Org productivity tip to prevent accumulation of unscheduled undone tasks

[Ryan Thompson <rct@thompsonclan.org>]

Hi all,

I recently found a small trick that makes Org nag me about undone TODO
items that I have added via org-remember. Previously, I had the
problem that I would use remember to add TODO items, but then they
would languish in my TODO list because they would never appear in my
agenda. To fix this, I set my normal TODO template to have a scheduled
date. This way, the default is to schedule a task for today, instead
of leave it unscheduled. Now, in my agenda, Org will nag me about
anything I have added unless I explicitly went to the trouble of
deleting the scheduled line or changing the default. I find that I
tend to get more done now that Org-mode reminds me by default.

Here are my two TODO templates. They are bound to "t" and uppercase
"T". The upper-case is my old TODO template, now called "TODO
unscheduled".

 ("TODO" 116 "* TODO %^{Description}\n  %U\n  SCHEDULED: %^{Scheduled
time}T\n  %?\n" "tasks.org" "Unsorted Tasks" nil)
 ("TODO unscheduled" 84 "* TODO %^{Description}\n  %U\n  %?"
"tasks.org" "Unsorted Tasks" nil)


-Ryan Thompson