Re: Re: Active timestamp with notification in advance

[Wanrong Lin <wanrong.lin@gmail.com>]

Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>>
>> Thanks a lot for the suggestions, but manual workaround does not work 
>> for me, as I want org to take care of giving me a notification in 
>> advance in the agenda buffer.
>>
>> For SCHEDULED and plain active time stamp, I don't think we need to 
>> have a default ahead notification setting as with deadlines, but it 
>> would really be nice to support the <..... -3d> format. It would be 
>> even nicer to have a new keyword (like "SCHEDULED@") that indicates a 
>> strictly scheduled item (just a fancy term for "appointment") and 
>> hence a default ahead notification setting can be applied. The lack 
>> of real appointment support in org-mode in fact is a little bit 
>> puzzling to me, since SCHEDULED item may or may not be strictly 
>> scheduled, while plain time stamp item may or may not be something 
>> that needs to take actions on (as it could be just an event).
>
> Hmmm, lets discuss this for a while.
>
> One thing is that I have been thinking for a while already if we 
> should have an APPOINTMENT keyword
> to mark plain time stamps that actually are appointments, and in this 
> way to differentiate them
> from events that you'd like to have in your agenda.
>
> However, about ahead warnings of appointments.  The way I see it is this:
> One important goal (at least for me) is to keep my agenda as empty as 
> possible,
> listing only the things I really need to do.  If I have a meeting in a 
> few days
> and I get an ahead warning, this only distracts me.  Because each time 
> I see
> that reminder, I need to think *again* why I did put that reminder and 
> what I
> am supposed to be doing to prepare it.
>
> Isn't  is much better to just put the meeting on the agenda with a 
> timestamp and then
> immediately think about *tasks* that I need to do before the meeting.  
> List those
> tasks under the meetig headline, and assign deadlines to them - you 
> will get
> the ahead warning.  This seems to me is a much saner way of working.  
> But I
> am interested to hear your use case - why do you want to be reminded of
> future appointments *each* time you look at your list for today?
>
> For meetings where I do not have anything to prepare, I do take a look 
> every
> morning on an extended agenda of 10 days, to see what is coming.
> Once a day, and that is it.
>
> - Carsten
>
>

A simple example is: sometimes I have very early dental appointment, 
like 8:00AM. But usually I don't get up that early. So if I open my 
computer at 9:00AM and find out I have missed an appointment, then the 
agenda is useless. And I will get haunted by the feeling that "I might 
still have missed something even if I checked my agenda".

I do agree that too many ahead notifications is distracting. But on the 
other hand, my imagination of the ideal org usage is: I look at today's 
agenda, and things are planned well for me, I just need to follow the 
agenda blindly (well, ideally). This is the reward for my upfront 
planning, meaning if I take my diligence in planning tasks when the 
issues just come up, I don't have to hassle around in the last minute. I 
want to have that security feeling of "I won't miss anything if I 
checked my agenda".

To achieve that goal, sometimes I need some sense of what is going to 
happen or what I am supposed to do tomorrow, or next a few days, 
depending on the task and context. To check agendas ahead every day is a 
good habit, but is not reliable, and I want to eliminate dependency on 
those habits as much as possible. I want to rely on only one habit: 
check today's agenda.

To reduce the distractions from those ahead notifications, we can do the 
following:

1. Don't give too early notifications. In my above example, probably one 
day ahead is good enough
2. Group those ahead notifications at the end of today's agenda, maybe 
with a divider to separate them out.

Another perspective to my above argument is: many of us use org (and 
emacs) because of its flexibility. It is not the easiest to learn to 
use, but once you master it, you can configure it to suit your own 
style. And hence I don't expect everyone will agree with my planning 
strategy, but if let's say 1/3 of the users think the feature has its 
value, I think it is well worth consideration, given it is an option 
that does no harm to people who choose not to use it.

Thanks for reading this.

Wanrong