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by Jtsummers 3559 days ago
For daily tasks, at work, the first thing I do is fire up Outlook and emacs.

Outlook has my calendar (very MS heavy corporate environment) so it displays every task, meeting, appointment easily. Mails that come in get put away (ok, not great with the zero-inbox thing, but I try).

In emacs I have a "daily activity log", it's the second thing I open each day. I create an entry for the day, tagging it with the project(s) I'm working on (these get added through the day as things come up, or at the start if I know it's on my agenda). I usually know what I'll work on that day so I'll create an entry for it, and open the linked org file for the project itself. So an entry might look like:

  ** <<2016-09-23>>                    :foo:
  *** TODO [[file:foo.org][foo]] [0/2]
  - [ ] Deal with PR-128
  - [ ] Build and install image
(NB: <<STRING>> in a headline in org-mode makes it a target for links like [[STRING]] or [[file:foo.org::STRING]])

Those bulleted tasks are what I intend to work on that day. If they don't get checked off, I can't mark the project's work as DONE, and I'll refile them later. I should probably automate this somehow, perhaps collect all incomplete tasks at the top of the log file for easier refiling. Presently `C-c / t` does the trick for finding them. foo.org will have a more detailed description of what I'm doing, possibly linking to other things. The bullets vary in detail by the end of the day, and may have several sub-bullets and links. Sometimes project boundaries are fuzzy, I just pick something or create more levels:

  *** TODO Related projects
  **** TODO foo
  **** TODO bar
2 comments

One nice thing about having your calendar, or a todo list longer than a day, in org, is that you can use the fantastic agenda mode.

Also, org has support for literate programming, multiple files in one org file (at least one person stores all their config files in an org file). It also supports publishing, a rudimentary spreadsheet system, and countless other things. There's a reason why so many swear by it.

Just started using org mode recently. It is fantastic. I still haven't figured out how to date TODOs and organize them around different org files. The org file fragment you've provided is interesting and has given me some ideas. I've also gotten into the habit of encrypting my org files - it is somewhat annoying having to type in the password every time you launch or save but it's worth it for the peace of mind.
You can look at this: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/orgtutorial_dto.html

That should help you with some of the stuff you just mentioned.