Journaling setup

GTD.org

Journaling setup in orgmode

Here’s the info about setting up the journaling system.

The entry for the journaling template I use is this:

(setq org-capture-templates
      (quote (
	      ("j" "Journal" 
	       plain (file+datetree (concat org-directory "journal.org")) 
	       "___________________________________________________________ *%U* ___\n%?\n" )))
)

The trick for the time display is to define the variable org-time-stamp-custom-formats and have the journal file include a line like #+STARTUP: customtime.

The %U specifier in the template normally inserts the date plus time. I have adapted the custom time format specifier so that the second part of the variable just formats the time and not the date.

A downside of this is that all datetime fields in the journal.org file will be displayed as time only. I’m looking into the %<...> (not in the manual, seems to format a generic time-string) specifier or the %(sexp) specifier the custom time adaptation is not necessary.

Other than the above I don’t think it needs anything special.

Excellent and thank you. I didn't know about org-time-stamp-custom-formats at all.

Also a very simple C-c C-x C-t toggles between the "normal" timestamps and the custom format overlay.