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Emacs org-mode

A few years ago I found it harder and harder to keep track of all my responsibilities so I decided to try the Todo.txt method of GTD. It wasn't bad, but not long after I came across a great tutorial describing basic functions of Emacs org-mode. Today all my tasks and projects are managed by org-mode, since it's much more then just a tool to tick of your TODO items. One of the most useful functions for me is the clocking function, that keeps track of time I spent on a particular project. It also has great integration with the rest of the environment; it can link to any kind of document, e-mail or Usenet article and export to many different formats. It has a simple and effective plain text system and you can learn to use it in a few minutes, for any other advanced functionality you can consult the extensive org manual.

Similar to org-mode is the Remember Mode, it's much simpler, and some maybe already use it for taking notes. I want to mention that org-mode has great integration with remember. Before I connected the two I already had a general notes.org file where I stored anything that was not that important to go in one of the main files... and it was rather big by the time I decided to use remember. So, this is how I configured it so that any new note gets placed under the right headline:

;; Included in org-mode section of my .emacs
(require 'remember)
(org-remember-insinuate)

;; Notes file
(setq org-default-notes-file (concat org-directory "/notes.org"))
;; Notes templates
(setq org-remember-templates
 '(("Note" ?n   "* NOTE %?\n %i\n %a" "~/.org/notes.org" "Notes")
   ("Download" ?d "* DL %?\n %i\n %a" "~/.org/notes.org" "Download")
   ("Login" ?l "* LOGIN %?\n %i\n %a" "~/.org/notes.org" "Logins")
   ("Music" ?m "* MUSIC %?\n %i\n %a" "~/.org/notes.org" "Music")
   ("Idea" ?i "* %^{Title}\n %i\n %a" "~/.org/notes.org" "Brainstorm")))

Hitting "C-x r" prompts me to describe a note I'm entering, and eventually places it in the correct section. It's also very flexible, if you had anything in your selection it will automatically be included, and if it was invoked while editing a file it will generate a link to that file or section of the file.