It's just a really solid markup for large plaintext documents with automa(g/t)ic formatting and the ability to embed: -Arbitrary code which can be executed and

It's just a really solid markup for large plaintext documents with automa(g/t)ic formatting and the ability to embed: -Arbitrary code which can be executed and which can update/operate on the contents of the document -calendars -hyperlinks -images and other media -tables which can also act as spreadsheets a la Excel It also lets you export to just about any format including HTML and pdf via TeX, and it has broad integration across emacs so you can easily invoke portions of org-mode from your other buffers/modes. In other words it's a really flexible medium for representing and working just about anything in a plain text file. I use it as a bug tracker for personal projects, I use it for self-documenting code ("literate programming", as they say), and I use it for writing prose that I intend to export to PDF such as reports and other things because frankly org is a much saner way to write latex/xetex/whatever.