Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

johnnydecimal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 300 posts

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

#31

Post by bicx »

lardissone wrote: post #12

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. The…

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.

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

#32

Post by ashu1461 »

RationPhantoms wrote: post #11
awestley wrote: post #6

I see this pop up every few years. I wish I had the follow though to do this.

Can I ask what benefit it provides? I'm genuinely curious what it could potentially provide.

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.

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

#35

Post by a1ff00 »

lardissone wrote: post #12

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. The…

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.

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

#36

Post by zerkten »

RationPhantoms wrote: post #11
awestley wrote: post #6

I see this pop up every few years. I wish I had the follow though to do this.

Can I ask what benefit it provides? I'm genuinely curious what it could potentially provide.

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.

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

#37

Post by raintrees »

bluechair wrote: post #15

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 sp…

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.

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

#38

Post by airstrike »

asystole wrote: post #27
lardissone wrote: post #12

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. The…

This is why I love Capacities. It's object oriented with properties and tags. No folders.

> 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.

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

#39

Post by esafak »

BoredPositron wrote: post #13
pendingU wrote: post #9

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…

You will understand when you get into your 50-60s.

My parents are way older than that and never worried about such things.

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

#40

Post by raintrees »

ocharles wrote: post #17
BoredPositron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will understand when you get into your 50-60s.

Because of the volume of documents, or because of some cognitive change at that age?

Both, for me. Memory not as sharp as it used to be, and more to be organized.
Post reply on HN