Ben Maughan has another great post in his Org mode series. This time, he augments his simple TODO list with schedules and deadlines. Org mode is famously flexible and that can make it hard to settle on a strategy for handling and displaying your tasks and agenda. Maughan shows us how he does it and provides some excellent ideas.
The real benefit of his post, I think, are the configuration items he uses to get his desired behavior. He explains each one in the comments so you can see what they’re supposed to do and look at the results in the accompanying screen shots. You can pick and choose from his list of configuration items to get a behavior that works for you.
It’s important, though, to remember Carsten’s advice for setting up your task management: don’t try to create a final strategy from the beginning. Start small and simple and let your strategy grow organically as you discover what works best for you. That means you shouldn’t blindly adopt someone else’s configuration. Rather, use interesting configurations like Maughan’s to discover what’s possible and steal the pieces that fit in with your workflow.
As I’ve said before, Maughan’s posts are useful and interesting so you should definitely put Pragmatic Emacs in your feed. The posts are usually short and pithy so you won’t have to spend a lot of time with them. A definite win for a small investment.