It seems that for this to work, existing directories can't be renamed. However with time the initial structure might turn out (or become) not optimal. In general I like the idea but not having a way to rotate the structure is a significant downside to me.
Johnny.Decimal
11–20 of 191 posts
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#12This idea looks great, and it would be great if it worked: I've been struggling to keep all my documents organized many times, and I think I've followed basically the same system (except for the number.mapping).
This is my gotcha: how do you decide where a document go? The categories might be clearly split, but documents typically won't fall in exactly one category.
How do you manage temporary tags? That is: how do you operate on the documents? You might be having some documents for your "2020 tax return" in several categories of your system. And what now? Do you duplicate them in another category (tax return?)? Do you tag them? How do you keep track that you moved them? (In case they're real objects, like pieces of paper).
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#13Putting your personal categorization number into the email subject is such a monumentally bad idea...
I can see this scaling very poorly if multiple individuals were to apply the same to their emails.
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#14I just delete stuff regularly. If you don’t own it you don’t have to organise it.
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#15I just delete stuff regularly. If you don’t own it you don’t have to organise it.
This one sparks joy.
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#16This is why I love love love Gmail and Google Photos. The search engine is so powerful. I search "driveway" and get all the photos my wife and I ever took that shows our driveway. Ah yes the cracks are getting worse. I search email for "driveway repair" and find that old recommendation from a friend despite the word driveway having never been mentioned. I don't need a sorting system. I need a big pile of all my data…
Search is awesome. I agree, gmail's is great. Apple's Spotlight is also fabulous. So why does the article say "search doesn't fix this?"
The problem is when search extends across domains. I can search files with Spotlight, but not my google emails. On my phone, it's worse because there are so many different comms systems. I can search my Whatsapp messages; my SMS messages; my email; Facebook messenger; Skype.... Each individual search is fine, but no one tool does them all. Hence, the idea of using manual labels to classify stuff - including emails - can still be useful. Crazy that we're forced back to this.
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#17> None of the areas or categories overlap. There’s only one place anything can ever be.
Exactly unlike actual documents. Where do I put the sales figures we use for marketing?
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#18Eh, I'm not convinced. This might be nice for a static hierarchy of not too many office documents, but for the very heterogenous files I deal with, I'm happy with the first level of division being a "project". There are only ever a handful of projects I'm working on at a time, and different projects' files are usually suited to very different directory structures.
That said, the only documents I need to keep in long-term storage are invoices and contracts, which I can just put into two directories. If I ever get too many of such official documents, I might look into a structure like this.
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#19When I discovered this before, I gave it a try and organized my email account.
What I can say is that I like it for helping you choose levels of hierarchy. So far I've squeezed 10 or fewer sub-categories into each chosen category. (I use the 0s, so within 10-19, I start with a sub-folder of 10...)
What I do not do is any of the other suggestions - searching by it, memorizing numbers (though I have an intuitive sense now when organizing email or looking through it.)
I have not tried this folder structure yet for files.
Re: Johnny.Decimal
#20This is why I love love love Gmail and Google Photos. The search engine is so powerful. I search "driveway" and get all the photos my wife and I ever took that shows our driveway. Ah yes the cracks are getting worse. I search email for "driveway repair" and find that old recommendation from a friend despite the word driveway having never been mentioned. I don't need a sorting system. I need a big pile of all my data…
Search is awesome. I agree, gmail's is great. Apple's Spotlight is also fabulous. So why does the article say "search doesn't fix this?" The problem is when search extends across domains. I can search files with Spotlight, but not my google emails. On my phone, it's worse because there are so many different comms systems. I can search my Whatsapp messages; my SMS messages; my email; Facebook messenger; Skype.... Each…
Couldn’t agree with this more. Local folder organisation isn’t the problem, silo’d data in proprietary ecosystems is.