Zamansky 23: Org Capture (Part 1)

Mike Zamansky has another video up. It’s number 23 in his Using Emacs Series and is part 1 of a sequence videos about Org capture. In this first installment, he covers the mechanics of Org capture: how to configure it, how to call it, and how to write your own custom capture templates.

If you’ve been around here for awhile, you know that the Org capture system is an integral part of my workflow. Like Zamansky, I record blog ideas with Org capture and use that entry as an anchor for the subsequent blog. After I write the actual blog post, I put a pointer to the blog text in the anchor entry as well as recording the time I worked on the post. Since each blog idea is a TODO item, my blog ideas file also tracks the state of the post: waiting to be started, ready to post, done, and so on. I should probably write about that process since it’s changed considerably since the last time I wrote about it.

I have several other templates that I use to capture journal entries, appointments, and other such information. All of this data is nicely displayed by the agenda system, which, presumably, Zamansky will talk about in his next video. The other strategy that I use is to insert tags into each entry. The capture templates prompt me for these so I don’t forget. The tags idea is something I learned from Karl Voit. The tags allow me to instantly display any entries with a certain tag. If, for example, I can’t remember the name of a nice restaurant I had dinner at last year, I can display all agenda items with a tag of dinner and quickly locate the entry that has the restaurant’s name.

It’s conventional wisdom that Org is Emacs’ killer app but the capture/agenda seem to be to be Org’s killer app. All my day-to-day planning and recording of events is centered around it and it fits in seamlessly with my workflow. If you aren’t using it take a look at Zamansky’s video (and the following ones on Org capture) and try it out for yourself. You won’t be sorry.

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