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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

#241

Post by fmbb »

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…

The problem everyone are trying to solve is ”I have too much to do”.

All these solutions are band-aids akin to sticking a queue in your backend to try and cope with constant overload.

The simplest way to get organized I think is to say ”no” more often, and stop caring about crap.

GTD has one good idea, and that is that first step ”can you do it in under five minutes, do it now” or however it’s written. The rest is procrastination.

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

#242

Post by jerieljan »

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…

After seeing this and the stories after this comment, I... can relate to this.

I went from being unorganized to somewhat organized, then went back and now it's a case of "I'll keep things organized when it makes sense, but the rest is up to my memory, the natural way of doing things and wherever I left it."

I'm just going to try the next thing, see and adopt whatever works, but if it doesn't, I'll just stick to whatever does.

At the end of the day, it's up to our brains on whether to use systems or not and if they fit our needs or if it doesn't.

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

#243

Post by hasbot »

Maybe the root problem is keeping too much stuff? IRL, I have one bank box that has a folder for everything I truly need (e.g. dog papers, vehicle repair records, tax documents, deeds, and um... that's about it really). In my digital life, I just don't keep much stuff. Songs, audiobooks, ebooks, tax returns, and that's about it.

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

#244

Post by fleshmonad »

>organise your file hierarchy in a common sense manner and add numbers

>write way too long blog post in """hacker aesthetic"""

>It gets to the HN front page

Apart from that, the spaces in all filenames are questionable. I truly don't understand how something like this gets 450 points on HN

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

#245

Post by spmcl »

I use Johnny.Decimal in my Obsidian vault, but its purpose is less about being able to find things in the future and more like "this is a simple well-trodden system so you may as well use it for some semblance of organization of your folder hierarchy." But I only label the folders. I don't label files with numerical values – folders are just dumping grounds for a certain type of notes. Like I have a folder for journal entries, unique notes, blog posts, book notes, recipes, and individual side-projects. A few tags (most auto-generated in templates) help me search past notes if I need to, but that's a very infrequent need.

My point is that switching just the folder hierarchy to Johnny.Decimal was very easy and I don't have to think about how I organize my work ever. Contrast that with some of the other PKM organization schemes you'll find (such as using Johnny.Decimal in its entirety), and you'll see that they both take a ton of time to set up and a ton of effort to maintain. Those are massive wastes of time. There are far more meaningful things you could be doing outside of marginal gains to productivity, if you can even call PKM optimization a "marginal gain."

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

#246

Post by reedlaw »

mattlondon wrote: post #142

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 u…

I used something similar based on https://karl-voit.at/folder-hierarchy/ which I found helpful.

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

#247

Post by sotix »

It reminds me of accounting systems. Asset accounts are 1000. Liability accounts are 2000. Stockholders' Equity are 3000. Revenue are 4000. Expenses are 5000. Then the second digit differentiates which specific category of account it is. The final two digits are the sub accounts of that broader category.

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

#249

Post by paufernandez »

jvidalv wrote: post #230
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…

A few weeks ago, during a one-on-one with my manager, I had an interesting realization about this topic. I understood that my chaotic nature isn’t due to a lack of organization—it’s because I thrive in chaos. I can function well without strict structure because I don’t need it to stay effective. My manager, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. She needs everything documented and noted, not because she’s inher…

You hit a very important point, the discomfort that orderly people experience (I am that kind of person). I believe that to be innate.

At the same time, a disorganized person is still more effective in an organized environment, but probably he hasn't realized this by himself because he doesn't have the internal drive to be organized in the first place.

You could say being organized is Nature's way of setting us up for success in complex and very demanding situations.

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

#250

Post by ccppurcell »

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 think you're right and I have a few systems I've implemented that work with me not against me. For example I organise my kitchen drawers by putting things in higher drawers if I use them a lot and lower if I don't. If I "mess up" it doesn't matter: things I use more will naturally rise to the top. Similarly spices, I return the spices to the cupboard at the front of the shelf and a natural ordering by usage develops over time.

In software terms the closest is that I switched to kiss launcher on my phone. It just shows you the apps in the order you used them, plus one horizontal line of faves and one vertical line of widgets. It can also learn what you do but I prefer the basic ordering. I use zoxide in the terminal for navigation and on the desktop I just press Super and search for everything.

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