To me, the central point of Kanban is to keep the Work-in-Progress queue small to optimize your state of flow. I have a "backlog.org" org-mode file in which I keep track of all my tasks, large or small. Any new tasks go in here.

I have a keystroke set up in Emacs that will open my to-do file for the day. All to-do files live in a common directory, are named "YYYYMMDD.todo", and are opened in org-mode. From my backlog file, I transfer a small number of items to my daily to-do file (usually 2 or 3). I then concentrate on these items until they are complete. Only when they are all marked as DONE, CANCELLED or WAITING do I move another couple of items to the daily to-do list.

I also try and time-box throughout the day as rigorously as I can. To do this, I use the Due app on my iPhone. This system has been working really well for me.

Related posts:

1. Micro-boxing for productivity
2. Integrating Emacs and XCode
3. Emacs and Ruby on Rails

Throughout 2011 though, I have written a paragraph each and every day in my iPhone. Kind of a mini-diary. It's been the longest period of regular writing that I have ever had. The factor that's made me write regularly for so long is that I put a repeating reminder in my iPhone. At 4:45pm each day my phone rings a bell, which reminds me that I need to write down my Momento for the day.

Now I'm trying to apply this same technique to my blogging - setting aside a time to write, and writing a blog post each day.

Capturing Information

I use Evernote to capture information throughout the day, especially interesting articles I read online. Within Safari, I can highlight the text I want to capture, press Cmd-C to copy it, and then press Ctrl-Cmd-V to paste it to a new note in Evernote. It's fast, and it also saves the URL for attribution

Emacs - org-mode and markdown

When I'm ready to write, I start off by creating a directory to write in. In fact, I have an Emacs function that creates the directory for me, along with an org-mode file, and a markdown file. The org-mode file is where I write the skeleton of the post, and the markdown file is where I write the prose. Here is the emacs lisp code that sets me up for blogging:

 
(defvar bh-blog-article-dir (expand-file-name "~/Dropbox/docs/blog-posts"))
 
(defun bh-blog-article-start ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((topic-name (read-string "Topic: "))
        (post-dir nil)
        )
    (setq base-post-topic (mapconcat (function (lambda (x) x))  (split-string topic-name) "-"))
    (setq post-dir  (concat bh-blog-article-dir "/" (format-time-string "%Y%m%d") "-" base-post-topic))
    (make-directory post-dir)
    (find-file (concat post-dir "/" base-post-topic ".org"))
    (find-file-other-window (concat post-dir "/" base-post-topic ".md"))
    )
  )
 

Uploading

When a post is ready to be uploaded, I have a Python script that converts the markdown file to HTML format, extracts the first H1 heading in the HTML to use as the post title, and then uploads the post to my blog.

Related posts:

1. Integrating Emacs and XCode
2. Opening a header file in Emacs
3. Emacs and Kanban

 
(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)
 

Related posts:

1. Integrating Emacs and XCode
2. Using The Remembrance Agent with Emacs
3. Emacs and Ruby on Rails

        <key>NSKeyEquivalent</key>
             <dict>
                 <key>default</key>
                 <string>/</string>
             </dict>
             <key>NSMenuItem</key>
             <dict>
                 <key>default</key>
                 <string>DEVONthink Pro/Lookup...</string>
             </dict>

Delete the "/" character from the "<string>/</string>" line. Once you log out and log back in, this should be fixed. Save a copy of this file before you change it, just in case you screw up.

Related posts:

1. Emacs cmd-key on Mac
2. Getting Postfix sending email on your Mac
3. Integrating Emacs and XCode