Contact me at bala@balaramadurai.net.
Email and I have always had a complicated relationship. I love Gmail’s web interface for quick triage, but my real work happens in Org Mode. For years, I tried the “all-in-Emacs” approach with mu4e and notmuch, but 500+ lines of config later, I realized I was fighting Gmail rather than working with it. That’s when I decided to build a bridge instead of a replacement.
We live in a world overflowing with opportunities to learn and grow. Yet, with so many demands on our time and attention, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and struggle to acquire new skills. This post will outline some key principles and a step-by-step method, inspired by productivity experts David Allen and Tiago Forte, to help you navigate the learning jungle and emerge victorious.
This blog post presents a guide to navigating the abundance of learning opportunities in the modern world. The post suggests applying a modified version of the “Get Things Done” method by David Allen and the “PARA” method by Tiago Forte. The first step is to “empty your teacup” by creating an inbox and a TODO list. Next, process each item in your TODO list by either deleting it, deferring it, delegating it, or doing it. Organise your work into projects, areas, resources and archives. For each project, define the success criteria, goals, deadline, and tasks, and identify the next action. The post also recommends scheduling regular weekly, quarterly, and yearly reviews to reflect and plan. For future planning, it suggests using the “Nine Windows” technique.
This is the video I made for the Emacs conference 2022 on my own experiences with trying to include handwritten notes in to my workflow.
Special thanks to the organizers of the Emacs conference for giving me the opportunity to present my experiences with a really old, but rock solid and awesome software. As they say, I wish Emacs had a text editor too!
Abstract of my talk:
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