Erik L. Arneson — Writer and Software Developer

Emacs as the Freelancer's Command Center

2026-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Freelancing for small businesses and organizations leads to a position where you are juggling a number of projects for multiple clients. You need to keep track of a number of tasks ranging from software development to sending emails to project management. This is a lot easier when you have a system that can do a bunch of the work for you, which is why I use Emacs as my freelancer command center.

I would like to share some of the tools and workflows I use in Emacs to help me keep on top of multiple clients’ needs and expectations.

Organization with org-mode

It should be no surprise that at the center of my Emacs command center is org-mode. I have already written about it a lot. Every org-mode user seems to have their own way of keeping track of things, so please don’t take my organizational scheme as some kind of gospel. A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I handle to-do lists in org-mode, and I am still using that method for to-do keywords. However, file structure is also important. I have a number of core files.

`Freelance.org`

This top-level file contains all of my ongoing business tasks, such as tracking potential new clients, recurring tasks like website maintenance and checking my MainWP dashboard. I also have recurring tasks for invoicing, tracking expenses, and other important business things.

This file is also where I have my primary time tracking and reporting. Org-mode already supports this pretty nicely, I just use the built-in clocktable feature.

`Clients/*.org`

Clients that have large projects or ongoing business get their own file. This makes organization a lot easier. All tasks associated with a client and their various projects end up in these individual files. The important part is making sure that these files are included in the time-tracking clock table and your org-mode agenda, so you can see what is going on every week.

References and Linking

I have C-c l bound to org-store-link and use it all the time to link to various files, directories, URLs, and even emails. I can then use those links in my client notes, various tasks in my to-do list, and so on. This helps me keep my agenda organized even when my filesystem and browser bookmarks are a bit of a mess.

Email with mu4e

I have been reading and managing my email in Emacs for over 25 years. There have been a few breaks here and there where I have tried out other software or even web mail clients, but it has always been a headache. I return to Emacs! Long ago, I used VM (which seems to have taken on new life!), but currently I use mu4e.

This gives me a ton of power and flexibility when dealing with email. I have custom functions to help me compose and organize my email, and I can use org-store-link to keep track of individual emails from clients as they relate to agenda items. I even have a function to convert emails that I have written in Markdown into HTML email, and one that searches for questions in a client email to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

The ability to write custom code to both process and create email is extremely powerful and a great time saver.

Writing Code

I don’t know what else to say about this, I use Emacs for doing all of my software development. I make sure to use Eglot whenever there is a language server available, and I try to leverage all the fancy features offered by Emacs whenever possible. The vast majority of projects for clients are PHP (thanks WordPress), Go, JavaScript, and TypeScript.

Writing Words

Previously, I have shared quite a bit about writing in Emacs. I like to start everything in org-mode, but I also write quite a bit in Markdown. Emacs has become a powerful tool for writing. I use the Harper language server along with Eglot to check grammar and spelling.

Track All Changes with Magit

Version control is essential, a lesson I have learned over 30+ years of software development. While Git is not part of Emacs, the software I use to interface with Git is. Magit is a Git user interface that runs entirely in Emacs. I use it to track my writing, my source code, and even all of my org-mode files. Using version control is so essential that I have a weekly repeating agenda task reminding me to check all of my everyday files to make sure I have checked-in my changes for the week.

Thinking Music with EMMS

I like to have some soothing background music when I am programming, writing, or otherwise working on my computer. However, if that background music has lyrics, it can be really distracting. It is easy to make a playlist for various suitable SomaFM channels to load into EMMS (the Emacs Multimedia System) using the command M-x emms-play-playlist.

Try saving the following into playlist.el somewhere, and using it the next time you are writing:

 ;;; This is an EMMS playlist file Play it with M-x emms-play-playlist
 ((*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/synphaera.pls"))
  (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/gsclassic.pls"))
  (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/sonicuniverse.pls"))
  (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/groovesalad.pls")))

And make sure to check out SomaFM’s selection to find some good background music that suits your tastes!

And the tools I have missed

There are undoubtedly Emacs tools that I have missed in this brief overview. I have been wracking my brain as I write, trying to see what I have forgotten or overlooked. Frankly, Emacs has become such a central part of the organization for my freelancing that there are probably many tools, packages, and processes that I use every day without thinking about it too much.

Emacs makes it possible for me to freelance for multiple clients and small businesses without losing my mind with organization and task management. The tools it provides allow me to stay on top of multiple projects, handle client relationships, and keep track of years worth of tasks, communications, and projects. Without it, I’d be sunk!

What Emacs tools are you using to manage your freelance business? I am always looking for ways to improve or streamline my process.

The featured image for this post comes from Agostino Ramelli’s Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588). Read more about it on the Public Domain Review.

Examining To-Do Lists in Org-mode

2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

When you are self-employed, you need to be very well organized. There is never anybody looking over your shoulder, reminding you of everything on your to-do list. You don’t have a project manager reminding you of every step in your big projects. I use Org-mode in Emacs to manage all of my tasks, to-do lists, and projects.

Many people have already written about why Org-mode is a good choice for this, so I am not going to. I will just mention that many years ago, perhaps around 2007, I read Getting Things Done by David Allen and got inspired to implement something like it in Org-mode. The system has slowly evolved over the years, but it has also become unweildy.

For the past few years, I had been tagging my tasks with the states TODO, NEXT, and DONE, primarily. I had some extra states sitting around for things that got canceled or delegated, and at some point I added a WAITING tag for when I needed somebody else to finish something, first. But the problem was, the TODO items really piled up. They became uncomfortable to sort through.

Inspired by a blog post by Sacha Chua earlier this week, I cleaned up my to-do states. I added STARTED and SOMEDAY, then went through the big list of outstanding items and re-evaluated their proper states. SOMEDAY won in 80% of cases, which really cleaned up the list. Now I can begin my day with a custom agenda command that looks for just NEXT and STARTED tasks, so I know what is most important. And I can end my day looking at TODO tasks to see if any should be switched to NEXT.

Here is what my configuration looks like now. First, I configure org-todo-keywords to handle the various states that my to-do items need. I am hoping that someday I’ll pare this down, but for now, this works.

(setq org-todo-keywords 
      '((sequence "TODO(t)" "NEXT(n)" "STARTED(s!)" "WAITING(w@/!)" "|" "DONE(d!)")
        (sequence "SOMEDAY(o)" "|")
        (sequence "|" "DELEGATED(g@/!)" "CANCELLED(c!)")))

I then added a “daily driver” command to my agenda to let me see the most important tasks today. This would probably be a good place for add-to-list instead of setq, but it’s just an example!

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("n" "Next tasks" ((todo "STARTED")
                           (todo "NEXT")))

Next, after Sacha suggested it in a post on Mastodon, I configured to-do items to automatically switch to the STARTED state when I clock-in to them.

(setq org-clock-in-switch-to-state "STARTED")

Finally, I have been playing around with configuring org-stuck-projects to be more useful. I tag all of my projects with a @project tag, and then have my to-do entries underneath them as keywords. I do not think that this works as intended yet. I don’t think I will be able to figure out the proper settings here until I have another stuck project; let’s hope that never happens, and I never need this report.

(setq org-stuck-projects '("+@project/-DONE-SOMEDAY"
                          ;; Keywords to identify non-stuck projects
                          ("TODO" "NEXT" "STARTED")
                          ;; Keywords to identify stuck projects.
                          ("WAITING")
                          ""))

The only lesson that I can really hope to share with you, dear reader, is that it is a good idea to examine your task management system regularly to fine-tune it to your needs. What I have noticed is that I can come up with great task management plans, but the implementation rarely survives contact with the real world.

If, upon reading this, you have questions or suggestions, especially for org-stuck-projects, I would love to hear about it in the comments, or on Mastodon. Thank you for reading!

Hypothes.is Web Annotation Tool

2015-01-14T23:38:13+00:00

While working on the Philalethes E-Bulletin Online Reader, I came across a useful web-based annotation tool called Hypothes.is. It’s worth checking out. The tool uses a browser plugin to provide a number of cool features.

Annotation
Discussion
Tagging
Sharing
Privacy Control

It also provides an annotation stream that allows you to view public annotations as they’re being made all over the web.