[HN Gopher] Johnny.Decimal - A system to organise your life
___________________________________________________________________
Johnny.Decimal - A system to organise your life
Author : debone
Score : 251 points
Date : 2025-02-21 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (johnnydecimal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (johnnydecimal.com)
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I think _having_ a system is more important than which system it
| is. I don 't see much benefit to limiting your hierarchy to 3
| levels. Putting metadata like creation time in filenames is
| _probably_ the wrong thing to do, since it 's redundant, although
| it's mighty tempting-and I do it all the time.
| tsumnia wrote:
| I will say that I have a few hierarchies I use regularly that
| go beyond 3 levels, and they are annoying to work with. There
| are times where I will copy the entire sub-directory to my
| desktop just to reduced how many levels I'm working from. Then
| once I'm done, I'll copy the files back into their little "box"
| and delete the desktop version.
| WillAdams wrote:
| That sort of thing really makes me miss the Miller Column
| Filebrowser on my NeXT Cube (and wish that Apple's
| implementation were more like to it --- it just doesn't
| "feel" right to me when I use it on my MacBook).
| cloudfudge wrote:
| Allowing the filesystem to track creation time means you have
| to worry about how you move the data around and whether the
| tools you're using preserve it properly. A folder named
| 20250221-nyc-trip is a coarse but very durable way to store
| that.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| 20250221-nyc-trip is not a creation time, it's an identifier
| of the subject. they're both dates but they're different
| things.
| zerkten wrote:
| Agree. The benefit of posts like these is that someone has
| documented their system and iterated on it. You can then steal
| ideas that work for you.
|
| As a not very organized person, and having struggled with
| getting personal systems running, guides like this help quite a
| bit. I've only improved by taking bits that stick for me
| (https://www.hanselman.com/blog/one-email-rule-have-a-
| separat...). Anytime I tried a whole system, it failed to get
| going at all causing me more stress.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I have found that after multiple migrations from one computer
| to another, some of my file creation dates are incorrect. I
| don't use JD but I do have a lot of stuff in yearly folders and
| some of it's clearly wrong. Like I _know_ that I started one of
| my graphic novels in 2012 but some of the first few pages have
| dates in 2014 and 2019. Did a computer migration change the
| dates? Did some edit I did later on save it as a new file? I
| don 't know. I just know the date's way off.
|
| I agree that the choice to have _any_ system is important.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Totally agree. Consider the simple act of copying a file.
| Will it retain the original date or start fresh? There is a
| correct answer, but maybe it depends on the operating system,
| or the program you're using to do the copy. But I don't care.
| "Ain't nobody got time for that." When I want to know the
| creation date or if I just want a unique name I add a the
| date as a suffix; 022125. It also helps that it's much easier
| to see at a glance.
| vander_elst wrote:
| Previous discussions:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36308366
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37506640
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398027
| awestley wrote:
| I see this pop up every few years. I wish I had the follow though
| to do this.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| Can I ask what benefit it provides? I'm genuinely curious what
| it could potentially provide.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| I think it is for power users who document a lot, just think
| of it as a better way to organise your documentation. I think
| the secret behind good documentation is the effort which will
| go daily to maintain it vs following a specific system.
|
| If you are putting in daily effort you will automatically
| find a system which suits your needs.
| zerkten wrote:
| It's therapy for a lot of people. The act of organizing helps
| them deal with information. That act of organizing and
| storing can help with recall for me but not as much as
| writing something down on paper does. The number of times
| people pull info out of these systems is questionable.
|
| An argument people use is that these systems help you later
| in life. I find these systems really hard to adopt and also
| find it difficult to work with people who expose these
| systems outwardly.
| emacsen wrote:
| I originally started with Johnny.Decimal for my life and after
| giving it a big try, switched to PARA.
|
| J.D is fine (maybe even great) if your categories are relatively
| static, such as a small business, but as an individual, I found
| it very restrictive and challenging to remember. Moreover, while
| the decimals are cool, I found them somewhat irrelevant if I was
| the only one referencing them.
|
| J.D is optimized for retrieval, where what I needed was optimized
| storage, and then occasional retrial.
|
| To each their own of course, and using _any_ system is better
| than none.
| pendingU wrote:
| I'm always impressed by systems like this, but I've personally
| never understood the point.
|
| I'd be curious to learn from others what the benefits of this
| kind of archiving are for them? And if the time cost is worth it.
|
| For me, I feel like I treat most of my documents as very temporal
| things. I need them for a certain period of time, but then after
| that, they can be list to the ether. I have never really had a
| need to reference old content, plans, documents, etc.
|
| The only old things I ever need to reference are old code
| projects and writings. But even that I can usually manage with
| just a single folder for the project.
|
| Everytime I get a new computer, I just start fresh. Keeping only
| a very small amount of files backed up in cloud services. Which
| as I mentioned are just a very small collection of code projects
| and writings. Am I crazy? Haha.
| 42lux wrote:
| You will understand when you get into your 50-60s.
| ocharles wrote:
| Because of the volume of documents, or because of some
| cognitive change at that age?
| raintrees wrote:
| Both, for me. Memory not as sharp as it used to be, and
| more to be organized.
| 42lux wrote:
| Volume is a factor but it's more about melancholia and
| being able to recall the years of your life.
| esafak wrote:
| My parents are way older than that and never worried about
| such things.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I have a cloud folder where I store pretty much all data I care
| about, both for work and personal life (with exceptions like
| photos and videos, for space reasons). It used to be a huge
| mess and I often had a hard time finding a specific thing. I
| switched to J.D a few years ago - or rather to a modification
| of it, it's not strict: I do have a few "out of category"
| folders that were difficult to neatly categorize, for example -
| but the principles are there. And now I find it much easier to
| locate stuff.
|
| In my case, though, looking for specific documents from several
| years ago is very common. Maybe if you don't have that need and
| can find things just fine with your current setup, J.D would do
| nothing for you.
| lardissone wrote:
| I tried many organization systems, including Johnny Decimal like
| PARA. And none of them worked for me. As an ADHD person, I've
| found the best way for me is not put effort in organizing at all.
| For that reason I've found tools like Logseq/Tana/Reflect does a
| great job. I just write in the journal and tag items accordingly
| if required, then if I need to write some long form document, I
| create specific pages for it. Then search and backlinks are
| everything I need. My brain works better searching than browsing.
| niteshpant wrote:
| > As an ADHD person, I've found the best way for me is not put
| effort in organizing at all
|
| Agreed - I looked at the website for a hot second, got
| overwhelmed and immediately closed it
|
| Consistency is key for a good organization system.
| Unfortunately, consistency in such manners of life isnt our
| forte
| doomnuts wrote:
| Preach brother
| kossTKR wrote:
| Exactly. Intricate systems are pure noise for me, a simple MD
| file opened in a texteditor like Sublime is enough, or as you
| say just a simple taggable system or really just a bunch of
| files in folder - as long as you have great search you'll find
| stuff in no time and forget most as you should.
|
| I personnaly just have a huge file with various notes, text,
| todos or whatever for each year divided into days, then i can
| just scroll up through days, or search to find out what i did
| and what day - some days have nothing, some have lots. Some
| topics / projects get their own file.
| asystole wrote:
| This is why I love Capacities. It's object oriented with
| properties and tags. No folders.
| mohaba wrote:
| What is?
| asystole wrote:
| capacities.io
| skoskie wrote:
| This product looks awesome and the mobile app looks
| exceptional. But if it's not self-hosted and in some kind
| of standard format,you're SOL _when_ the company shuts
| down. Even though you can export your data, where are you
| supposed import it to?
|
| Here are some possible alternatives:
| https://selfh.st/alternatives/notion/
| asystole wrote:
| Trust me, I do understand all that. My personal set of
| trade-offs is such that I really can't be bothered with
| self-hosting.
|
| Capacities has one-click export of all of your objects
| (notes/pages) with a sensible folder structure that
| produces markdown with frontmatter and includes all media
| attachments. That's good enough for me.
| airstrike wrote:
| > We believe that everybody should have access to tools for
| building knowledge. Therefore, the core product of Capacities
| is and will remain free. Read our promise
|
| Wow, I'm sold.
| lardissone wrote:
| I just tried it, looks good. But TBH, I miss outlining. I
| would like they offer a way to have an outlining mode (with
| collapsing ability). Thanks for the recommendation.
| asystole wrote:
| https://capacities.io/tutorials/outliner-mode
| lardissone wrote:
| Tried that, but I would like outliner mode to be the
| default. Instead of writing a `-` at the beginning of the
| line.
|
| Anyway, I'll give a better try. Thanks.
| bicx wrote:
| I don't have ADHD (that I know of) and still love Logseq. For
| me, it's the perfect mix of notetaking, journaling, outlining,
| task tracking, and lightweight hierarchy/linking.
|
| I find that if I have to organize or categorize entries in a
| system, entries just don't get logged at all.
| lardissone wrote:
| I'm trying a lot of tools, but I end up using Logseq. It's
| amazing.
|
| Only bad thing is their mobile app, it's so bad.
| h14h wrote:
| I've tried a number of KMS's and repeatly bounce off and
| wind up back in Google Keep. Annoying mobile apps is
| usually the #1 reason.
|
| I would love it if one of these KMS companies would give up
| trying to create a mobile app w/ feature parity, and expend
| energy making something way simpler. All I really want is a
| solid UX for:
|
| 1. Quickly capturing multi-modal thoughts 2. Easily
| surfacing specofic KMS items
|
| Thinking of my experience with Obsidian mobile... I don't
| want markdown, I don't want finicky two-way sync that
| randomly deletes directories, I don't want an entire file
| tree to tediously navigate.
|
| I just want to be able to hatily jam a thought into the
| system, and to find specific items in the system, both as
| quickly as humanly possible.
| smeej wrote:
| If the mobile app could handle PDF reading/highlighting
| like the desktop app can, and _especially_ if it could
| reflow PDFs like KOreader can, I would never use another
| tool for information management.
|
| I have loads of epub books that I want to read on my
| Android eInk reader (Boox Note 2 Color). I can convert them
| to PDF no problem, if that's the only option, but man I
| wish I could read them right in Logseq on Android. I've
| tried various syncing solutions to export KOreader
| highlights, and it's just not nearly as good. Even tried
| buying a ChromeOS tablet so I could run Linux Logseq on it,
| but the form factor sucks compared to the Boox.
| a1ff00 wrote:
| After years of searching for an organizational solution myself,
| switching between countless applications, numerous
| applications, and a concoufany of feedback, insights and ideas
| from xyz influencer, this is exactly the same path i've settled
| on, despite not being diagnosed with ADHD myself -- though, the
| signs are all there.
|
| A structure loosely connected to past notes via a weekly
| 'cleaning/review' process in my "PKS", where I'll /search/ for
| tags, filenames, file contents and loosely link things
| together.
|
| It's saved me _countless_ hours, but more importantly its
| drastically reduced analysis paralysis and kept me focused on
| the most important thing -- writing.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > concoufany
|
| cacophany?
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cacophony
| jonaias wrote:
| You might want to take a look
| athttps://www.limitless.ai/#pendant
|
| We've received great feedback from ADHD users about how it has
| helped them throughout their lives
| lardissone wrote:
| I'm still waiting for shipping to my country. Pre-ordered on
| Oct/23 :(
| egglemonsoup wrote:
| That's a very compelling pitch. I don't have the budget yet
| but it's something I'll be keeping my eye on as yall launch
| and reviews start coming out!
| multjoy wrote:
| And if I don't want my conversation recorded? How do I know
| if I am being recorded?
| znpy wrote:
| most stuff don't work, and don't stand the test of time.
|
| anyway, here is what's has been working for me:
|
| for physical stuff (documents, printouts etc): a dumb file
| organizer box, one of those where you can hang those hanging
| manila folders. and of course a few such folders. I bought
| fifty such folders some years ago, have used about half so far?
|
| for digital stuff: a simple mediawiki installation. it's hosted
| at home and it's not accessible from the public internet. the
| visual editor makes it low-friction to edit, the categories
| system works well enough, a page can belong to more than one
| category and there's always a search function that works well
| enough.
|
| the nice thing about mediawiki is that you can upload and embed
| images, you can link to other systems (like files in nextcloud)
| and you can upload whole files and link to them from various
| pages.
| bluechair wrote:
| I really appreciate what Johnny Decimal is trying to solve -
| we're all struggling with digital organization and the appeal of
| a clean, simple system is undeniable.
|
| Having implemented similar approaches across several teams, I can
| say it works beautifully for personal projects or well-defined
| small team efforts. But here's the challenge: most real-world
| information refuses to fit into single categories. A technical
| spec might be simultaneously system architecture, compliance
| documentation, etc. While the Johnny Decimal strength is its
| rigid simplicity, that's also its weakness when facing actual
| organizational complexity.
|
| Rather than fighting these natural interconnections, I've found
| more success embracing them - using approaches that allow
| documents to exist in multiple contexts while maintaining the
| Johnny Decimal core goal of findability/searcability. The
| solution to chaos might not be enforcing a decimal hierarchy, but
| rather building systems that match how information actually flows
| in modern organizations.
| raintrees wrote:
| For me, that is the value of tags. No need to have duplicates
| to have items represented in multiple categories, yet each
| appropriate category gets a nod about the particular item.
| satiric wrote:
| I tried this with my personal Google drive and am not really
| using the numbers. It's just a little extra work to set up. I
| don't see much of a benefit to it personally, but if you do then
| great. The important thing is to have a system you like
| SvenL wrote:
| It's pretty amazing that there are such systems. Everytime I try
| something like this I fail following it just a few weeks later. I
| just relay on search, I have one mailbox, one download folder and
| that's it. If I look for something I have just 2 searchboxes, one
| in finder and one in outlook.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I probably need real-life shelves and boxes for organization. But
| I think I failed strategically because I brought too many I do
| not enjoy about into my life. Juggling 6 pieces of shit is not
| fun however good I'm doing it.
|
| I'll buy those shelves and boxes and just grit my teeth for
| another 15 years, and then it should be a lot better.
| edding4500 wrote:
| So basically a Zettelkasten?
| Tomte wrote:
| No. It has practically nothing to do with Zettelkasten. For
| starters, Johnny Decimal says nothing about links.
| edding4500 wrote:
| Uh, you are right, that was a silly comment I made.
| lokimedes wrote:
| I love the ADHD meets ASD of this one! As long as it requires
| self-control, and long-term memory, it is DOA for me.
|
| Oh the curse of knowing what one requires, but always having it
| out of reach due to misfiring dopamine regulators/receptors.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| I think with any documentation, specially something like life
| tracker tracker, it is a daily effort to maintain it, clean it,
| figure out which sections are outdated.
|
| I make sure that with every new article which is added into my
| documentation, I go through some past pages and organise / clean
| them up. This also helps in revision of some of the past insights
| which were collated.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| I've been using this for the past 18 months, and it works really
| well. I'll write 19.01 on my calendar now instead of "review
| finances". I don't maintain the index on a regular basis yet, and
| so far I haven't needed an index.
|
| Yes, I used to think tags were so neat, but I was fooling myself.
| shoknawe wrote:
| Joplin might be a good vehicle for the implementation of
| Johnny.Decimal.
| drcongo wrote:
| Previously: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=johnnydecimal.com
| krunck wrote:
| Does it support symlinks? Because there is always stuff I want in
| two different places.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Just a general observation as someone nearing 50. I'm honestly
| very curious to see if someone has had a different experience
| than me. I'm am, to put it mildly, not an "organized person". I
| have tried a million different systems throughout my life - GTD,
| Inbox Zero, spreadsheets, etc. etc.
|
| To be honest, I don't believe that any of these "organization
| systems" really help people that have problems being organized in
| the first place. I think it's just a fundamentally different way
| of how I'm wired. My general conclusion is that trying to "fight"
| my natural way of doing things is always going to be a losing
| battle, and that instead I just need to figure out ways to handle
| my general messiness and get it to work for me. I mean, I can
| certainly be organized for sizable stretches of time, but
| whenever I start getting pressed for time, or stressed, or lose
| my motivation for some other reason, it always reverts to the
| mean.
|
| I'd honestly be really interested to hear if anyone has ever
| changed from being a "unorganized person" to an "organized
| person", because it my few decades of life I've never seen it be
| successfully accomplished.
| ejoso wrote:
| Similar age. Similar realization.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I agree with your take. I think someone who can/will get
| organized will do so regardless of which system they use.
| Someone who can't/won't get organized isn't going to no matter
| what system is proposed.
|
| The benefits of these organization systems, in my experience,
| come into play when there are multiple people involved (e.g. a
| workplace, shared storage, etc.), so that everyone can be
| organized in the same way rather than having a bunch of
| competing organization systems created by each person.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| IME having a personal system can be invaluable. It HAS to be
| something that resonates for you subjectively and personally
| -- it could be a system someone else has created (bullet
| journal, PARA, whatever) but if it's going to work, and
| stick, has to become "yours" to some degree.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I definitely agree when it comes to personal storage.
| Making the system (whatever it is) "yours" is the key.
|
| But when dealing with shared storage, if everyone makes the
| system "theirs" to some degree, you end up with a
| disorganized mess. Which is where a rigorously defined
| system (this, something else, something custom) is required
| to keep any sanity.
| dominicrose wrote:
| I'm not organized by default but I can live or work with
| organized people. It's possible to fit in and participate in
| the organization.
|
| I tend to let my brain organize my life for me. The end result
| is that I don't do many different things but I do the things I
| care about.
|
| However, A 4-colour pen and a small spiral notebook with a grid
| can help. The paper and colours allows you to be much more
| creative than just using an ordered sequence of words or some
| more complex but still limited note taking system.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| Im kind of like you. My answer to this is what I call
| "breadcrumbs". I leave them everywhere, and rely on fast
| searching tools.
|
| In onenote, I make sure things have unique keywords I can
| search for.
|
| I use "Everything" or "Fsearch" to find files on my harddrive.
| It even indexes my onedrive.
|
| Emails? Git gud with searching boolean queries. From:fred AND
| body:football
|
| I've similarly tried various organization methods and I cant
| seem to maintain them. Focusing on easy search has been my way
| forward.
| slightwinder wrote:
| They don't need to help everyone, nor solve all problems. Just
| helping some people to solve some problems is progress.
| Organization is a spectrum, some parts are more organized, some
| less. And those systems, tools, whatever, can be a guideline
| finding your way.
|
| I don't know whether I'm a person with an organized nature
| (it's probably more on the messy side), but I know that
| understanding how those tools and systems work, and when, did
| help me to organize my life a bit better. For me, the main
| problem is always that I need to have reason for using
| something and stay with it. Just reading a book and blindly
| following what it says is not really my thing. But when I find
| a demand, knowing about those tools and systems did help me to
| implement solutions for myself which stuck.
|
| It's a bit like not needing all the buttons in a car in the
| beginning, until it's cold, you want it warm, and you realize
| that heating might be a good thing for you. You will not know
| that there is heating in a car, without reading the manual, but
| if you need it, the knowledge about it will help you find your
| solution.
| robofanatic wrote:
| as long as you don't get harshly "punished" or judged for being
| unorganized by others above you in the food chain then you are
| fine.
| mo_42 wrote:
| I wouldn't say that I was a very chaotic person but after
| moving several times it felt like it takes longer to find some
| special tool than buy it new. So I created a little program to
| keep track of all my stuff [1]. It took quite a while to put
| everything in there but it helps me to check for a tool if a
| friend asks for something. Also, I like to be aware of what I
| own and what I should give away because I don't need it
| anymore.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mo42/inven
| smeej wrote:
| The one logistical change I made that solved this for me was
| that whenever I have to look for something, as soon as I find
| it, it gets moved to wherever the first place I looked for it
| was. I take that as an indication that my brain's default
| sorting system thinks it belongs there.
|
| I also have a tendency to go through everything I own once
| every couple of years and get rid of anything a past version
| of me thought a future version of me might want to do, but
| future me does not want to do, though, so the total amount of
| "stuff" I have is pretty manageable to start out with.
| iyn wrote:
| Brilliant idea (moving the found item to the location you
| first looked at)! If you ever write a blog post about your
| org system/such tricks I'd happily read it :)
| bongoman42 wrote:
| In a similar boat and I'll add another point. Any new system
| leads to a temporary increase in focus and productivity. Then
| it steadily drops off. What this told me is that new systems,
| as long as they don't have a steep entry ramp are good to get
| that temporary boost. Just don't expect it to last for months.
| Also, I found a fair number of high performing people are
| unorganized, but they often have secretaries and coaches who
| are themselves organized to get things done for them. But if
| you are not at a point where you can afford one, you have to
| learn to get these things yourselves.
| skolskoly wrote:
| >Any new system leads to a temporary increase in focus and
| productivity.
|
| I used to try to be very organized and adopt different
| systems to do so. Unfortunately due to the variety of things
| I do, I ended up creating the XKCD "you now have 14 competing
| standards" problem. My efforts to impose order only created
| more chaos. I have since just created a big monolithic txt
| file for notes, and a directory sorted by date modified.
| Delete old things, rename new things appropriately, and then
| use proper search tools like Voidtools Everything. When a
| project is complete, that's when I start organizing it,
| because that's when I know what it should look like. I don't
| understand how people can work with inconsistent and
| constantly changing structure.
| niam wrote:
| The closest I've come is in using an "outliner". I don't have
| it in me to impose structure on notes.
|
| I like how logseq works, where you don't need to name your
| files. You just write into the "today" log about whatever. Then
| if you someday want to create a page on a particular topic, the
| system combs through your past daylogs for incidences of that
| phrase and throws a reference to it into the doc for you.
|
| There's no necessary starting structure besides the incidental
| chronology of when you elect to write. But it's useful to me in
| the same ways I think structure/organization is meant to
| afford.
|
| Obsidian works similarly, but its unit of information is a
| document, vs logseq which uses bullet points. I tend to prefer
| the latter since even prose is too structured for me when I
| need to quickly jot things.
| smeej wrote:
| Seconding Logseq, though I think the move to database
| structure is going to ruin it for me. I'm one of those people
| for whom Notion is counterintuitive to the point of being
| completely unusable, and all I can suss out about this switch
| is that it's going to make Logseq more like Notion.
|
| Every time the Johnny.Decimal system resurfaces on HN,
| though, I'll admit to spending a couple weeks revisiting the
| task of finally systematizing the decades of old files stored
| on my hard drive, until I remember that I haven't _looked
| for_ any of them in many years, never mind opened them, so it
| 's probably not worth any effort after all.
| niam wrote:
| I've not been terribly worried about them running SQLite in
| the background as long as their sync with the filesystem is
| seamless, which they've highlighted is the goal.
|
| Unless there's another set of reasons you're worried about
| it?
| cldwalker wrote:
| > I'm one of those people for whom Notion is
| counterintuitive to the point of being completely unusable
|
| Most of the existing workflows remain the same and the DB
| version opens up many more workflows. Would recommend
| trying it out if you haven't already with
| https://test.logseq.com/ and
| https://github.com/logseq/docs/blob/feat/db/db-version.md.
| If you have tried it out, please give us feedback :)
| morning-coffee wrote:
| Similar age, slightly different experience.
|
| I haven't tried a bunch of different systems, but I admit to
| liking the principles behind this Johnny.Decimal system and
| might give it a whirl.
|
| I used to get frustrated that all of the information I'd carted
| along over the years wasn't "organized". I realized a couple
| things: - I really didn't need most of the
| stuff I thought I did. So I cull/delete and generally try to
| minimize what is kept from the start. - For the stuff I
| do want forever, I use "Archive" for mail and a similar concept
| for files. One folder per year and the entirety of that year's
| activities dumped there. I'll use search over this when needed.
| - Each year I start somewhat fresh, carrying over current areas
| still active from the previous year while archiving the rest. I
| then re-evaluate and try to simplify the current "working
| index" for the current year and its generally easy to find
| thing within that narrowed context.
|
| My analogy is that life is an immutable log of records ongoing
| in chronological order... so a folder for each chronological
| year. Then index in each year as you see fit... the
| index/categories/areas for each year don't have to be the same
| as prior years... they likely won't if life is interesting and
| changing!
| emacsen wrote:
| I'm in my mid-40s and have severe ADHD and I've tried many many
| techniques and systems over the years. Over the last ~15 years
| I've come to evolve a set of systems that work for me.
|
| I'm starting (in my "ample free time") to document them and in
| a series blog posts help people find systems that will work for
| them. My experience is that the best systems are the ones that
| have five characteristics:
|
| 1. They're simple
|
| No complex patterns, no "we'll solve everything"
|
| 2. They require little or no task switching in the middle
|
| This breaks my ADHD concentration.
|
| 3. They're forgiving if you fall off the wagon
|
| You will always have bad days and need to restart. The system
| must make it easy.
|
| 4. The system must be very general, maybe even "too simple" but
| easy to customize.
|
| There is a natural desire, especially in ADHD people, to over
| complicate, so the system must allow you to be as simple as
| possible, but then let you customize later.
|
| 5. They don't require any specialized tool (especially not an
| online tool). No system should be invariably tied to a specific
| piece of software or hardware. These may be excellent
| augmentations, but they should never be requirements.
|
| Am I an "organized" person? No, but I'm far better organized
| than I was. Tasks rarely get missed now. I'm far more
| productive than I was (and I have stats to back up my
| assertion). I can almost always retrieve documents I need
| relatively quickly.
|
| These systems won't change who you are, but they will assist
| you in being better at being who you are.
| istjohn wrote:
| I just wrote a sibling comment echoing essentially the same
| philosophy, although you've elucidated the principles in more
| detail. As I wrote, my system is basically use a paper filing
| system (don't overthink it, just alphabetically ordered,
| labeled manila files), Google Calendar, Google Drive, and
| Obsidian on my phone for miscellaneous note-taking.
|
| I'm eager to learn more about your systems. Where's your
| blog?
| pjerem wrote:
| May I ask your blog URL ? Or add it in your profile :)
| Multiplayer wrote:
| I implemented Johnny Decimal about 5 years ago in Google
| Drive. The cool thing about it is it's just always there.
| It's pretty much set and forget it.
|
| I'll forget about it (because ADHD?) and when I open up
| drive, there it is! :). And I'll use it.
|
| It's a small investment upfront.
| ryanstorm wrote:
| Your principles mirror my own, which have been developed and
| refined over the last ten years (I'm 34 now). There have been
| periods of overcomplicating things, but they've mostly
| reached a natural state that works for me.
|
| Maybe interesting is the evolution of my system:
|
| * 2015 and prior: Sticky notes, calendars, notebooks, sheets
| of paper, chaos
|
| * 2016-2019: I found the bullet journal method and
| implemented the most basic form found here:
| https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq (collections, future log,
| monthly log, daily log) and never really evolved from that
| utilitarian mode.
|
| * 2019-2025: I signed up for Notion and ported my bullet
| journal system there. I miss the physical version, but prefer
| the easy access and easy editing in the online version. In
| addition to Notion, I heavily use Google Calendar, and also
| Google Keep as a quicker-access and catch-all of smaller
| notes. I use Notion for life admin and Obsidian for work
| notes and files.
|
| OP's Johnny.Decimal system caught my attention since I've
| been interested in a consistent and proven way to organize
| the files on my laptop, SSDs, Drive, as well as all my
| physical docs. I could also see it being a nice way to
| organize my Notion and Obsidian, but I also tend to rely on
| search and backlinking as others have commented about for
| their own systems.
| TOGoS wrote:
| I have similar inner battles.
|
| I think the key is to come up with a system that takes your
| natural tendencies into account. Result might not be perfect
| but it will be less of a disaster than if you had no system at
| all.
|
| Things like 'slow recycle bin' (where you throw stuff that you
| probably won't need to look at again, but you might) help with
| this.
|
| e.g.
|
| I have a lot of 6-quart sterilite bins where I keep various
| tools/components/junk. Most of them contain specific things and
| are labeled accordingly. There are also some that are labeled
| "random crap from my pockets". Not ideal to have "random crap"
| bins but at least I know which ones they are, and the option is
| open to go through and better-organize them later.
|
| I have periods where I carefully curate my digital photos and
| archive them using a specific file structure. Sometimes I don't
| keep up, so as a backup, I dump all the raw photos to a big
| hard drive and generate manifest files with filenames, sizes,
| and bitprint hashes that I keep in Git. This part is of course
| somewhat automated or it would never happen at all.
| skydhash wrote:
| Did so, but mostly due to increasing responsibility and general
| laziness. If it's something in my ecosystem (either digital or
| real life) I'm strongly against spending much energy to finding
| stuff and redo things. I'm not against messiness, but things
| should either be highly visible or arranged in a way that
| minimize thinking. And if something can be automated, I will do
| so if the manual way is cumbersome enough.
|
| I try not to burden my memory with remembering trivia. So I
| note them down, bookmark them in some ways that will resurface
| contextually. Which is why I never took on with a particular
| method for all aspects in my life, but will gladly use it
| within a specific context.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| I had to get organized in college because I was doing a lot of
| additional coursework and still working. Previously I was
| completely disorganized in terms of planning.
|
| Honestly the best way to do it isn't even a "system" it's to
| take the most lightweight level of organization and applying it
| to things you use.
|
| For me the main organizational tool is just google calendar,
| using an all day event to denote due dates/trip
| planning/reminders, but even a daily note with what you're
| looking to do and important dates could be useful.
|
| All these """systems""" have never caught on for me. It takes a
| lot of time to understand to the system and adjust instead of
| building a habit of surfacing information.
|
| Get the system out of the way and just start putting stuff
| down. I get a ton of stuff done now that I couldn't without
| organizing things particularly when it comes to planning trips
| or work.
| adastra22 wrote:
| You may have ADHD. Medication helps. A personal support system
| (the people in your life) helps more.
| istjohn wrote:
| My brother claims to have achieved that transformation with
| GTD. My personal experience is that complex rigid systems like
| GTD require high initial investments in effort and can be
| brittle. They are sort of like doing a total rewrite of a
| codebase. My biggest wins have come from making small
| incremental changes.
|
| The biggest win I ever made was getting a small filing cabinet
| (a banker box works, too) and putting it, a stack of manilla
| folders, and a marker next to my desk. Then, when I get a piece
| of mail or have a piece of paper, I file it in the appropriate
| folder, making a new one if need be. If you have a huge,
| chaotic pile of papers somewhere, try this. Take that pile and
| throw it in a box somewhere. Don't try to organize it. You now
| have a Pile-Of-Papers-In-a-Box. From now on, instead of putting
| new items on the POPIB, file them in your new proper file
| system. And if you need to dig something out of the POPIB, when
| you're done with it, file it away instead of returning it to
| the POPIB. Soon, the POPIB will shrink to a pile of mostly
| trash that you can store in a shoebox in the back of a closet.
|
| My biggest loss was trying to digitize my home office with a
| fancy Fujitsu scanner, Google Drive, and Airtable. It turned
| out to be a bigger project than I anticipated, and I
| prematurely abandoned my trusty analog system. Soon, AI will
| make this trivial, but for the time being, I'm sticking to
| paper. I also prefer the user experience of physical paper, at
| least until I can hand over all the paper shuffling to an AI.
|
| Other small gains I've made are using Obsidian on my phone for
| notes and using Google Calendar religiously for all
| appointments and scheduled activities.
|
| Filing cabinets, digital calendars, note taking apps--these are
| all simple, obvious things, but I think being organized is all
| about acquiring a handful of these small habits and sticking to
| them. If your system is simple enough to become reflexive,
| you'll be more likely to stick to it under stress.
| ghaff wrote:
| >And if you need to dig something out of the POPIB, when
| you're done with it, file it away instead of returning it to
| the POPIB. Soon, the POPIB will shrink to a pile of mostly
| trash that you can store in a shoebox in the back of a
| closet.
|
| It's also the case that you may legitimately need something
| out of the POPIB sometime over the next 12 months. Assuming
| you've been smart about it (I did have an old doc I needed a
| while ago but I had actually kept it in my fire box because
| it seemed like something I might need) if something is a few
| years old, it can probably go in the trash.
|
| The problem with scanning is that there's work involved and
| if you don't do a decent job with metadata, it's going to be
| pretty much useless anyway. For a lot of people, file cabinet
| with folders is probably a good system unless they really are
| on-the-go or have multiple residences a lot of the time.
| ipsento606 wrote:
| For me, part of the tension stems from being unwilling to
| design a system crappy enough that I will actually stick to.
|
| To take a trivial example, say your problem is that you leave
| clothes all over your bedroom floor, so you decide to set up a
| system to solve that.
|
| The naive approach is to design a system like "If it's too
| dirty to wear again, put it in the laundry basket, coded by
| light or dark. If it's clean, decide if it should go on a
| hanger or in a drawer. If it needs a hanger, hang it up, being
| careful to select the right kind of hanger for the right kind
| of clothing. If it needs to go in a drawer..."
|
| That's the system I want to design because that's how I want my
| life to be.
|
| It would feel very unnatural to design a system like "pile all
| clothes on the chair in the corner and worry about them later",
| because I don't want my life to be like that, and I don't want
| to believe that that's the only kind of system I might have a
| chance of sticking to.
|
| But that _is_ the only kind of system I 'll stick to. And
| ultimately, it's much better to have all your clothes piled on
| the chair in the corner rather than strewn all over the bedroom
| floor.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| I'm like you and I've slowly started to embrace it. Sometimes
| that means three laundry baskets. One for clean one for dirty
| and one for wear again. And then iterating on top of that!
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| I did the third laundry basket for a bit. I think it's
| missing what's _peak_ about the chair which is that I can
| still sorta see what 's in the pile. I'm trying to find a
| coat hook esque system.
| bialpio wrote:
| When I saw Simone Giertz's build, I immediately wished
| she'd start selling those.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H175G8NH2Cg - "A chair
| built for your half-dirty clothes". I'd love this to be
| my "3rd basket".
| 4k93n2 wrote:
| wont everything be wrinkled when you take it back out of
| wear-again basket?!
|
| i just tend to order most things on hangers with the most
| newly washed things to the right, then every time i wear
| something and put it back it goes a bit closer to the left.
| then when im putting on a wash i know that its all the
| things on the very left that need to be washed.
|
| another useful way to keep track of things is to hang up
| anything thats newly washed with the hook of the hanger
| facing towards you, then hang it up the normal way once you
| worn it. and i still order the newly washed things from
| right to left as well since theres the odd thing i dont
| wear that often which can go musty if its just sitting
| there for months, so when im putting on a wash sometimes i
| check the very left side of the newly washed things as well
| cautious-fly wrote:
| In terms of organising files over the years I have found that
| nothing beats good file names and file search.
| y33t wrote:
| The best system I've come up with is to timestamp all my notes
| and sort them chronologically in a filing cabinet. You can link
| to notes by their timestamp, create indexes, calendars, weekly
| or daily todos etc, as necessary. The idea is that a note can
| be whatever you want or need it to be in that moment. Just make
| it addressable. Timestamps also give temporal context to
| correlate with emails, phone calls, or any other logged
| activity.
|
| I found that trying to organize my notes one way or another
| introduced more work and cognitive load than it saved. Just
| timestamp it and let the rest happen naturally. Wu wei?
|
| It's similar to a zettlekasten I guess, but without the effort.
| jrootabega wrote:
| There is no voluntary system which can't be sabotaged by your
| own feelings. Performance anxiety, overthinking, fear of
| success, etc. And if you let things pile up without processing
| them, that becomes another snowballing reason to avoid the
| system. One's thoughts and feelings ABOUT the system seem to
| have no way to be processed BY the system, so one just avoids
| all of it. There is also sometimes an expectation that a system
| will do the hard work for you, instead of just telling you what
| you should be putting hard work into in a certain time slice.
|
| I am not betting my life that there is no one who is
| psychologically incapable of working with certain systems
| without intractable distress. But I doubt it.
| marttt wrote:
| These two older HN comments might relate to your lines of
| thinking. I found both of these very insightful when I got
| stuck with trying out all sorts of rigid systems, outliners,
| zettelkasten etc:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17893139
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8807252
| flessner wrote:
| I have been an extraordinarily unorganized university student
| until the begining of this year - I am still not fully
| organized, but doing a lot better.
|
| What helped me was looking at the "atomic concepts"
|
| * What do I need to get done? (Tasks)
|
| * When will I work on what? (Calendar)
|
| * How do I keep information around? (Notes)
|
| My "evergreen" information (like lecture notes, book notes) was
| happily living in Obsidian the past years, so criteria three
| was already "satisfied". I never found a true "system", so most
| of my notes are in a Zettelkasten-esque style.
|
| I was stunned to discover that I didn't have a proper solution
| for "Tasks" or "Calendar". As an immediate fix I simply bought
| a DIN A6 notebook and a pen. Eventually, I started using the
| Apple Calendar with a Shortcut that could tally up the time for
| me - it was insightful. I went from >20 hours of social media a
| week to nothing (except HN) within a month.
|
| I am still experimenting, currently I am trying to move the
| "Tasks" into a "daily note" in Obsidian. I have also tried to
| do some "Journaling", but I found it to not be effective. What
| I have found to be absolutely necessary though is having a
| dedicated time in the morning and evening to review everything,
| plan the day, defer tasks etc.
| scrapcode wrote:
| Same. A very simplified version of bullet journaling does quite
| a bit for me to track tasks. I basically just use three bullets
| ( - for information, * for an item requiring action, and > to
| indicate i need to keep moving that task forward).
| tikhonj wrote:
| I am pretty ADD. For me, moving to a system using org-mode
| helped _a lot_. It didn 't make me an "organized" person
| (hah!), but it has repeatedly kept me from losing track of
| important things _and_ has given me a place to take tasks
| /reminders/notes/etc off my mind. Being able to write something
| down and trust that it will surface back when I need it has
| reduced my mental load and general anxiety.
|
| I haven't been super organized or consistent in _how_ I use
| org-mode--org-mode is great at letting me discover my own
| workflow and adapt the tool to what I need rather than adapting
| myself to the tool--and I 've gone through periods where I lost
| the habit, but, overall, it's been a concrete improvement to my
| life. I've found that seeing it as a _tool_ rather than a
| "system" made a big difference for me. I've never liked
| productivity systems (especially at work), but having a tool I
| can use _in whatever ways helps me_ is a qualitatively
| different--and better!--thing.
| puffybuf wrote:
| I love org-mode with emacs. I use it to organize my notes /
| game hacks / todo / pretty much anything using a tree
| structure. You can use drawers to hide things like sample
| code.
| updatedprocess wrote:
| How does this transfer to mobile when you're out and about?
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| termux on android can run emacs
|
| (for making it more usable, see:
| https://babbagefiles.xyz/termux-extra-keys-emacs-org-
| roam-no... )
| arnonejoe wrote:
| Same. My file system gets "cleaned up" every two years when I
| buy a new macbook.
| wink wrote:
| I challenge the "organized person" thing already.
|
| I'm very organized in some areas and make the biggest mess in
| others.
|
| Also what does "unorganized" even mean? I usually don't forget
| work TODOs but I regularly forget non-work TODOs. One has me
| have a text file open on the same computer, and in the other
| area stuff comes up left and right, and if I have my phone to
| jot it down it doesn't mean I will look at my phone on time...
| tonymet wrote:
| the process of trying to organize is helpful, even if the
| organization system itself fails. I think people resent
| organizing because they expect magic to happen once they try.
| but like exercise, learning, playing music, cooking -- it's the
| practice of the habit that develops results . Everything great
| takes repetition
| monroewalker wrote:
| The best approach I've found so far is to just have a single
| master "event log" where I dump everything that I want to save
| by default. I have specific places to put things but if I can't
| be bothered to decide where or am not sure it'll just go to the
| event log. I'm using Notion for this where each entry is its
| own page in a "database" list. Adding a new page is trivial
| though through the site or app. I have an iOS shortcut setup
| too to open the entry creation
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| I love exploring different organizational systems.
|
| Getting Things Done is good for project management but falls
| down for organizing.
|
| Marie Kondo is good at organizing and deciding if something is
| worth keeping or not, but has issues with scale.
|
| Covey/Daytimer was good for time management but didn't do
| project management all that well.
|
| Jamie Hynaman has a massive wall of transparent boxes for
| organizing materials for his shop but all the hammers are in
| one box and you have to go to that box to get the hammer
| whenever you need one.
|
| Adam Savage's system puts his most needed tools right around
| each workstation but it's expensive as he had multiple copies
| of many tools.
|
| Kitchens use mise en place to prep and organize the ingredients
| for cooking so they can 100-200 plates out to table a day.
|
| There's PARA, and Zettlekasten for organizing information.
|
| There are, all told, tens of thousands of rules for writers.
|
| In the end I see them all as tools for solving problems and not
| all of them work for all problems and that's okay, if I can
| find a tool to make solving a problem I am currently working on
| easier, that's wonderful or I make something myself.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Adam Savage's system puts his most needed tools right around
| each workstation but it's expensive as he had multiple copies
| of many tools.
|
| It's a tradeoff. For travel, I obviously don't have multiple
| passports or high-value items. But it's absolutely worth
| having some extra cords and toiletries so I have dedicated
| travel kits for those sorts of items. Not perfect or absolute
| but being able to more or less grab a couple kits and throw
| them in my luggage works for a lot of purposes.
| ghaff wrote:
| I found GTD had a few basic concepts I try--sometimes even
| successfully--to follow. But I've basically never been an
| "organizational system" person.
| a-saleh wrote:
| There is some level of organization you have to achieve to be
| at least somewhat successful.
|
| I think these sort of more complex systems are there to help
| you if your problem is being overwhelmed, or if you have need
| to have things classified and under control.
|
| If your problem is the baseline fact that sticking to any sort
| of system is hard ... haha, same, and then you need a system
| that is simple.
|
| I currently live by my google-calendar. Alerts in advance,
| trying to put everything there, to a point I
| https://sectograph.com/ as my watchface on my smartwatch, just
| so that I won't forget what I need to do today.
|
| Also, writing out my daily todo-list in a ~private-ish channel
| I have on friend's discord suprisingly works better just having
| a todolist. Because my friends see that and that makes my brain
| actually care :)
|
| So, yeah, "just need to figure out ways to handle my general
| messiness and get it to work" is right on the money.
|
| It is like with that Bullet Journal thing. You see the
| elaborate ones from people that love their melticulous
| templates. But when I used it for a month or so successfully,
| it was just about the simple bulet-points, sometimes with
| dates, review once a day. I stopped because I lost the
| notebook, so ... oversharing on discord it is - I probably am
| procrastinating there anyway :D
| anktor wrote:
| Recently I have been thinking about this, because I feel I have
| managed to become way more organized than I ever thought it was
| possible.
|
| What is working for me right now is noting everything in a
| calendar so I cannot forget it or as TODO in a somewhat heavy
| personalized Obsidian configuration.
|
| A few years ago (5-6 aprox) I started copying my older co-
| workers habits to see myself improve. Physical notebooks were
| soon discarded because I never remember where I wrote down
| things.
|
| I used a TODO plugin in sublime which worked for several
| months, until I felt I needed screenshots so I moved to
| OneNote. After a while I became frustrated with not being able
| to customize it enough, so I started trying out different
| things. I saw a coworker using Obsidian, watched a couple long
| YouTube videos to learn how to customize, and I'm never going
| back.
|
| My team this week told me they are impressed with how much info
| I write down and it was a very proud moment for me!
| ra wrote:
| I'm the same - just turned 50.
|
| The lightbulb moment for me was when I found out my HBDI [1]
| profile - my thinking preferences are heavily skewed toward
| analytical and experimental, and away from practical /
| relational.
|
| My management team compliment me by being a) orgasnised and b)
| relationship focused.
|
| [1] https://www.thinkherrmann.com/hbdi
| kisonecat wrote:
| I wouldn't say I'm organized, but org-mode is the only tool
| I've ever really used to keep track of what I am doing. I've
| been using org-mode for >= 15 years.
| react_nodejs wrote:
| So are you selling several file explorer folders for $15? ;D
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| As a system, this makes sense and I love it. As a personal
| practice it's completely impractical for all but a narrow band of
| the population. And when those people need to collaborate with
| others, good luck getting everyone else to follow the system.
|
| I recommend embracing the chaos instead. Enhance the tools for
| finding information, and make it easy to apply metadata.
|
| At a certain point you can get no further without demanding more
| personal discipline, but that point is way beyond what is
| prescribed here.
| pavlov wrote:
| A cousin of Johnny Mnemonic?
| galfarragem wrote:
| My take on "systems to organise your life". It may help somebody:
| https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system
| bpev wrote:
| My filesystem organization has been based off of Johnny decimal
| for some years now. TBH, I don't know how much I specifically
| recommend it, since it did take quite a long time (years) for me
| to really figure out my organization and become comfortable. But
| now, because my system is now pretty set in my brain, the big
| benefit is that I can pretty much navigate to mostly any
| directory instantly from anywhere without too much thought, using
| scripts I wrote. (https://johnny.bpev.me/guide, which is really
| mainly
| https://github.com/bpevs/johnny_decimal/blob/main/source/she...).
| But it makes my filesystem feel much flatter and simpler to me.
|
| For example...
|
| - My latest large coding project spans from `22.00` - `22.20`
| (clients from `.01`, server from `.11`, libs from `.21`), and I
| can navigate to any of those directories from anywhere in my
| filesystem via `jd 22.10`. Or if I forget which one, `jd ls 22`.
|
| - For things like photos and completed music production projects,
| I organize in more of a date system, but that entire system is
| housed in the jd structure, so if I want to look at some photos,
| I can easily open `31.02` and navigate internally to that.
|
| Oh fwiw, I only use a few broad categories:
|
| - `10-19 Notes`
|
| - `20-29 Projects` (active projects, code and music mostly)
|
| - `30-39 Archives` (closed projects)
| hbarka wrote:
| In 2025 someone discovered the ancient Dewey Decimal system.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| This has existed before 2025
| kstrauser wrote:
| More like, someone realized a few years ago that you can make
| your own Dewey Decimal system and apply it to your own library.
| erganemic wrote:
| Off the top of my head, all PKMs make trade-offs on
| discoverability, portability, maintainability, and ease of
| recall. Broadly, "discoverability" is how likely you are to
| stumble on something you'd forgotten (just recently, I found a
| file in my "taxes" directory listing all the documents I needed
| last year, which was a big help, and which I did _not_ remember
| writing), "portability" is how resistant the system is to a
| company shutting down/project being abandoned, "maintainability"
| is how easy to keep your system consistent with its principles
| (including inserting a new note), and "ease of recall" is how
| easy it is to find something if you know you're looking for it.
|
| When thinking about a lifelong PKM, I feel like I value
| portability more than most; something highly tied to a particular
| company like Notion is right out for me, and I'm leery of stuff
| like Obsidian or even org-roam, since even if the entries in
| those systems are just text, I just know that someday the logic
| that ties them together will stop being developed/maintained and
| I'll have to migrate.
|
| I feel confident in directory structures and text files as long-
| term mediums though, and so JD is appealing to me, but its
| maintainability (specifically the cognitive load around inserting
| a new note) is such a stumbling block for actually creating
| content for it. Not to mention the primary thing it trades
| maintainability off for (ease of recall) is almost entirely
| solved by search functionality, leaving discoverability as the
| only benefit over just chucking everything in a flat "notes"
| directory.
|
| I do something PARA-adjacent now, and I might just commit to
| that, although denote is interesting as an Emacs user for a
| slightly more portable tagging- and search-based option.
| jppope wrote:
| I think this is definitely a cool system so not meaning to knock
| it, but I used to hyper-optimize all parts of my life and it was
| exhausting. So one day I just stopped. I started focusing on just
| being present, prioritizing, and trying to remember things that
| were important. I still take notes and have todo lists and stuff
| but they are similarly for being in the moment- just for the time
| right when I'm using them. I may have lost some things over the
| years but the removing the stress has made me better at all the
| things I was working on in general.
| Beestie wrote:
| Its a beautiful system but where my head explodes (and has been
| exploding for 4 decades) is over the following scenario.
|
| So in Johnny's system, I assign 21 to automobiles. My VW van gets
| 21.1, my Citron is 21.2, etc. and the insurance for each car gets
| a .8 so 21.1.8, 21.2.8, etc.
|
| And I assign 13 to Money. Insurance belongs under money so 13.5
| is insurance and life insurance gets 13.5.1, E&O insurance gets
| 13.5.2, etc.
|
| I also need a top folder for Medical for doc visits, vaxes, ER
| visits, Surgeries, the kids' allergies and stuff.
|
| So where all this is going is two months later, where is the
| health insurance policy? Is it under medical or under money? Is
| the car insurance under Automobiles or Insurance under Money?
|
| Back to my head exploding - this is my issue - I can never
| remember which branch of the tree to find a specific leaf? Does
| my annual car tax belong with the Money or with the Auto branch?
| If I want to see the tax for all the cars at the same time, I put
| it under Money - Taxes - Auto but when I need to know the last
| time I paid the tax on the VW, I will assume its filed under
| Auto-VW-Car Tax.
|
| This is why I can never find anything. All due respect to Johnny
| but I'm too retarded to use it properly.
| xixixao wrote:
| What you need is a tree where the items can be in multiple
| places.
|
| Bear does this really well with its hierarchical tags.
|
| Most filesystems can do this with hardlinks (but the UX mostly
| sucks).
| Beestie wrote:
| omigosh - genius idea - I need a Schrodinger's file system!
| WooHoo! The dumb insurance policy is wherever I look for it!
| :-)
| beAbU wrote:
| I had exactly this issue before, an I blame overthinking
| things. Trying to put in place a system where none is needed.
|
| I ended up with a box, in the box there are large plastic
| envelopes, and each envelope is labelled.
|
| I have:
|
| - "assets" (cars, warrantees, service records, purchase
| invoices etc)
|
| - "health" (all medical related things)
|
| - "insurance" (everything insurance related)
|
| - "guns" (I like guns... so licenses, legal paperwork, etc etc)
|
| The best thing is, this is a box. So worst case, even if I
| misfiled something, all I need to do is rifle through a box.
| The box is portable and universal, and if my wife needs
| something, I can easily guide her to where to find it.
| arbitrandomuser wrote:
| This! i prefer tags over folders for this reason. All notes go
| into single folder , no sub directories . Because a note can
| have multiple classifications a tree structure is not natural
| way to organize them. Add tags , if you have note taking
| program will show you all possible existing tags you it makes
| this easier.
| lblume wrote:
| Additionally, tags naturally form hierarchies in the form of
| trees (or ADGs), so any possible taxonomy should support
| that.
| mindwork wrote:
| symlinks or hardlinks might help with that, depending on your
| needs. With hardlinks you will see the same file in both
| locations, and if you change or remove the file it will be
| removed in the other directory as well
| gloomyday wrote:
| I've had this problem for a long time. My solution was to keep
| my organization as flat as possible. This means everything
| insurance-related would go to 13.
|
| A flat structure seems less organized, since you are "mixing"
| stuff, but as long as there isn't too much stuff inside, going
| through stuff one-by-one is faster than you think. If I do have
| a lot of stuff in a section, I either split into several
| sections in the top structure (so 13 is life insurance, 14 is
| other...), or go one level deeper (not preferred, but I do it
| when it's very clear and there is too much stuff, like photos,
| which btw sorting chronologically works best for me).
|
| It is really not much of an issue having 50 top sections. It
| makes the organization transparent, and indexing, sorting and
| going one-by-one remains easy.
| dubeye wrote:
| it's only going to be one of a few places though, and the key
| thing is you know where those places are and can get to them
| quickly
| jen729w wrote:
| Johnny here. This is the canonical example, and I quote it
| myself: is it `Insurance > Car` or `Car > Insurance`?
|
| In reality you just decide. One feels better to your brain. And
| you tend to remember that.
|
| It helps of course if you remain consistent. In the systems we
| design we've realised that most people want the _insurance_
| close to the _thing being insured_.
|
| So in our life admin system we have health, pet, home, motor,
| and travel insurance as IDs alongside your records for those
| things. Seems to suit most people.
|
| And don't forget you've got your index as a fallback. I don't
| remember most of these numbers but I just launched Bear, typed
| `insurance` in the search field, and there they are. Now in
| three clicks I can get to my home insurance which, turns out,
| is at `12.12`.
|
| https://share.icloud.com/photos/0afQRa-furBCpa9rOIc3r3Q7g
| Centigonal wrote:
| I tried this for a year, but the juice wasn't worth the squeeze
| for me. I went back to my previous homegrown folder tree.
| ConanRus wrote:
| What we really need is a personal AI assistant that handles
| labeling, tagging, and organizing documents by creating
| categories and connections. The fact that, in 2025, someone would
| propose doing all of this manually and consider it a good system
| is just ridiculous.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I've been attempting to integrate this into my life for a few
| years now, and failing. Doing this manually is never going to
| work, HOWEVER, automating it will. I periodically run this
| script[1] to organize my Downloads folder.
|
| Pretty sure I can figure out a way to make macOS watch that
| folder and run the script but I want to live with this more
| before doing that.
|
| Note that all this does is move stuff around...you still gotta go
| to the destination folders and continue organizing there but at
| least half the work is done for you.
|
| ---
|
| [1]:
| https://gist.github.com/NetOpWibby/7e39068c1d0209e4412e3a05e...
| sureIy wrote:
| I realized that I'm very good at remembering time and location
| more than anything. If I want to look at something, I know when I
| did it more than what it contained.
|
| For this purpose the photos app is amazing: "April 2020 cat
| video" and it's exactly what I was looking for.
|
| I really wish file explorers were more consistent with their date
| management and didn't change "creation date" just because the
| file was moved or whenever the app/OS decides.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I wish someone made an OS that just did this for me
| nicebyte wrote:
| I bet 90% of the reason this is on the front page is the Berkeley
| mono font. the system itself sucks.
| camkego wrote:
| If this is a system to organize files and folders, rather than
| physical real life files and folders, it should say so in the
| first sentence.
| tonymet wrote:
| the concept is very good, and i like the approach to distinguish
| personal , business etc. It's not the system that matters, but
| the continued practice of inventorying and assessing your
| library.
|
| One approach is to imagine your archives as a physical library
| and what regular maintenance you would need to keep the library
| in order for others to enjoy it.
|
| These include indexing like the author talked about. but also
| curating & summarization ( meta-summaries of the catalog). Also
| disaster preparation (backup) , replication (e.g. keeping
| repositories in sync between the archive and active work).
|
| Every well built engineering system started as a neglected
| concept that got elevated into a formal area worthy of attention
| dubeye wrote:
| I set this up a few weeks ago and it's working great so far. You
| start to develop muscle memory and now i organise everything to
| the same order, eg bookmarks
|
| i think it's partly that i remember location phsyically. i can
| remember bookmarks in real books, my remembering where certain
| words are on a page and flicking through until i find them. i
| wouldn't stand a chanec ofremembering page number. somehow the JD
| system recreates thsi for me
| g8oz wrote:
| It doesn't have to be all or nothing for the Johnny decimal
| system. Start with a life area like home ownership. Ask AI to
| generate a Johnny decimal system on this topic. I was impressed
| with the comprehensive structure I got.
| subpixel wrote:
| Holy smokes this does not resonate with me. Not the need for
| organization, but the implementation of some watered down Dewey
| decimal system.
| MailleQuiMaille wrote:
| I think the key for me, a lifelong messy person, was to find out
| what I like or don't.
|
| Like : -Taking notes on the fly for capturing fleeting ideas.
| -When working on a project, embracing the mess by having as many
| documents/spreadsheets as possible. -When a project is over,
| putting everything in a folder and letting it there.
|
| Don't like : -Using fancy tools like Notion, Obsidian and the
| likes. -Getting stuck on rigid systems, and even worse : tied to
| a subscription. -Being forced to use a specific device.
|
| My solution ? Upnote. Proton Drive. A messy desktop.
|
| Am I the most "optimized" I could be ? No. But I can quickly find
| out everything I need fast, and when I'm working on a project, I
| know what to do.
|
| More than that seems overkill, for me at least.
| mattlondon wrote:
| This seems overly complex? 15.2.234 for example is not remotely
| memorable or intuitive - no one knows what that is.
|
| Why limit yourself to this low-signal approach? It seems
| deliberately obtuse for no obvious benefits?
|
| What has worked for me is a folder per financial year, then just
| rough semantic groupings in each year folder called e.g. "cars"
| "health" "house" "tax" etc and just chuck files into those as
| needed. I usually change the filename to be something descriptive
| and information dense too like e.g. "<house number + street> Home
| Insurance Aug 2024-2025.pdf" etc. Store it all on some cloud
| service (OneDrive or Google Docs or whatever - local backup of
| your choice) and then you can just drill-down or even better
| _just search_. Simples.
|
| So e.g.
|
| 2024-2025/
|
| --house/
|
| ----123 ABC Street Home Insurance April 2024-2025.pdf
|
| ----123 ABC Street Mortgage statement Jan 2024.pdf
|
| --cars/
|
| ----Honda repair invoice June 2024.pdf
|
| ----Honda insurance Feb 2024-2025.pdf
|
| ----BMW insurance Mar 2024-2025
|
| Not rocket science. Anyone reading this understands this
| "system", and it is trivial to search. No rote memorisation of
| random numbers needed!
| 0x457 wrote:
| Well, you only need to remember "00.00 Index" which is where
| description of all categories is.
|
| Your version IMO is awful. Year on root level means you have to
| remember year that document was created. Unless you constantly
| need to lookup insurance documents (only thing besides taxes I
| can remember which year I'm looking for) that's not going to
| work IMO.
|
| Since we threw away core organization principle of this system
| (limit your choices), why not all documents realted to
| house1/car1/car2 into corresponding folders?
|
| Also, you used 2 different ways to write a month and date. Now
| I have to remeber is this document on Jan or January, don't
| want to confuse with documents about my friend Jan and Jane
| either.
| marcusestes wrote:
| [IQ distribution chart meme]
|
| * Just use Apple Notes
|
| * No! You can't just use Apple Notes. You need a full ontological
| graph structure based on an open standard!
|
| * Just use Apple Notes
| 0x457 wrote:
| This one actually works with Apple Notes.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| Looks like a task oriented sorting - "for what do I need this?" -
| and the numbers are a workaround for a shortcoming in file
| managers, which does not allow giving a user defined sorting to a
| list of files/folders.
| raajg wrote:
| I think that local search, retrieval, and filing will become much
| easier with LLMs.
|
| There are already tools and products in the market that allow you
| to rename and organize files. I believe this is the future.
|
| We have developed various systems over decades, but I anticipate
| with LLMs it'll be so easy to file and retrieve things that we
| won't even have to think about it.
| ediwdlrow wrote:
| "If you put those boxes in boxes, in boxes, you'd never know
| which box to open to find the next box. It would be chaos."
|
| Not really...
|
| If my outermost box says "Tools", a box in that box says
| "Automotive", and the box in that box says "Trim Removal".
|
| There's no chaos, I drill down from the generic to the specific
| and find what I need.
|
| Using Tags (keywords, etc) you can cross reference things too --
| for example Tools that may have uses in both the Automotive,
| Household, Computer realms get those as keywords, and ideally the
| tool will have a primary role so it can exist in that box, or
| otherwise if it truly doesn't belong in any one box then it can
| just be in the Tools box along w/ the boxes that contain all the
| task-specific stuff...
| groby_b wrote:
| For anybody going to implement it: Good luck, enjoy the journey
| and learning from it.
|
| At the end of the road, there will be a sign. It will say
| "hierarchical taxonomies never work". You will likely ignore it.
| (We all do). Ab initio.
| urda wrote:
| I'm still working a lot of my internal tribal knowledge out
| around this, but as I work that blog post out my general flow of
| organizing information in my life has been as follows:
|
| - Starts with a physical Moleskine notebook and fountain pen.
| This is the most free flowing and easiest way to get information
| saved. It is literally pen to paper, it does not crash, it does
| not fail.
|
| - From there ideas and notes are migrated, shaped, and
| restructured in digital ink and text on a Freeform board on my
| iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision.
|
| - Finally, as those ideas become more real and solid, they are
| formed into well understood wiki pages and saved there. From that
| point all new and changing information is committed to the wiki.
|
| Not all my information needs to flow into the wiki, but it is
| nice to have a knowledge "funnel" when keeping notes. When I
| think about information and notes, I always think about my
| favorite quote:
|
| > "For this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written
| down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are,
| where you've been, where you're going and where you want to get.
| In scientific work and electronics technology this is necessary
| because otherwise the problems get so complex you get lost in
| them and confused and forget what you know and what you don't
| know and have to give up."
|
| > Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
| whalesalad wrote:
| The aesthetic of this website immediately tells me that this
| person has no qualifications to tell me how to organize my life.
| hnclimategroup wrote:
| Nature doesn't work by organizing your oh-so-busy life. Just go
| with the flow.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Another system to organize my life? I JUST got started with
| BulletJournal :)
|
| Tbh, a person with ADHD and in my mid 30s, the biggest problem I
| have faced and none of these system [haven't tried
| Johnny.Decimal] yet is 'given my current situation, be it career
| and life, what should I prioritize' and the second hard part if
| keep track/progress.
|
| I do miss school/university days where we had a curriculum to
| follow with deadline and all. That brought structure and with
| fixed milestone. But in personal life, with unknowns everywhere,
| it is challenging. I have tried multiple strategies but they
| don't seem to work or eventually are forgotten. From two minute
| rule to this, I can't remember the exact details but something
| like invest x hours and if it doesn't work out, move on.
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