Howm vs a giant Org-mode outline

For a long time, all of my notes went into an outline in single Org-mode file. I love outlines, so this was just swell.

But no serious Emacs user can resist the lure of Getting Fancy with Org-mode. Me included. So I got fancy and added all kinds of capture templates and folders and rules and refiling shortcuts and I was constantly updating my org-agenda-items list, etc. It was great, but rather complex. Whether I considered it needlessly complex depends on when you ask. Today, I am thinking that, yes, it's too complex.

Thankfully, I've been putting new notes into howm for a couple of weeks. What a glorious mess that has become.

I like how howm defaults to listing the most recently-modified notes first. This is similar to the Noguchi Filing System I tinkered with years ago. It doesn't make sense immediately, but the more one pours into it, the more it sorts itself out. Kind of.

What the howm list of notes reminded me of was my original Giant Outline in Org-mode. Here's something similar from my inbox.

Org outlines can be sorted all kinds of ways. And I can add properties, tags, etc. They're quite versatile.

I'm going to continue using howm, because I like how it works. But I'm also going to revisit the simple version of using an Org outline again.