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The Emacs Planning Habits of a Questionably Effective Person: My 40-year journey of planning with Emacs, Org Mode, paper journals, etc.

George Jones - gmj@pobox.com

The following image shows where the talk is in the schedule for Sat 2026-12-12. Solid lines show talks with Q&A via BigBlueButton. Dashed lines show talks with Q&A via IRC or Etherpad.

Schedule for SaturdaySaturdaySat 9:00- 9:10 Saturday opening remarkssat-openSat 9:10- 9:30 The Emacs Planning Habits of a Questionably Effective Person: My 40-year journey of planning with Emacs, Org Mode, paper journals, etc.planningSat 9:50-10:10 Emacslisten: Controlling Emacs by voicelistenSat 10:30-11:00 Multi-dimensional information processing with Emacs and Emacspeak: a blind man's perspectiveemacspeakSat 11:10-11:30 ltx-talk: Accessible presentations with ox-beamerltx-talkSat 1:00- 1:20 Plots with ROOTs: Resilient data visualization with Emacs, Org and gnuplotplotsSat 1:40- 2:00 Personal task management under stress (with Org mode)tasksSat 2:20- 2:30 How I solved Org Mode's biggest mobile and collaboration problemsmobileSat 2:50- 3:10 Hyperbole, My Dear WatsonhyperboleSat 3:30- 3:50 Hyperbole Koutliner: The Best Autonumbered, Hyperlinking Outliner for EmacskoutlinerSat 4:10- 4:30 Close the writing accountability gap with EmacswritingSat 4:50- 5:00 Saturday closing remarks / open sessionsat-closeSat 10:30-11:30 [Panel] Improving the Emacs Community: Onboarding, Participation, and GrowthcommunitySat 1:00- 1:15 Emacs as my portable user space across operating platformsportableSat 1:35- 1:55 Emacs everywhere: A fun romp through esoteric operating systemsosSat 2:15- 2:25 My Space Cadet Deck - an Android Stream Deck replacement with deep Emacs integrationcadetSat 2:45- 3:00 El Remoto: browse any GitHub repos without cloning themremotoSat 3:20- 3:40 æmacs: having a hoot with a guile emacsguileSat 4:00- 4:20 It's Probably Not a Virusvirus9 AM EST10 AM EST11 AM EST12 PM EST1 PM EST2 PM EST3 PM EST4 PM EST5 PM EST

Format: 20-min talk ; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room https://media.emacsconf.org/2026/current/bbb-planning.html Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-planning
Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-planning
Discuss on IRC: #emacsconf
Status: Ready to stream

Times in different time zones:
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~9:10 AM - 9:30 AM EST (US/Eastern)
which is the same as:
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~8:10 AM - 8:30 AM CST (US/Central)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~7:10 AM - 7:30 AM MST (US/Mountain)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~6:10 AM - 6:30 AM PST (US/Pacific)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~2:10 PM - 2:30 PM UTC
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~3:10 PM - 3:30 PM CET (Europe/Paris)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~4:10 PM - 4:30 PM EET (Europe/Athens)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~7:40 PM - 8:00 PM IST (Asia/Kolkata)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~10:10 PM - 10:30 PM +08 (Asia/Singapore)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~11:10 PM - 11:30 PM JST (Asia/Tokyo)
Find out how to watch and participate

Description

This is the story of my 40+ year journey using planning tools, many of them inside Emacs since the advent of Org Mode. This is not a "now I know how to plan things perfectly" talk. I will demo Emacs planning workflows and tools I use, that I have used, and that I'm experimenting with now. You are probably a better planner than I am. You probably get more things done than I do. Sometimes getting things done is the point. Sometimes shiny objects are the point. Sometimes avoiding shiny objects is the point. I'll touch on all that.

Here are some of the "Try this at home, kids" things I will touch on:

  • Org and Denote capture templates
  • My custom org-todo-keywords
  • The Org Agenda: Per-project files vs. a single diary.org
  • Habits, schedules, and weekly "DONE" and "Worked On" summaries
  • Migrating to Denote
  • "Strange new worlds" with AI/gptel creeping into my workflows

Sometimes life happens outside Emacs. I admit it. I will touch on how my daily paper journaling and other inputs interact with my Emacs workflows.

About the speaker:

George Jones has been noodling around Emacsen since the TECO days (pre GNU) and had a bit to do with MicroEmacs finding its way onto the Amiga and USENET. Since the advent of Org mode much of his planning happens there. In this talk George will run through demos of current workflows with capture templates, custom TODO keywords, Org Agenda, habits, schedules and the use of newcomers including denote and gptel.

Questions or comments? Please e-mail gmj@pobox.com

Back to the talks Previous by time: Saturday opening remarks Next by time: Emacslisten: Controlling Emacs by voice Track: General - Watch