Donovan R.

What if you want an agenda to keep track of TODOs and scheduled tasks, but you only have Emacs at your disposal?
You might find yourself in a situation where you don’t have access to the internet, Outlook, a smartphone or a physical planner.
Or, like me, you might simply prefer to keep your agenda in a straightforward plain text file.
It’s not a common problem, but I found it intriguing enough to write this little Emacs survival guide for anyone interested.

If you know nothing about Emacs, don’t worry. This guide is completely beginner-friendly.
I wrote the initial notes while I was still learning how to use the agenda in Emacs myself, so you’ll be just fine, even if it’s your first time running Emacs.

Before anything else, how to Execute command in Emacs

To run a command in Emacs, press M-x or Alt+x.
This open the prompt in the mini-buffer (at the bottom of Emacs) where you can type and execute commands.

Open the agenda view

To access the agenda menu, run M-x org-agenda RET (Alt+x, org-agenda, <Enter>).
Next, press a to open to the agenda view.
You’ll see an empty agenda first, and that’s no surprise since we haven’t added any tasks yet.

Schedule a task with org-capture

Creating a capture

To create a new task, invoke org-capture with M-x org-capture RET.
A menu will appear for you to select a capture template.
Press t to create new task.
A buffer will open where you can enter your TODO item

Scheduling a date

To add a scheduled date to your task:

• Run M-x org-schedule RET to bring up the calendar.
• A calendar view will appear below. You can pick a date using Shift + <Arrow Keys>, or simply input the date and time you want.
  Example: 1 nov 9am, saturday 8pm, +2sun 6pm (meaning 2 Sundays from now at 6pm).
• Once you’ve chosen the date, press <enter>.

Tip :

• The shortcut C-c C-s also run org-schedule.

Your TODO item will now have a SCHEDULED: line with the date you chose.

You can repeat this process anytime to reschedule your task.

Saving the task

There are two main ways to save your task:

• Use save-buffer with C-x C-s or M-x save-buffer RET to save and keep the buffer open for further editing.
• Use save-buffer-kill-terminal with C-c C-c or M-x save-buffer-kill-terminal RET to save and close the capture buffer.

By default, tasks are saved into a file named .notes in your home directory.
To check this, run M-x describe-variable RET org-default-notes-file RET.

Viewing the scheduled task in the agenda

If you return to the agenda view (M-x org-agenda RET a) now, it will still be empty.
That’s because Org-agenda needs to know which files to scan for tasks.
To fix this:

• Open your task file with M-x find-file RET or C-x C-f, then entering ~/.notes.
• Add it to the agenda files by running M-x org-agenda-file-to-front RET or C-c [.

Now, when you reopen the agenda view (C-c a a), your scheduled task should appear!

How to use the agenda

• To refresh the view, press g.
• To see more days, add a prefix argument like C-u 14 before running M-x org-agenda RET a. This shows 14 days in the agenda.
• To jump to the task in its file, navigate to it in the agenda and then press <Enter>.

Re-schedule a date

You can reschedule tasks right from the agenda using Shift + <Arrow Keys> or M-x org-schedule RET to pick a new date.
Refresh the view with g to see your changes.

Change state (TODO, DONE)

When you complete a task, change its state by using M-x org-agenda-todo RET or C-c C-t.
This cycle the task between TODO and DONE.

And that’s it folks!

What else can be said?

I’ve covered just a bit of Org-agenda in here, but the Org-mode ecosystem is truly a beast when it comes to personal organization and note taking.
There is so much you can do with it. It’s a real rabbit hole!
Org-mode can be your agenda, notebook, time tracker, habit tracker, and more. You can even use it as a full-fledged spreadsheet, much like Excel.

With so many features, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed.
Personally, I like to explore how other people use Org-mode and then pick only the ideas that fit my own workflow. I leave the rest for later discoveries.
It’s a sane way to learn step by step without getting lost in the endless possibilities of Org-mode and Emacs.

What I’ve shown above is a very simple workflow. It is very easy to adopt, and it’s more than enough for effective day-to-day usage.
I hope this proves useful to someone out there. And if not, it might come in handy for me later.

Since we had a bit of free time on Saturday, we decided to visit my mum and sister in the countryside.
We also planned to check on the trees we’ve been planting a few miles away during the summer.
For context, we planted around 200 trees along with some fruit trees, back in February. We’ve also been growing sweet potatoes.
It had been a long time since I last visit the fields, and I was so excited to go back.
Who knows, maybe we could bring some sweet potatoes home with us?

The region where I spent my childhood is known for its unpredictable, rainy weather.
The plantation is located off-road, and when it rains, getting there can be a bit tricky and even dangerous.
So before leaving, I asked my mother if the weather was good enough for us to reach the plantation. She assured me it should be fine.
Sadly, just few miles before we arrived at my family’s village, it started to rain heavily.
My mother said it had been perfectly clear just an hour earlier. The weather had suddenly changed, which meant no field visit for us.

There is a saying in Madagascar: “Tsy mena-mivadika tahaka ny andro ririnina” which litterally means, “Changing shamelessly, just like winter days”.
I used to hear it all the time without paying too much attention to what it truly meant. Now I totally get it!

No sweet potatoes for us this time, and we have to postpone our visit to the plantation.
Still, it was nice catching up with my family despite the setback.
They prepared rice with fried fish and romazava for lunch, followed by hot milk for dessert.
A truly warm and welcoming meal!

Taking digital notes is something I do a lot. Not because I particularly enjoy writing all the time or because I’m especially good at it, but because I want to understand myself better and gain a little more control over my life.
Taking notes is like building a time machine that tracks how my mind works.
I do it also because it’s fun to rediscover my old self through my notes.
Sometimes I made silly decisions, other times I appeared wiser than I do today.
Sometimes I find my belief swinging from one extreme to the opposite like a pendulum.

It’s June 2025, and I want to share with you what kind of notes I take and an overview of my current workflow for note-taking.

As for today, I’m using both Logseq and Emacs to take notes.

Logseq

Logseq still holds most of my old notes, and I rely heavily on it for capturing media-related content (videos, Excalidraw diagrams, and more).

What notes do I take in Logseq?

Quotes

I capture quotes from other people that resonates with me, as well as my own insights.
I use the Logesq banner plugin to randomly display these qutes in the banner.
I love this mechanism of resurfacing quotes.

Contacts and People info

When I interact with someone, I note the interaction in the journal page, using their name as a tag (which also creates a page in Logseq).
Later, I can fill in more details about the person, such as email addresses or phone numbers on their page.
From their page, I can quickly check every interaction in the backlink section.

Youtube links

I use the youtube timestamps when learning something new or bookmarking some interesting part of a video.
This allows me to quickly jump to the relevant part later.

Excalidraw

I use the build-in excalidraw to brainstorm or create presentations.
I maintain a vertical calendar in Excalidraw where I jot down some notes about what I might want to do each month.
I use the green color to separate what’s done from the rest.
I find this gives me a convenient overview of the year.

Presentation

Logseq is excellent at structuring ideas with bullet points.
The Bullet Threading plugin combined with the built-in zoom in / out feature of Logseq makes it a very good tool for presentation.

Emacs

I rely extensively on Org mode for note-taking on Emacs.

What notes do I take in Emacs?

Long-form notes

Insights, Technical documentation, Blog Posts, Journals, etc, when I’m in the mood for a long-form writing, I switch to Denote and start typing.
I don’t use many of Denote’s features. I just run M-x denote , fill in the title and tag, and start writing.
It’s simple and gets the job done!

Project

I have a folder named project where I put org file for each project I’m working on.
I don’t use a specific structure yet. Just bullet points for todos and scheduled items with notes for each project task.
The org files are linked to Org agenda for convenience.

Time tracker

Similarly, I have org files for tasks. For example work.org for work-related tasks.
I track the time I’m working on tasks using org-timer-set-timer combined with org-clock-in and org-clock-out.
And I use Org capture template for convenience.

Event Scheduling and Agenda

As above, I have an agenda.org file that is linked to my Org agenda for all my scheduled event.
Using of course org-schedule for scheduling a task.

Synchronization

Wether I’m using Logseq or Emacs, all my notes are linked to a private Git repository. This setup ensures that my data is always synchronized and backed up.
It’s simple and reliable.

In summary

This is my current workflow. Nothing set in stone, just how I do things right now.
Like everything else, it changes and evolves over time as I learn and grow.
Who know what it’ll look like in the next month or next year?
For now, this is what works for me.

It still feels so strange to me to see people intentionally closing their eyes and blindly follow the crowd, regardless of the direction they’re heading.
When you witness large groups repeatedly falling victim to scams like MLMs (Multi-Level Marketing), miracle-maker sects, and similar schemes, it’s truly astonishing.
I’m sure that at some point in their journey they had doubts about the path they were taking, yet instead of bailing out, they doubled down or even risked everything they had. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) must’ve kicked in so strongly that it overrode any logical thinking.

I’m from Madagascar, the world’s largest producer of Vanilla.
But today we are not here to discuss the Vanilla spice.
Instead, this is part of the My Emacs Journey series, and I’m going to talk about Vanilla Emacs!

If you’ve read my article on My note taking journey, you know I didn’t actually start with Vanilla Emacs. My journey began with Spacemacs, then moved to Doom Emacs before I finally decided to go Vanilla.
If you are curious about that last transition, then I invite you for another long read where I explain my reasoning in more depth.

It is really easy to drift away from the initial intentions during the writing process.
When I wrote my previous blog post, I had so much I wanted to share. New ideas kept pouring into my brain.
At the same time, I found myself wanting to revise my words, because they never seemed to fully convey what I want to say.
The process of editing is really long. I feel like every time I go back to my writing, there is always something I want to change.
And that might be for the best but still, it’s a weird experience.

I’ve been reflecting to my previous failed attempts of using Emacs and wondering what could’ve been done differently.
So as usual I started jotting down notes related to how I felt and where my pain points were as if I were to go back in time and teach my past self.
I often do this to ensure I understand what I am doing and can transfer the knowledge and insights to someone else if needed.
Over months of discovering Emacs, I’ve accumulated a lot of tips and tricks on the features and packages of Emacs. And now I want to share them as blog posts.
Because I have so many notes, mostly unfinished/in-progress/unpolished, making a series of multiple posts out of them seems to make more sense.
It’ll give me the necessary time to review my notes and make some light editing on them before publishing.
So I’m going to share “My Emacs Journey” with you. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
The first note I’ve written is titled : “Start with Dired”

After some hesitation, I finally decided to put my thoughts out into the world.
Publishing my blog wasn’t an easy decision—I went back and forth on it for a while.
But now that I have a VPS to tinker with, it feels like the perfect excuse to finally go live!

In my previous article, I shared how I streamlined my search process on Linux by creating a tool that allows me to quickly Google selected text without interrupting my workflow. After a week of enjoying that solution, I found myself wanting to replicate that same efficiency in my Windows environment.

I recently finished reading “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn, and I found it to be a compelling exploration of important philosophical questions. The book talk about humanity’s place in the world.