May I recommend thinking of Emacs as your Fortress of Solitude

Summary

First thing I do when I turn on my computer is open my Emacs. What awaits me is a blank, dark purple screen with a random motivational quote on top. I will usually take a moment, enjoy the calmness of the empty canvas in front of me. There is nothing fighting for my attention, nothing I have to react to. Just the familiar comforting view, patiently waiting for me. #+begin_disclaimer You might start thinking at this point, ok another stereotypical crazy Emacs user, sitting in his basement whole day writing C, browsing web with JS disabled, chatting on IRC and reading his email in his Emacs. However, IMHO, I (and many others) am more unlike that stereotype than you might imagine! It has been long time since I have written any C, lately it has been mostly TypeScript (ok and some Haskell I admit). I don't even code much these days! I am a founder/CTO of a startup and I spend most of my time hiring, managing, reviewing, emailing, marketing, strategizing. I have a family, small kids, a dog, hobbies (even some that are not Emacs). I read my email and browse web in Chrome, use Notion, G Suite, Discord, LLMs (not for writing though), and I never managed to get into IRC. #+end_disclaimer That unassuming blank canvas, inviting you to type? That is the scratch buffer. It's there every time you start Emacs, by default. And while it may not seem like anything special, it says a lot about Emacs. No code editor I know of comes with such blank canvas. Text editors often do, but as a starting poing for a new document. Instead, in Emacs, it is just an unassuming canvas you can "scratch" on, assignment of meaning left to you. Once in Emacs, I will usually open my daily schedule/agenda, which is only a key combo away. I hit <space> o d and in front of me is: my daily checklist scheduled events for today (synced from my gcalendar) a list of tasks I planned for today + any from earlier days I haven't finished some general notes my inbox (of tasks, GTD style). Figure 1: My daily agenda wit...