platform that it is.

In org mode you get faster, more efficient and more powerful as you develop, which means you don't need to summon that willpower.

XKCD : Is it Worth the Time?

https://xkcd.com/1205/

This assumes that there really is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow at all. In my experience foss tools are often pushed insincerely by activists.

For instance when I asked about accessing org from a phone, this person told me he sshed in and accessed it using a phone terminal emulator.

Yeah... No... That's not my ideal way to organize my life.

I love that XKCD, though the person you're responding to was talking about willpower, not time.

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