As you all know, we here at the Irreal bunker are all in on Org mode. We use it for everything from taking notes, keeping a journal, setting reminders for tasks, and writing this blog. Virtually all our writing is done with Org. Because we hardly ever write anything out by hand, that means everything that we write.
I just came across a 3 year old post by Aditya Athalye that discusses how and why he uses Org mode for writing. It’s an interesting post and well worth revisiting. Athalye doesn’t use Org for any of its calendaring or managing of TODOs features, just for writing. That writing includes his blog, note taking, slide decks for live presentations, interactive computational notebooks, and diagramming.
His story, mutadis mutandis could be mine. I do use some of the calendaring and TODO management functions but mostly I use it for writing, including keeping notes and data records. Athalye likes it for the same sorts of reasons that I do:
- Org mode files are plain text and don’t depend on any particular app—although its natural domain is, of course, Emacs. That means that your data is portable and that you can move it anywhere whenever you like. You are not locked into any particular application. It also means that it’s easy to build pipelines to process your data because it is, after all, just text.
- Your data is “local first”. That means you always have a local copy and can’t be locked out from your data at the whim of some algorithm or the demise of the hosting company.
As Athalye says, Org is a huge app and has lots of moving parts so it can be intimidating to get started. His advice, like mine, is to start slowly. Use it to solve one small problem without worrying about all the other functionality. When you have that under control, move on to another problem.
There is, to be sure, a lot to learn and Athalye has nice list of Org resources that you can use to get started. His post is a bit long but there’s a lot useful information in it. Definitely worth a few minutes of you time.