When I first heard of org-mode, I thought org-mode, like any other task management app, would just work out of the box and be my task management planner inside emacs. But, I was so wrong. Org-mode is so much more than that. Instead of thinking of org-mode as a "plug-and-play task management software", one should think of org mode as a toolset for building their own personal knowledge management system.
There are many interesting articles on the internet about what is
org-mode and how should it be used. Readers who are not familiar with org mode, should checkout org-mode's official website.
File Organization
I keep my org files in ~/org folder. The following table describes
various subfolders and files in ~/org folder.
| Path | Meaning |
| ~/org/archives/ | Folder containing archived org notes |
| ~/org/projects/ | Folder containing project specific notes |
| ~/org/journal/ | Folder containing journal entries |
| ~/org/scribble.org | Org file containing un-organized notes / tasks |
| ~/org/work.org | Org file containing organized work related items |
| ~/org/personal.org | Org file containing organized personal items |
| ~/org/lists.org | Org file containing various lists (such movies to watch, travel lists etc) |
Syncing and Backup
Git is great for maintaining backup, but it's not great for on-the-fly
syncing across multiple devices. On the other hand, services like
google-drive or dropbox are great for syncing but aren't too great for
backups. So, I use git for backups and google-drive for syncing. This
~/org folder is essentially a clone of a GitHub private repository
and it is also configured as a folder that should continuously
synchronize with a folder on Google drive.
However, there's one catch. Backing up your .git folder on google
drive or dropbox is not a great idea. Imagine what would happen if two
computers are run git commands on this folder simultaneously. Also,
backing up .git on google drive / dropbox generates unnecessary upload
/ download traffic for google drive / dropbox. So, instead what I do
is that inside ~/org folder, I created a symlink called .git which
points to "~/dot-gits/org". So, instead of backing up the entire git
folder to google drive, I only backup a symlink which I can use on
different computers to point to local git folders.
This setup allows me to backup org files on GitHub and also continuously sync them across different computers.