Your principles mirror my own, which have been developed and refined over the last ten years (I'm 34 now). There have been periods of overcomplicating things, but they've mostly reached a natural state that works for me.
Maybe interesting is the evolution of my system:
• 2015 and prior: Sticky notes, calendars, notebooks, sheets of paper, chaos
• 2016-2019: I found the bullet journal method and implemented the most basic form found here: https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq (collections, future log, monthly log, daily log) and never really evolved from that utilitarian mode.
• 2019-2025: I signed up for Notion and ported my bullet journal system there. I miss the physical version, but prefer the easy access and easy editing in the online version. In addition to Notion, I heavily use Google Calendar, and also Google Keep as a quicker-access and catch-all of smaller notes. I use Notion for life admin and Obsidian for work notes and files.
OP's Johnny.Decimal system caught my attention since I've been interested in a consistent and proven way to organize the files on my laptop, SSDs, Drive, as well as all my physical docs. I could also see it being a nice way to organize my Notion and Obsidian, but I also tend to rely on search and backlinking as others have commented about for their own systems.
I agree with you, but just for kicks I'd like to go through your examples.
First, blogging is alive and well in the outdoor sports space. "Trip reports" serve as incredibly helpful tools for research. In climbing, [Steph Abegg](https://www.stephabegg.com/tripreports/chronology) has one of the most useful sites cataloging, detailing, and photo logging all of her ascents. The late Marc-Andre Leclerc was a beautiful human, and while there are films and memories about him, it's his [blog](https://marcleclerc.blogspot.com/) that allows the world to get a truer sense for who he was.
I'm probably in the minority, but I prefer blogs over YouTube for their ability to parse the info more easily. TikTok takes most of the control in how it presents any info you might find and tops it off with immeasurable distraction.
ChatGPT can be great for quickly gathering relevant knowledge, but it still needs cross-referencing, and lacks the creative and novel elements that comes from a valuable human blog post.
Mainstream news articles tend to lack personality and voice.
"If you build it they will come" seems to still hold true for the posts and trip reports I've written. I've been pleasantly surprised by the email I've receive in my inbox asking esoteric follow-up questions, wondering how they even found my posts in the first place.
Overall traffic is admittedly mostly non-existent, and that's fine as I'd be glad to help or inform the few that do come across my posts. Though more to your point, I do wonder how many potential (younger?) readers will never come across a blog post because it's not ingrained as a place to look for info, as opposed to YouTube/TikTok etc.
Thanks for sharing. It's been wild for me to read through this thread and finding so much shared experience. For your comment, it could have been written exactly by me, just with the book and media subjects replaced with my own.
I'm undiagnosed, but have already made an appointment after reading a similar topic on reddit earlier this month [1]
Maybe interesting is the evolution of my system:
• 2015 and prior: Sticky notes, calendars, notebooks, sheets of paper, chaos
• 2016-2019: I found the bullet journal method and implemented the most basic form found here: https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq (collections, future log, monthly log, daily log) and never really evolved from that utilitarian mode.
• 2019-2025: I signed up for Notion and ported my bullet journal system there. I miss the physical version, but prefer the easy access and easy editing in the online version. In addition to Notion, I heavily use Google Calendar, and also Google Keep as a quicker-access and catch-all of smaller notes. I use Notion for life admin and Obsidian for work notes and files.
OP's Johnny.Decimal system caught my attention since I've been interested in a consistent and proven way to organize the files on my laptop, SSDs, Drive, as well as all my physical docs. I could also see it being a nice way to organize my Notion and Obsidian, but I also tend to rely on search and backlinking as others have commented about for their own systems.