In the article Capture the monkey I wrote about the Capture feature from Org Mode, which gives you the ability to create task items on the fly. Now I will show you how I use this feature to create so-called TODO items.

You will see that the introduction I give you is enough to start and use the TODO feature to be productive in your task management daily grind. If you're looking for more detailed information about the TODO items, please consider to read the Org Mode manual.

Here's how to use it

Ok, let's create our first TODO item.

To structure an Org Mode document you use headlines, and these start with one or more stars:

* Top level
** Second level
*** Third level

Now you see how to create headlines, to make a headline into a TODO item, just add the word TODO after the stars and you get your first TODO item:

** TODO Create your first todo item

By default, a TODO item has two states, TODO and DONE and to rotate through the different states use (org-shiftright) or (org-shiftleft) functions. At this time it just switches between TODO and DONE, but later when you have more keywords, it will also iterate through these.

Example of a TODO item and a finished one marked as DONE:

** TODO Not done yet!
** DONE I'm done!
   CLOSED: [<Timestamp>]

You see that in the DONE marked task item is a CLOSED keyword with a timestamp beside it. By default, if you finish a task item Org Mode will add a timestamp and a CLOSED keyword, to inform you about the finished time of the task. This is very helpful to get more information in the agenda view.

By default the variable org-log-done is set to 'time, which means that after you finish a task a timestamp will be added, as already mentioned above. But you could also add a note. Just assign 'note to the org-log-done variable and Org Mode will prompt you for an additional note along with the timestamp.

One of my favorite features I couldn't work without are the clock commands. Imagine you're starting with a new task, you have to fix a bug in your code and have to manage the time you need to fix it. Org Mode comes along with punch-clock powers, which makes this kind of job very easy.

The function (org-clock-in) starts the clock on the current item you're in and the vice-versa function (org-clock-out) stops the clock.

Check out what this looks like:

** TODO what's the amount of time needed
   CLOCK: [2011-10-26 Wed 14:31]--[2011-10-26 Wed 15:10] =>  0:39

In the example above I started the clock and stopped the clock 39 minutes later. This feature is really great, because in the agenda view of Org Mode this clock information will give you an overview over how long we needed to fix our bugs.

For now you know enough to manage your task items. Go ahead and try this out.

Next I will show you how easy it is to create your own TODO like keywords, for example something like FEATURE, BUG or SUPPORT.

Your own keywords

In my daily grind I use a few more keywords than just a simple TODO for my tasks. Org Mode gives you the possibility to add our own keywords really easily. The variable org-todo-keywords gets all the task types we want to have:

(setq org-todo-keywords
       '((sequence "TODO" "|" "DONE")
       (sequence "FEATURE" "|" "COMPLETED")
       (sequence "BUG" "|" "FIXED")
       (sequence "|" "CANCELED")))

Great, now you're ready to use this just like TODO before.

What I really like is the possibility to create fast access TODO states by just adding single keys in parentheses after a keyword.

Fast access state keys:

(setq org-todo-keywords
       '((sequence "TODO(t)" "|" "DONE(d)")
       (sequence "FEATURE(f)" "|" "COMPLETED(c)")
       (sequence "BUG(b)" "|" "FIXED(x)")
       (sequence "|" "CANCELED(a)")))

If you now use the (org-todo) function, Org Mode prompts you for the kind of task key which you want to use, so you don't have to cycle through the task types with the (org-shiftleft) or (org-shiftright) functions anymore.

Functions and default keybindings

Summary

You see Org Mode's TODO feature is very powerful and still easy to use. You get in touch with it in no time and you can use it for your daily programming routine.

There is certainly a lot of more stuff about the TODO Org Mode feature and it would be wise of you to check it out. Org Mode TODO manual