By default Emacs Orgmode uses uppercase words for todo keywords. But having tens of entries marked with TODO and DONE in my file looked horribly cluttered to me. So I searched for alternatives. After a few months of experimentation, I decided on the following scheme. It served me well ever since:
To set this in org-mode, just add the following to the header (and reopen the document, for example with C-x C-v
):
#+SEQ_TODO: ❢ ☯ ⧖ | ☺ ✔ ⌚ ✘
or for the complex case (with details on what I do)
#+SEQ_TODO: ❢ ☯ ⚙ ✍ ⧖ | ☺ ✔ ⌚ ✘
Then use C-c C-t
or SHIFT-→
(shift + right arrow) to switch to the next state or SHIFT-←
(shift + left arrow) to switch to the previous state.
Anything before the |
in the SEQ_TODO is shown in red (not yet done), anything after the |
is show in green (done). Things which get triggered when something is done (like storing the time of a scheduled entry) happen when the state crosses the |
.
And with that, my orgmode documents are not only very useful but also look pretty lean. Just as good as having a GUI with images, but additionally I can access them over SSH and edit the todo state with any tool - because it’s just text.