# Notes on how I use org-mode for work and life

I use [[org-mode]] a lot.  A LOT.  All day, every day, pretty much.  I use it to keep on top of both my work life and my private life.  At my desktop and on my phone.

It's served me very well over the years, but I'm currently changing the way I use it a bit.  For the better, hopefully.  I'm using it pretty well but could be doing so much better, I think.  I'm aiming to be a little more [[GTD]]-y. I'm going to try to note things down along the way, to tidy it up and hopefully to make a useful resource for others when I've settled with it.

Some key parts of how I use it:

-   org-mode, obviously
-   org-agenda
-   org-super-agenda
-   org-roam
-   org-timeline


## Project notes

I keep project notes in org-roam nodes.  Currently a bit of a hodge podge mixture of activity logs, thoughts, notes, reference materials.  Could perhaps be broken out into active stuff and reference material?  But working well enough for now.

Each project has its own node, and then quite often chunky subtasks will end up with their own node too (linked to from this main one).

I used to use org-roam just for more of a knowledge base kind of thing - less of these project notes.  But it's been a useful recent development.


## Activity logs

A newish thing is to archive done tasks into a section titled 'Activity history' in each project file.  So tasks get archived to their projects, rather than to a generic archive file.  I don't officially 'archive' them with org commands anymore then, I just move them to the project file.  Maybe I could use archive to subtree somehow?  To look at.

One very nice aspect of this is that you can run a clocktable on your 'Activity history' heading, to see how much time you've spent on a specific project.


## Next actions


### Adding NEXT as a todo keyword

Just a little thing, but:

```elisp
(setq org-todo-keywords
      '((sequence "TODO" "NEXT" "|" "DONE")))
```

To flag things as next actions in projects.


### Filtering just to see next actions

There will be many ways to do this.  At the moment, I'm looking in org-agenda and filtering by regex for NEXT.