Beginning to see the light with org-mode

Posted by Mick S
Sep 8, 2015 at 10:06 PM

Like many regular posters on this forum, I’ve spent years trying to perfect my work-flow. There are only two pieces of software that have stood the test of time for me: Emacs org-mode and Ultra Recall (Directory Opus gets a special mention).

The major advantage of both is that data can be stored as plain text and accessed from almost anywhere. I typically keep data as plain text, organised on disk in a folder structure synced to a UR database.

While this is perhaps not quite as user friendly as some other approaches, it’s unbeatable in terms of power and flexibility. I also rely quite heavily on Directory Opus to help keep things tidy.

Org-mode is incredibly powerful and with a little work can be made to fulfill an amazing range of tasks with relative ease. I’ve been a long time lurker on this forum and have often thought to myself when reading of some poster’s data management tribulations “what this person really needs is org-mode”. To be sure, org-mode does have a fairly steep learning curve but I’d say the same for Connected Text and many other popular applications. I can’t edit a Connected Text file on my phone or tablet but anything that can read plain text can deal with org-mode to at least a basic extent.