Emacs org mode as a work diary

Question

Is emacs org mode a good choice if you want to maintain a work diary?

I have tried to use it and archive old tasks (TODOs) but is there an easy way see which tasks I worked on for example last week (some task have been timestamped more than one day) ?

Answer 1

To see what I have done by day (there is probably a way to limit it to a particular period of time, but putting that together is a low priority for me), here is what I do. Start with C-c a that brings up the orgmode agenda menu, then L to display the timeline for the current file and finally l to turn log mode on.

That gives me output that looks like this:

...
Wednesday   9 March 2011
Clocked:   (7:21) One of my tasks
Clocked:   (0:07) Another of my tasks
...

Given that this is in emacs, there is probably a way to make this simpler/quicker to use, but this is what I do at the moment.

Answer 2

I've never tried it yet, but org-mode can be used to clock your working times. See : http://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-work-time.html

Answer 3

I personally have a binding to insert a now timestamp, and scatter them over the tasks I work on while I do so. Then, I can see what I've been doing in the agenda (C-a a a), looking at past days.
^{Maybe rayners' idea of the timeline is better, I just never used it.}
It has the advantage you can put multiple temistamps for some tasks, without depending on state changes (which I personaly don't log).

It goes :

;; Insert immediate active timestamp
(define-key global-map (kbd "<f9>")
'(lambda () (interactive)
   (when (eq major-mode 'org-mode)
     (org-insert-time-stamp nil t nil)
     ;; (insert "\n")
     )))

And may requiere org-agenda-skip-timestamp-if-done to be nil.