Org: have multiple TODO sequences that terminate with DONE

Question

So, let’s say I have two different TODO keyword sequences:

TODO | DONE
RESEARCHING WORKING FINISHING | DONE

I want both to cycle to “DONE.” But, the Org manual says not to use duplicate TODO keywords. And, I can’t find any established way to have separate sequences “merge” into one. I know the obvious solution would be to have two separate “DONE” keywords, but that just sounds insane to me; I’d rather have a heading start as a TODO, then I either shift+right to DONE or shift+Ctrl+right to the other sequence, which will eventually lead to DONE as well. Please help! Thanks!

Answer 1

I think the closest you can get here is to have three lists in org-todo-keywords like this:

(setq org-todo-keywords
      '((sequence "TODO" "|")
        (sequence "RESEARCHING" "WORKING" "FINISHING" "|")
        (sequence "|" "DONE")))

If you start with TODO, then S-right will cycle through the second sequence, and eventually land on the third one. C-S-right will cycle first to RESEARCHING, and then to DONE.

If you type C-u C-c C-t, then you get completion on the state. In this specific set, C-u 5 C-c C-t will switch to DONE (it is the 5th state in the lists). I would probably type C-S-right in most cases to mark something DONE.

If you only need this locally in one file, you can do it like this:

#+TODO: TODO |
#+TODO: RESEARCHING WORKING FINISHING |
#+TODO: | DONE

In each of these cases, it should work fine when you open the org-file, but if you make the changes while in an org-file you may have to run M-x org-mode to restart org-mode.