I am planning to add some hooks to org-mode to allow pushing clock in and clock out events to an external web service.
While I was thinking through whether this was worth working on, I realized something about how I approach tasks these days, and there’s actually a philosophical component to this work.
I love the idea of org-mode; I love org-roam; and I love org tasks. But for personal tasks, so much context and work does not take place in Emacs, having to go back there every time is a lot of work, and things that require a lot of work do not get done often. Context switching should generally be avoided.
Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion that org-mode is acceptable for four contexts:
- computer
- office
- comms (email, phone)
- read (occasionally)
The other contexts should go through a more flexible system:
- home
- errands
- anywhere
- read
- agendas
The flexible system will vary based on needs, but I have found a functional home in Todoist. It has webhooks for notifications to my time tracking system, easy inbox additions which is important for my GTD-lite style of task management. And a very well thought-out UX/UI.
What that means, however, is that I need an aggregation point for tracking my time. It’s not enough to use org timers for everything, or webhooks in Todoist. I need both. So I’m going to set out to build some light emacs hooks from the org-clock-in and org-clock out methods. I will also need a hook on org-add-note so I can sync notes to my tracking software. All of this should be for an end, though honestly, I don’t have a great way to aggregate and show the time data I’m accumulating in Vrobbler. But that will come. For now I’d love a way to keep track of certain contexts in Org, and others in Todoist. I wonder if there’s value in even having blocks in one, like Todoist, where I know to check in org mode for my schedule during certain blocks of the day … maybe that would go better in a calendar?