On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> wrote:

My guess is that this allows him to see what group an item belongs to in
the agenda view, since categories are listed in the left column.

But this is like asking why someone puts their pots in the cupboard next
to the oven rather than above the sink, or why someone uses legal pads
rather than a spiral notebook.

And if you were setting up a kitchen for the first time, wouldn't you ask that kind of question? :)

My recommendation: Just start creating trees, use only a few TODO
states, and allow the organization to evolve in the way that feels the
most comfortable to you.

At the time of this writing, I've stumbled because I have had one file called TODO which is becoming too cluttered for me to process usefully. I used C-c C-v to show only TODO items, but some TODO items have ellipses indicating content while some have ellipses indicating DONE items afterwards, so I end up expanding a bunch of DONE items. I have a TODO state called BLOCKING which clutters the view too. I have a vague sense that learning how to use the agenda would help, but I haven't gotten to it yet, since I've been trying to put together a coherent org-mode setup by cargo-culting things from the advanced users' setups. This probably isn't the best way to go about it, of course..

I thought org-mode level 1 was pretty easy to learn -- but I'm really struggling to get to level 2.

Ethan