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Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

johnnydecimal.com

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Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#161

Post by jen729w »

Beestie wrote: post #90

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, et…

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

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#162

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

updatedprocess wrote: post #131
puffybuf wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does this transfer to mobile when you're out and about?

termux on android can run emacs

(for making it more usable, see: https://babbagefiles.xyz/termux-extra-keys-emacs-org-roam-no... )

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#163

Post by ra »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

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 th…

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

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#164

Post by iyn »

smeej wrote: post #89
mo_42 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 f…

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 :)

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#165

Post by kisonecat »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

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 th…

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.

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#166

Post by eawgewag »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

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 th…

I'm a big fan of the Jibun Techo system of planners. I have a yearly planner that I get a new one every year that handles all of my every day things. I move the "LIFE" book around to each new year which holds things that matter on a yearly/longer than yearly basis.

This system is beautifully not tied to any software or thing that I have to manage. It's helped me ensure that my basic yearly needs are always handled

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#167

Post by Vegenoid »

Beestie wrote: post #90

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, et…

This is why I like Obsidian (or some other linked-documents wiki type of system), because it makes linking things easy, so you can take multiple routes to find a thing. I have a health note and a finances note. Which one does health insurance go under? I pick whichever one seems to make the most sense at the time. Then, in the future, if I'm looking for health insurance and look in the wrong place first, I can easily make a link there to the "health insurance" note/section. Now, I will find health insurance whether I look under health or finances.

The "Obsidian way" that many people recommend is notes that are as small as possible to maximize this kind of effect, but that's not how I like to do it. I prefer bigger notes with lots of headings (that can be nested up to 6 levels), and lots of links within a note and between notes to specific headings. I find this to be a nice blend of hierarchical navigation and link navigation.

Non-text files (like receipts or pictures) get linked from the relevant note or section, and many types of media can be viewed inline in the WYSIWYG editor.

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#169

Post by lostlogin »

4k93n2 wrote: post #129
haliskerbas wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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…

> wont everything be wrinkled when you take it back out of wear-again basket?!

Yup. But when it’s t-shirt and shorts, or t-shirt and jeans, I don’t care. I don’t really have any other clothes. I have a jumper somewhere and a cycling top.

Re: Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

#170

Post by kenada »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

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 th…

I’m in my mid-40s. I’ve been practicing GTD for about a decade. My system used to be fairly elaborate in the beginning, but now it’s fairly simple. However, I don’t view it as an organizational system. It’s a tool for me to be confident that I’m doing the right thing right now.

For organizing reference material, I have a drawer with files for physical things and cloud storage and notes for digital things. I label it by topic as it seems appropriate/obvious. I review my reference material annually, deleting or destroying anything that’s not still needed.

In practice, I don’t actually engage with my system much. I review it weekly to clear out any next actions I did. It’s there as a backstop (i.e., I use deadlines as appropriate in OmniFocus) and to help keep me aware of my hard and soft landscapes.

(I lost my weekly review habit for a while, and that was bad for me and my system. I’m glad I’ve reestablished it.)

If (for example) I decide to hack on nixpkgs stuff tonight, I don’t need a task for that. I may capture one to resume later, but what’s important is that I know what I’m not doing, and I’m fine with that. If it turns out I’m not, then that’s a sign I need to renegotiate or delegate some of those things.

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