In 2025 someone discovered the ancient Dewey Decimal system.
More like, someone realized a few years ago that you can make your own Dewey Decimal system and apply it to your own library.
Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
111–120 of 300 posts
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#112Its 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, et…
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.
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#113Just 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 th…
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…
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.
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#114Just 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 th…
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.
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 n…
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…
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?
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#116Just 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 th…
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).
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#117I'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…
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.
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#118Its 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, et…
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.
Additionally, tags naturally form hierarchies in the form of trees (or ADGs), so any possible taxonomy should support that.
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#119I bet 90% of the reason this is on the front page is the Berkeley mono font. the system itself sucks.
Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
#120Its 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, et…
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