Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Ali Tofigh]

Hello everyone,

I'm a new user of org-mode, and seeing the great potential, I am
trying to switch to org-mode for handling my day-to-day tasks. I'm
going to start off by using org-mode to handle my projects and I need
some advice.

I like to keep my projects self-contained. Therefore I use one
org-file for each project. Each org-file contains two main headlines:
journal and tasks. Under journal I collect all kinds of information:
meeting notes, relevant stuff I've read, urls, etc. I also write down
what I have done every few days. The journal entries are sorted
chornologically. Under tasks I keep all todo items.

Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
anyone have any advice on how to handle these?

I don't want to keep them as todo items in the journal since I like to
keep changing the todos (e.g., dividing them into subtasks) and I
don't want those changes to appear in the journal. My initial thought
was to create one headline for each idea and tag it with ":idea:". I
could then easily go through all ideas in a project and choose the
ones I want to work on by creating todo items. Those ideas would then
be further tagged with ":handled:" or something similar. This way I
could search for unhandled ideas in my projects. As an alternative I
could use separate todo keywords for todos and ideas.

Any specific advice or just general thoughts are most appreciated.

Cheers,
/Ali

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[John Hendy]

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On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Ali Tofigh <alix.tofigh@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm a new user of org-mode, and seeing the great potential, I am
> trying to switch to org-mode for handling my day-to-day tasks. I'm
> going to start off by using org-mode to handle my projects and I need
> some advice.
>
>
I'm new to this as well and started in a very similar way:
- begin with just notes
- ramp up to todo tracking
- continue to ramp up to scheduling/full-fledged work data capture system


> I like to keep my projects self-contained. Therefore I use one
> org-file for each project. Each org-file contains two main headlines:
> journal and tasks. Under journal I collect all kinds of information:
> meeting notes, relevant stuff I've read, urls, etc. I also write down
> what I have done every few days. The journal entries are sorted
> chornologically. Under tasks I keep all todo items.
>
>
I started with separate, then went to all-in-one file, and think I'm going
back to one-per, mainly because of issues with being too deep in an outline
already by having one file; in other words, I blow a headline with project
name, then another with either 'journals' or 'todos', etc., and only then am
I in day-to-day notes...

Anyway, your setup sounds similar to what I'm leaning toward as well.


> Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
> anyone have any advice on how to handle these?
>
>
I'm very 'idea' centered as well. See some 'ideas' below :)


> I don't want to keep them as todo items in the journal since I like to
> keep changing the todos (e.g., dividing them into subtasks) and I
> don't want those changes to appear in the journal.


I agree with this -- my idea for a 'journal' is a record of my work, meeting
notes, etc. Ideas are usually equivalent to 'off-topic concept to try later
that came up in the context of this meeting but that will develop
separately.'


> My initial thought
> was to create one headline for each idea and tag it with ":idea:". I
> could then easily go through all ideas in a project and choose the
> ones I want to work on by creating todo items. Those ideas would then
> be further tagged with ":handled:" or something similar. This way I
> could search for unhandled ideas in my projects. As an alternative I
> could use separate todo keywords for todos and ideas.
>

What about:

### IDEA 1 ###
--- file: project_name.org ---
* Journals
** Title <date>
Notes about stuff

* Ideas
** TODO idea 1 <date>
** WORKING idea 2
** DONE idea 3 <date>

Something like this? This could track ideas in each project and if you do
use them as TODOs you can pull them up with agenda to check ideas across all
projects.

### IDEA 2 ###
- a remember template for ideas?
- file keystrokes set to set the file to a particular project's file with a
simple key entry?
- or... one file called 'ideas.org' divided by projects (or just tag idea
headlines with the project name)
--- then use remember-mode to add ideas to that file when you're in
meetings/taking notes in a different, dedicated project file?


> Any specific advice or just general thoughts are most appreciated.
>
>
I'm so new I can hardly believe I'm proposing these ideas as I don't even
know that I know everything necessary to implement them! But... these are
things i ponder so I thought I'd share...


> Cheers,
> /Ali
>
>
John


>
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Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Ali Tofigh]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 16:38, John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
>> anyone have any advice on how to handle these?
>
> I'm very 'idea' centered as well. See some 'ideas' below :)

;-)

> What about:
>
> ### IDEA 1 ###
> --- file: project_name.org ---
> * Journals
> ** Title <date>
> Notes about stuff
>
> * Ideas
> ** TODO idea 1 <date>
> ** WORKING idea 2
> ** DONE idea 3 <date>
>
> Something like this? This could track ideas in each project and if you do
> use them as TODOs you can pull them up with agenda to check ideas across all
> projects.

What I would like is to keep my ideas in their context and not
separately. Ideally I just want to write my meeting notes as usual but
be able to somehow mark certain sections as ideas to come back to
later. I keep my real todos, the ones I want to work on, separately as
you suggest.

> ### IDEA 2 ###
> - a remember template for ideas?
> - file keystrokes set to set the file to a particular project's file with a
> simple key entry?
> - or... one file called 'ideas.org' divided by projects (or just tag idea
> headlines with the project name)
> --- then use remember-mode to add ideas to that file when you're in
> meetings/taking notes in a different, dedicated project file?

Same as above...

I really really would like some feature to be able to highlight some
part of my text (or even better a list item) as an idea. This way my
ideas could be interspersed in the level I'm in. It doesn't seem
logical to me to create a new heading for each idea in the middle of
my notes.

=== project1.org ===
* journal
** meeting 1
   notes...

   - idea 1 :idea:
   - idea 2 :idea:

   notes contd... (this is same level still as notes above under
heading "meeting 1")

* tasks
** todo1
*** subtask1
** todo2

> I'm so new I can hardly believe I'm proposing these ideas as I don't even
> know that I know everything necessary to implement them! But... these are
> things i ponder so I thought I'd share...

I appreciate it. It's fun to share ideas!

/Ali

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[John Wiegley]

On Apr 12, 2010, at 3:46 PM, Ali Tofigh wrote:

> Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
> anyone have any advice on how to handle these?

Hi Ali,

For ideas I just use a done TODO state called "NOTE".  I have the key M-z bound to create one and switch me to the Org-buffer, so that I can stay there and keep typing.

John

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Ali Tofigh]

Hi John,

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 03:46, John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
>> anyone have any advice on how to handle these?
>
> For ideas I just use a done TODO state called "NOTE".  I have the key M-z bound to create one and switch me to the Org-buffer, so that I can stay there and keep typing.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried both checkboxes and TODO items
to keep track of my ideas, but your idea of using a done state seems
very neat. I'll give it a go.

What really feels unsatisfactory to me is that only headlines can be
TODO items. I want to be able to insert TODO items in the middle of a
section. I've looked at the inline-tasks add-on, but that doesn't
really do it for me... Anyway, I understand that the way org-mode is
implemented right now, it would be very impractical to try to add
non-headline TODO-items. In any case, org has simplified my life, even
before I've optmized the way I use it. It's great!

Cheers,
/Ali

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Matt Lundin]

Hi Ali,

Ali Tofigh <alix.tofigh@gmail.com> writes:

> What really feels unsatisfactory to me is that only headlines can be
> TODO items. I want to be able to insert TODO items in the middle of a
> section. I've looked at the inline-tasks add-on, but that doesn't
> really do it for me... 

Could you please elaborate?

> Anyway, I understand that the way org-mode is implemented right now,
> it would be very impractical to try to add non-headline TODO-items. In
> any case, org has simplified my life, even before I've optmized the
> way I use it. It's great!

Here's one quick hack to search for non-headline todo items (i.e.,
checkboxes):

C-c a / \[ \] [RET]

This will generate a list of all "open" list items, such as,

 - [ ] Review this idea

Best,
Matt

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Ali Tofigh]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 13:00, Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> wrote:
> Ali Tofigh <alix.tofigh@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> What really feels unsatisfactory to me is that only headlines can be
>> TODO items. I want to be able to insert TODO items in the middle of a
>> section. I've looked at the inline-tasks add-on, but that doesn't
>> really do it for me...
>
> Could you please elaborate?

I often write journal entries after meetings describing what was
discussed. I often summarize using plain lists. Some of these are
ideas for future work, some are downright todos. Some paragraphs are
descriptions of ideas. Ideally for my case, I would want to be able to
tag a list item or even entire paragraphs as an 'idea' or turn a list
item into a todo-item without creating a new (sub)section:

text text text....
- *TODO* Sarah wants me to send her files A and B
- maybe we should try algorithm B on data set C   :idea:
text text text continuing the section...

> Here's one quick hack to search for non-headline todo items (i.e.,
> checkboxes):
>
> C-c a / \[ \] [RET]
>
> This will generate a list of all "open" list items, such as,
>
>  - [ ] Review this idea

Wow, I had not thought about that one! I'll be fiddling with that as
soon as I get some time on my hands. Thanks. I'm getting some really
good suggestions from people here.

/Ali

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Ali Tofigh]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 13:00, Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> wrote:
> Here's one quick hack to search for non-headline todo items (i.e.,
> checkboxes):
>
> C-c a / \[ \] [RET]
>
> This will generate a list of all "open" list items, such as,
>
>  - [ ] Review this idea
>

This has proved to be the best way so far for handling my "ideas". I
have now defined a custom agenda command for this and it works very
well. Thanks for the suggestion.

/Ali

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Sébastien Vauban]

Hi Ali, John and all,

Ali Tofigh wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 03:46, John Wiegley <jwiegley-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
>>> anyone have any advice on how to handle these?
>>
>> For ideas I just use a done TODO state called "NOTE".  I have the key M-z
>> bound to create one and switch me to the Org-buffer, so that I can stay
>> there and keep typing.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried both checkboxes and TODO items
> to keep track of my ideas, but your idea of using a done state seems
> very neat.

I've another view on this subject -- but I've to be honest at this early
stage: *I currently have no solution that completely satisfies me*.

I really am puzzled by using a "TODO state" for saying "this is a note".

For me, a so-called TODO state is a circumstance (or a mode), so one
transitional property on a cycle. That's something that evolves over time,
such as:

    TODO -> NEXT -> STARTED -> WAITING -> DONE

A NOTE does not belong to such cycles. It's just some kind of "property".

I would be more inclined to view a NOTE "property" as a tag, but that does not
satisfy me neither. Tags are for contexts, mainly resources we need to have at
hand, or locations we need to be, or time ranges in which the action makes
sense.

Maybe it should be a real PROPERTY?  Anyway, as I don't have the solution yet,
I don't have yet a proper way to mark my notes as NOTES...

I hope others can share their views on this?

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sébastien Vauban



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Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Bernt Hansen]

Sébastien Vauban <wxhgmqzgwmuf-geNee64TY+gS+FvcfC7Uqw@public.gmane.org>
writes:

> I really am puzzled by using a "TODO state" for saying "this is a note".
>
> For me, a so-called TODO state is a circumstance (or a mode), so one
> transitional property on a cycle. That's something that evolves over time,
> such as:
>
>     TODO -> NEXT -> STARTED -> WAITING -> DONE
>
> A NOTE does not belong to such cycles. It's just some kind of "property".
>
> I would be more inclined to view a NOTE "property" as a tag, but that does not
> satisfy me neither. Tags are for contexts, mainly resources we need to have at
> hand, or locations we need to be, or time ranges in which the action makes
> sense.

I think that's too narrow a view for tags.  Tags should be whatever is
useful.  It can be a context, or resources you need, or locations, or
anything else that is useful.

I use arbitrary tags to match items with an external tracking system -
and use the id of that system so I can match them easily.  I also
use :NOTE: for notes.  It works for my needs just fine.  Tags are not
and should not be limited to context only.  I also use tags for special
todo states... if I cancel a task I give it a CANCELLED tag too ... so
any subtask of the cancelled task is obviously cancelled and unavailable
to work on.

-Bernt

Re: Suggestions needed for handling "ideas"

[Nathan Neff]

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On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 2:46 AM, John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 12, 2010, at 3:46 PM, Ali Tofigh wrote:
>
> > Frequently my notes on meetings contain ideas for stuff to try. Does
> > anyone have any advice on how to handle these?
>
> Hi Ali,
>
> For ideas I just use a done TODO state called "NOTE".  I have the key M-z
> bound to create one and switch me to the Org-buffer, so that I can stay
> there and keep typing.
>
>
Same here -- I just use the SOMEDAY todo state for both ideas and things
that I really want to do someday.

Previously, I would use a separate IDEA and SOMEDAY states, but the two
concepts are similar enough that I combined them.

--Nate


> John
>
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