@buherator the org prefix is a hint what the original purpose was, and since it is about organizing, TODO is automatically highlighted, you can even have small [] checkboxes which you can check/uncheck, and top of the section will give you a nice percentage of how many subtasks are already completed. hiliting TODO in md is a very poor reimplementation of this. org-mode is amazing 4 organizing thoughts & todos. also very nice for latex beamer presentations & blog posts, but that is another story.