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Comment by uludag | Hacker News Reader

I'm on my seventh year of using org-mode for my task management. My system has slowly evolved over time but I'm pretty much still using the same single text file to manage everything. My main getting-things-done org-mode file is now at 6k lines long.

Before org-mode, I was always downloading different software to manage tasks and notes. The tool churn was very degrading to my productivity but I feel that commercial interests would keep turning the churn machine: new UI changes, enshitification, monthly subscriptions, etc.

It's such a refreshing feeling, sitting back, and feeling assured that for the next presumably 25 years of my career, and perhaps for the rest of my life, I can still be using org-mode, and it will always work as I learned it, but it's flexible enough to easily implement extensions.

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I try it regularly and I was running an org-mode based task management for a year and some months in between, but man, I do not have time and patience for sync conflicts in 2025. It can work but I have to be very cautious, and iCloud sync being a bit mysterious does not help. But I've also recognized that I don't have very complex projects, that GTD tools do not matter since their contents are transient by nature and that Apple Reminders is basically good enough. As a bonus it allows me to share Lists/Projects with my wife.

I totally understand this situation. I actually never had a good mobile set up when I was on iOS and only when switching to Android was able to finally setup something I liked using orgzly-revived, syncthing, and android Emacs.

As for GTD, I never did proper GTD until about a year ago, after reading the GTD book. I don't consider my life complex by any means, but I've been surprised at the amount of projects in my life that have been reified in my system.

I am practicing GTD since ~15 years already, but while I stick to some practices (review, inbox and so on), I have a simpler setup for projects and files, sufficient for my needs. One of the lessons is that GTD and productivity systems are not about tools - I am equally productive (or unproductive) in emacs, omnifocus, reminders. The advantage of OF and reminders is that I don't have to look after sync, workflow-wise I quickly learn to navigate around idiosyncrasies of each of them and settle on the same workflow, helping myself with scripts and glue code where I need it.

This said, I still keep my long-term notes in denote, because it works and I don't trust Apple Notes for long-term stuff (missing built-in export).

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