The Complete Computing Environment

(provide 'cce/org-tasks)

Tasks are prioritised when the project is opened, it's an intuitive habit to scan that a list of tasks within a project are reasonable, correct, and prioritised. Re-ordering tasks is done with M-<UP> and M-<DOWN>, sorting bubbly.

digraph tasksworkflow {
  node [shape=box,fontname="Courier"]
  NEXT -> CANCELED;
  NEXT -> DONE;
  NEXT -> INPROGRESS;
  NEXT -> WAITING;
  INPROGRESS -> DONE;
  INPROGRESS -> WAITING;
  INPROGRESS -> CANCELED;
  WAITING -> NEXT;
  WAITING -> CANCELED;
}

Tasks can be in five states, and flow between them works largely based on intuition. Individual work-objects are created in NEXT state if they're ready to work on, or WAITING if I have to do mental work on them still, or if it depends on uncompleted work. The move between states, towards either DONE or CANCELED, two self evident completed states. I move tasks between INPROGRESS and WAITING based on a scale of weeks, tasks can stay in INPROGRESS perhaps for a week before their state should be reevaluated and possibly moved to WAITING.

(setq org-todo-keywords '((sequence "NEXT(n)" "INPROGRESS(i!)" "DONE(d!)")
                          (sequence "WAITING(w!)" "CANCELLED(c!)")))
(setq org-use-fast-todo-selection t)

(setq org-todo-keyword-faces
      '(("NEXT" :foreground "blue" :weight bold)
        ("INPROGRESS" :foreground "burlywood" :weight bold)
        ("DONE" :foreground "forest green" :weight bold)
        ("WAITING" :foreground "orange" :weight bold)
        ("CANCELLED" :foreground "red" :weight bold)))