Depends. For just checklists org-mode is overkill, I use a few custom shortcuts in Vim for that. But org-mode also has a couple additional features like time t

Depends. For just checklists org-mode is overkill, I use a few custom shortcuts in Vim for that. But org-mode also has a couple additional features like time tracking and a way to generate summarised tables based on that tracking, or the agenda. Either way learning Emacs just for org-mode is probably only a good idea if you really want to use the features coming with it in one package.