Check out org-mode. There are a bunch of tutorials here that really help show the power/ease. Specifically, I found this video useful.
The major benefits (IMO) of org-mode are:
- simplicity, it’s just a text file (or set of files)
- flexibility, you can start very simple and grow your usage as you learn more
- expandability, very popular and new capabilities coming all the time
- versatility, you can get different views of your tasks – ordered by time, priority, other…
- readability, you can publish to HTML and other forms easily
Really, it’s worth watching one of the videos to get an idea of what is available.
ORG’s author, Carsten Dominik, sums it up nicely with this 24 word quote:
Org-mode does outlining, note-taking,
hyperlinks, spreadsheets, TODO lists,
project planning, GTD, HTML and LaTeX
authoring, all with plain text files
in Emacs