Johnny.Decimal(johnnydecimal.com)
johnnydecimal.com
Johnny.Decimal
https://johnnydecimal.com/
190 comments
It does feel entertaining to read the comments from people who have so obviously never worked for a large (or old) organisation doing an admin related job who think that spotlight or fuzzy search will save them.
In a previous job I had to respond to freedom of information requests for a public sector organisation with more than 20,000 employees, which meant deep diving different departments shared drives and shared inboxes. The vast majority had no real structure at all and good luck finding a system that can search dozens of silo'd shared drives for info in .pdf and .doc files with permission systems that have evolved over decades. Discovering that the R&I division (which had several thousand employees on its own) mostly used johnny.decimal on their shared drives and often in their personal spaces was like discovering a tribe of ray gun wielding supermen in the depths of stone age Norfolk. It just makes life easy.
> good luck finding a system that can search dozens of silo'd shared drives for info in .pdf and .doc files
https://www.google.com/search?q=ediscovery+software
https://www.google.com/search?q=ediscovery+software
Ediscovery software, and I used a bespoke solution in that job, takes a job that can take weeks or months the and makes it possible to do it in days. Or y'know, you could use a filing system and do it in minutes?
also IIRC Windows Index Server has done this since the late 90s. And you can certainly configure it to index across shared drives.
Not suggesting it though :P
Not suggesting it though :P
Sometimes unfortunately you have no idea of the keywords to search for...
... or you drown under the ocean of unrelated finds, which is my usual experience with mass-applied windows indexing (in the form of massive corporate sharepoint)
... or you drown under the ocean of unrelated finds, which is my usual experience with mass-applied windows indexing (in the form of massive corporate sharepoint)
I idealize / fantasize about archiving and organizing work sometimes, not going to lie. I think a lot of people do as well for their own notes, but if they're anything like me, they don't have nearly as much stuff, or they intentionally produce and hoard stuff for the satisfaction, not because they actually need it.
There being new filing / organizing systems and apps (zettelkasten is the new hip thing nowadays it seems) popping up on HN every once in a while isn't helping either.
Tl;dr, I think it's the idealization of organizing, the feeling of productivity, etc that is fueling a lot of people.
Meanwhile I've gone through three or four different note keeping / taking / managing apps and still haven't settled on anything, lol. I also lost the need for it, now that I've gone from the exploratory phase to actually building software.
There being new filing / organizing systems and apps (zettelkasten is the new hip thing nowadays it seems) popping up on HN every once in a while isn't helping either.
Tl;dr, I think it's the idealization of organizing, the feeling of productivity, etc that is fueling a lot of people.
Meanwhile I've gone through three or four different note keeping / taking / managing apps and still haven't settled on anything, lol. I also lost the need for it, now that I've gone from the exploratory phase to actually building software.
The HN comments always sting a little. My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote? So my recommendation (having had a couple HN-front pagers) would be to be encouraged by the upvotes and the attention, while keeping your skin thick.. But also learning from the criticism what you can improve.
I just want to +1 this is a mostly-positive user who mostly upvotes rather than comment. I'm sure there's plenty of us, so don't feel discouraged.
Same here. I like the idea of JD very much - and I've been meaning to reorganize my notes by it, but can't ever get started on it - so there's very little of value I can add to conversation beyond an upvote.
On GP's:
> My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote?
It irks me to see this comment pattern regularly being called out as "HN specific", because it isn't. It's universal in on-line discussions - particularly those on platforms with upvote/reaction buttons. There is nothing interesting in "I like it" comments, so you always get disproportionately more of critical comments ("I don't like it because", "I had a problem with it"), tangents, and low-quality humor. HN is perhaps different than most places in its strong dislike of low-effort jokes - which leaves us with just criticism and tangents. My point thus is: it's not HN, it's the Internet. It's not a mutual admiration society like you get when you go out with friends for a beer. I would think people would've gotten used to it in 2020.
On GP's:
> My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote?
It irks me to see this comment pattern regularly being called out as "HN specific", because it isn't. It's universal in on-line discussions - particularly those on platforms with upvote/reaction buttons. There is nothing interesting in "I like it" comments, so you always get disproportionately more of critical comments ("I don't like it because", "I had a problem with it"), tangents, and low-quality humor. HN is perhaps different than most places in its strong dislike of low-effort jokes - which leaves us with just criticism and tangents. My point thus is: it's not HN, it's the Internet. It's not a mutual admiration society like you get when you go out with friends for a beer. I would think people would've gotten used to it in 2020.
>> My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote?
> It irks me to see this comment pattern regularly being called out as "HN specific"
I've heard this general rule vocalized on social media as "Fans like, haters comment".
If you get loads of upvotes for an idea and a lot of flack, those pushing back is not your audience and can safely be ignored. You are not doing anyone any favors by trying to appease everyone.
> It irks me to see this comment pattern regularly being called out as "HN specific"
I've heard this general rule vocalized on social media as "Fans like, haters comment".
If you get loads of upvotes for an idea and a lot of flack, those pushing back is not your audience and can safely be ignored. You are not doing anyone any favors by trying to appease everyone.
pretty much that, because what am i going to say other than: i like it, i'll go try that now.
if on the other hand i see something that's problematic or could be improved, i should say that, instead of just downvoting.
i think the problem comes from the tone people use to voice their disagreements
if on the other hand i see something that's problematic or could be improved, i should say that, instead of just downvoting.
i think the problem comes from the tone people use to voice their disagreements
Really great site! Uncluttered and easy to follow.
I have one question: is there JD best practice on how to handle file sets that are generated frequently and in large-ish numbers? I’m thinking specifically of camera image files. My current approach is to have a directory per year, and then subdirectories (with a YYYMMDD-subject name) for each distinct shoot (typically between 30 and 50) in that year, together containing between 5000 and 20000 new images (depending on how many shoots I do). I maintain a parallel folder structure for the processed images. My current thinking is to keep this photo-library as-is, but put all of my ‘normal’ files into a JD structure.
By the way, and picking up memetherapy’s comment, I’ve also experienced knowledge management problems in large corporations for which JD would be a great answer. The last place I worked moved several years ago from a ‘classic’ system based on servers and file systems to a system based upon numerous per-project sharepoint sites. It didn’t help that the template for the sites was developed from a project lifecycle perspective and had about 70 folders covering every stage from initiating a bid to project shutdown. There was pretty-much a single ‘dev’ folder for the actual work, that techies like myself inevitably populated in inconsistent ways. Something that was never resolved was that all of these silos made searching for old reports, etc really really hard and fundamentally broke knowledge management in the company. Especially when most of the silos had per-project access permissions.
On the point made elsewhere about tagging, in my experience it is extremely hard to get people across a large company to add metadata to content, let alone do it consistently.
I have one question: is there JD best practice on how to handle file sets that are generated frequently and in large-ish numbers? I’m thinking specifically of camera image files. My current approach is to have a directory per year, and then subdirectories (with a YYYMMDD-subject name) for each distinct shoot (typically between 30 and 50) in that year, together containing between 5000 and 20000 new images (depending on how many shoots I do). I maintain a parallel folder structure for the processed images. My current thinking is to keep this photo-library as-is, but put all of my ‘normal’ files into a JD structure.
By the way, and picking up memetherapy’s comment, I’ve also experienced knowledge management problems in large corporations for which JD would be a great answer. The last place I worked moved several years ago from a ‘classic’ system based on servers and file systems to a system based upon numerous per-project sharepoint sites. It didn’t help that the template for the sites was developed from a project lifecycle perspective and had about 70 folders covering every stage from initiating a bid to project shutdown. There was pretty-much a single ‘dev’ folder for the actual work, that techies like myself inevitably populated in inconsistent ways. Something that was never resolved was that all of these silos made searching for old reports, etc really really hard and fundamentally broke knowledge management in the company. Especially when most of the silos had per-project access permissions.
On the point made elsewhere about tagging, in my experience it is extremely hard to get people across a large company to add metadata to content, let alone do it consistently.
> My current thinking is to keep this photo-library as-is, but put all of my ‘normal’ files into a JD structure.
Yes. This sort of data set already sorts itself pretty well: by date. There’s no need to mess with that.
See also: your music library, if you don’t have iTunes do it for you.
> It didn’t help that the template for the sites was developed from a project lifecycle perspective and had about 70 folders covering every stage from initiating a bid to project shutdown.
Aah, when the PMO tries to be helpful. I see this all the time - a ‘baseline’ set of folders that you’re meant to understand know what to do with but literally nobody does so they just get ignored.
Worse, I frequently see them with numbers at the beginning. Worse even, those numbers just make no sense at all. I’ve recently experienced a repeating pattern which involves folders 001-015 being something that I can’t remember, and then `016 TO BE DELETED` (because this is in a document management system where you can’t actually delete a file).
Yes. This sort of data set already sorts itself pretty well: by date. There’s no need to mess with that.
See also: your music library, if you don’t have iTunes do it for you.
> It didn’t help that the template for the sites was developed from a project lifecycle perspective and had about 70 folders covering every stage from initiating a bid to project shutdown.
Aah, when the PMO tries to be helpful. I see this all the time - a ‘baseline’ set of folders that you’re meant to understand know what to do with but literally nobody does so they just get ignored.
Worse, I frequently see them with numbers at the beginning. Worse even, those numbers just make no sense at all. I’ve recently experienced a repeating pattern which involves folders 001-015 being something that I can’t remember, and then `016 TO BE DELETED` (because this is in a document management system where you can’t actually delete a file).
Perhaps you could, rather than taking criticism personally, use these comments as an opportunity to get a broader understanding of how others perceive your work.
I imagine it's a minority view here (well, pretty much everywhere), but I relish getting constructive criticism of my works, whether it's on a site like this or a review by my peers/customers/employers.
That's because I have my own perspective, point of view and view of the world. Others have different ones.
When other folks share their opinions/perspective, it gives me an opportunity to examine my own preconceptions -- which usually winds up giving me a better understanding of the topic at hand.
Granted, in a setting like HN, there will be those who will be uncharitable or dismissive, and those voices can be ignored.
However, those who criticize specific stuff and provide the assumptions/reasoning/thought processes behind those criticisms can provide valuable insight into how you and/or your product/service are perceived outside of your small circle of shared views and assumptions.
I hope the bulk of the comments here are of the latter kind rather than the former, and that you get new perspectives that can drive positive growth for your activities.
I imagine it's a minority view here (well, pretty much everywhere), but I relish getting constructive criticism of my works, whether it's on a site like this or a review by my peers/customers/employers.
That's because I have my own perspective, point of view and view of the world. Others have different ones.
When other folks share their opinions/perspective, it gives me an opportunity to examine my own preconceptions -- which usually winds up giving me a better understanding of the topic at hand.
Granted, in a setting like HN, there will be those who will be uncharitable or dismissive, and those voices can be ignored.
However, those who criticize specific stuff and provide the assumptions/reasoning/thought processes behind those criticisms can provide valuable insight into how you and/or your product/service are perceived outside of your small circle of shared views and assumptions.
I hope the bulk of the comments here are of the latter kind rather than the former, and that you get new perspectives that can drive positive growth for your activities.
I believe the trick is to remove the emotion from it. It can be very hard to not perceive criticism of the thing as criticism of oneself. Especially if the thing is something we've worked hard at and are proud of.
I use the "feedback bucket" mental trick: all feedback is shit (whether supportive or critical). All the feedback goes in the bucket, where it nourishes the growth of the beautiful roses of customer insight.
The point is to remove the immediacy of the feedback, detach it from the thing (and my feelings about the thing). But still allow it to inform my thinking about the thing. Instead of taking a criticism to heart, I can mentally "put it in the bucket". If it's useful, thoughtful, considered, constructive criticism then it will produce some insight later. If it's just spite, then it'll produce nothing.
I use the "feedback bucket" mental trick: all feedback is shit (whether supportive or critical). All the feedback goes in the bucket, where it nourishes the growth of the beautiful roses of customer insight.
The point is to remove the immediacy of the feedback, detach it from the thing (and my feelings about the thing). But still allow it to inform my thinking about the thing. Instead of taking a criticism to heart, I can mentally "put it in the bucket". If it's useful, thoughtful, considered, constructive criticism then it will produce some insight later. If it's just spite, then it'll produce nothing.
Indeed -- and this is why, really, we all want our pet thing to be up here on the front page at some point. Feedback from this audience is truly invaluable...
...sometimes. ;-)
...sometimes. ;-)
I have to say, I use it, thank you for publishing it, and have a nice day
Thanks for your comments here. They made me see that this is meant for a pretty particular context.
My first reaction was creeping horror, because this feels like a solution to a problem people shouldn't have. But now that I read you talking about the situations you've made this for, I get your point: it's a problem people do have, and one that's not going away any time soon.
Just to save future bathub wear and tear, I'd suggest adding a bit to the top of the website to say who this is for. Just a couple sentences telling the story of your archetypal user would do it. You might also say who it probably isn't for, just so we can get to the dogs wearing clothes images sooner.
My first reaction was creeping horror, because this feels like a solution to a problem people shouldn't have. But now that I read you talking about the situations you've made this for, I get your point: it's a problem people do have, and one that's not going away any time soon.
Just to save future bathub wear and tear, I'd suggest adding a bit to the top of the website to say who this is for. Just a couple sentences telling the story of your archetypal user would do it. You might also say who it probably isn't for, just so we can get to the dogs wearing clothes images sooner.
Good points, thanks, and probably the main thing I’ll take away from this thread.
“It isn’t for everyone” is absolutely right, and if I can make that separation higher up then it’s better for everyone.
“It isn’t for everyone” is absolutely right, and if I can make that separation higher up then it’s better for everyone.
Awesome privacy policy!
https://johnnydecimal.com/privacy/
https://johnnydecimal.com/privacy/
Looks not valid in terms of GDPR. What are my rights and in which paragraph are those rights stated? How long is data stored? Which log files of my visit arise (just my IP and date of visit? Who hosts that site, if it's not a machine you physically own? Do they store that data? More data, like browser or OS version?)
You are usually allowed to use that data for debugging and intrusion detection etc. but you still need to mention it, if that data is collected, even by a third party you hired.
Mate, it’s a website. You come, you read it, you leave. Next you’ll want a GDPR policy for your library book.
If that privacy policy doesn’t make it screamingly obvious that I’m not tracking you in any way then holy moly I don’t know what to do.
If that privacy policy doesn’t make it screamingly obvious that I’m not tracking you in any way then holy moly I don’t know what to do.
You could add a clause: "If your email address contains the string "a3w" it will be immediately forgotten." :)
I think if[1] I ever had a website, and if[2] I had advertising I would choose one advertiser per month, display a static image at the top of each page, and clicking on it would take you to a static page on an advertiser's website. and it would have a privacy policy like your good example
[1] big if
[2] bigger if
I think if[1] I ever had a website, and if[2] I had advertising I would choose one advertiser per month, display a static image at the top of each page, and clicking on it would take you to a static page on an advertiser's website. and it would have a privacy policy like your good example
[1] big if
[2] bigger if
There's not much to change there to actually make it "more GDPR-like". It already does what GDPR wants to cause, i.e. you don't gather Personal Data, with the only exception being the email, and given that it's not operating as an organisation it's probably in the clear.
Maaaaaybeee you might want to strip last octet in IP number from logs, but that's pretty much it.
Complex GDPR policies are only necessary when you want to store and process Personal Data.
Maaaaaybeee you might want to strip last octet in IP number from logs, but that's pretty much it.
Complex GDPR policies are only necessary when you want to store and process Personal Data.
> Maaaaaybeee you might want to strip last octet in IP number from logs, but that's pretty much it.
It’s hosted on Netlify, so I don’t even have logs. :-)
It’s hosted on Netlify, so I don’t even have logs. :-)
Then you point to netlify as responsible party and I guess you might be done ;)
GDPR compliance is overblown, when the simplest way to be compliant is to "just don't store nor process personal data"
GDPR compliance is overblown, when the simplest way to be compliant is to "just don't store nor process personal data"
I agree, except for the part where they immediately contradict themselves:
> If you choose to give me your email address, I will treat it with the utmost respect. I’ll never spam you, or give it to anyone else.
> In 2019 I moved from Mailchimp, whose business model started to make me uncomfortable, to Buttondown. It’s run by one guy who I trust to do the right thing.
> If you choose to give me your email address, I will treat it with the utmost respect. I’ll never spam you, or give it to anyone else.
> In 2019 I moved from Mailchimp, whose business model started to make me uncomfortable, to Buttondown. It’s run by one guy who I trust to do the right thing.
Are you arguing that using a service provider to send email is "giving email adresses away"? If so, how do you send your email? (I guess you could host your own mail server on-premises, but is that the bar?)
I'm not arguing that, it is literally factually true. He says he won't give it to anyone else, then goes on to list the person he's giving it to.
This is a bit off-topic, but by any chance did you draw inspiration for the design of the site from Butterick's Practical Typography[0]? I _love_ the beautiful simplicity of this page.
[0]: https://practicaltypography.com/
[0]: https://practicaltypography.com/
I know the site well! Not consciously, but I guess that’s the sort of look I was going for. Plus, frankly, it’s all I’m capable of! Ha ha.
I’ll say that Tailwind CSS is a godsend for someone like me. Being able to semantically describe what a thing should look like, inline, is miraculous.
Edit: /s/tailscale/tailwind. Tailscale is also amazing.
I’ll say that Tailwind CSS is a godsend for someone like me. Being able to semantically describe what a thing should look like, inline, is miraculous.
Edit: /s/tailscale/tailwind. Tailscale is also amazing.
This system has tremendously impacted my academic research productivity. Thank you.
I had a project I'm working on (which I already knew was going to be contentious) hit the front page a few months ago in a big way. After about 5 minutes I had to block the ID in my browser. It wasn't great.
Thanks for posting. If nothing else the good thing about your system is getting people to think about how to name and nest folders. I quite like one note in that it forces a 2 level heirarchy
I've met your site via your comment on HN about a year ago, on the topic about organizing...something...that I can't remember now.
The idea intrigue me! It's not often you see kind of thing that seems mundane(to general interwebz population) like a system to organizing files and folder. There is some method floating around, but they either too basic or too complex for my need.
That said, back then I give Johnny Decimal a try a bit, but works took toll on me and I eventually give in to my old way of filing things. Maybe it's time to revisited. :)
The idea intrigue me! It's not often you see kind of thing that seems mundane(to general interwebz population) like a system to organizing files and folder. There is some method floating around, but they either too basic or too complex for my need.
That said, back then I give Johnny Decimal a try a bit, but works took toll on me and I eventually give in to my old way of filing things. Maybe it's time to revisited. :)
I really liked your project. It may or may not be useful in my case, but I want to just say that you've put a lot of effort into this and it certainly shows. I have a problem with naming things as well, usually prefer some kind of a systemic way of organizing things. Perhaps, peculiarly I have a fascinationg for how companies name their products! It is similar in a way - organizing information for best possible internal and external communication.
Website is clear cut and to the point, its gorgeous btw. :-)
Website is clear cut and to the point, its gorgeous btw. :-)
I see you've already commented on Dewey elsewhere, but was just wondering - are these categories the actual Dewey Decimal System?
Second, have you experienced any of the problems outlined in MetaCrap https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm
Second, have you experienced any of the problems outlined in MetaCrap https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm
Re: Dewey, no. You make your own category numbers up for each system, every one is different (unless you create a standard, e.g. if you do lots of similar projects).
How have I never seen that link?! Yeah the issues described therein sound familiar...
How have I never seen that link?! Yeah the issues described therein sound familiar...
Thanks for the great site, it's a great reference for new clients when setting up there new file servers etc.
I'm currently doing a Zettlekasten (note/idea organisation) which uses a _similar_ principle, I think between this and johnny.decimal you could build a very custom but efficient system. Will have to ponder further :)
Cheers
Love this idea, and I want to adopt it for our organisation.
Could you advise what you would do in the following situation though?
I imagine one folder called "1 Projects" and immediately stumble upon an issue. We have 100's projects, not 10's.
Do I introduce another decimal point? Like so: "1.123.0"
Do I introduce another decimal point? Like so: "1.123.0"
Multiple projects: https://play.johnnydecimal.com/johnny.decimal/projects
My top-priority job as soon as I get time over Xmas is to get (an updated, better) version of this up on the main site. It’s the #1 question I get asked.
Took me a few years to figure this one out but I’ve been running it in anger now for a year and I can say that it works.
My top-priority job as soon as I get time over Xmas is to get (an updated, better) version of this up on the main site. It’s the #1 question I get asked.
Took me a few years to figure this one out but I’ve been running it in anger now for a year and I can say that it works.
Thank you for this! I have been working at the same company for 8+ years, and I have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. I have trouble finding anything these days. The stuff I /can/ find is because I have multiple copies sprinkled in different directories.
After reading this post, I have started to organize my documents and projects according to the description. I feel like this is going to be helpful not only so that I can find what I'm looking for, but so that I don't have 4 copies of every giant source code repo taking up my disk space.
I do have one question: in the examples, the category shows "40-49 BlahBlah", but the subcategory goes "41 Taxes, 42 Expenses, etc." Is there a reason why X0 is skipped? Is this so you have room for something you might have forgotten?
After reading this post, I have started to organize my documents and projects according to the description. I feel like this is going to be helpful not only so that I can find what I'm looking for, but so that I don't have 4 copies of every giant source code repo taking up my disk space.
I do have one question: in the examples, the category shows "40-49 BlahBlah", but the subcategory goes "41 Taxes, 42 Expenses, etc." Is there a reason why X0 is skipped? Is this so you have room for something you might have forgotten?
> In the example we’ve been using, 20-29 was Administration but our first category was 21 Company registration. What happened to 20?
> We reserve these numbers for ‘management & meta’ information about the category. Although I hardly ever use them, it’s rare that I have more than nine categories in an area. I don’t miss the wasted number, but I always appreciate it when I need it.
[0]: https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/what-about-00-09/
> We reserve these numbers for ‘management & meta’ information about the category. Although I hardly ever use them, it’s rare that I have more than nine categories in an area. I don’t miss the wasted number, but I always appreciate it when I need it.
[0]: https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/what-about-00-09/
:-)
Also recently I’ve been starting my IDs at `.11`. Same idea — sometimes you really want stuff to always appear ‘at the front’ and this lets you achieve that.
In the project system I’m setting up now, for example, we’re using the PMP methodology [0]. This very neatly divides up in to:
Then I won’t fill up the zeros, I’ll skip straight to .11 in each category for the things that are ‘personal’ to this particular project. I’m expecting that they will not be standard across projects.
[0]: https://www.pmi.org/certifications/project-management-pmp
Also recently I’ve been starting my IDs at `.11`. Same idea — sometimes you really want stuff to always appear ‘at the front’ and this lets you achieve that.
In the project system I’m setting up now, for example, we’re using the PMP methodology [0]. This very neatly divides up in to:
21 Scope
22 Schedule
23 Cost
...
29 Stakeholder
Then I won’t fill up the zeros, I’ll skip straight to .11 in each category for the things that are ‘personal’ to this particular project. I’m expecting that they will not be standard across projects.
[0]: https://www.pmi.org/certifications/project-management-pmp
I just left a job due in large part to terrible knowledge management. This is lovely. Thank you.
I’ve been using John Decimal since reading about on HN several years ago, so for every critic, there are folks happily using it and paying no mind.
Hi, I'm currently reading the site/guide, my question is, how viable is this for organizing personal files? Is this strictly for business only? I'm currently doing a personal files reorg and this hackernews post came in perfect timing.
100%, it’s what I do.
Also on my to-do list: get a few example structures up there. But drop me a mail and I’ll send you my home structure for inspiration. hello <at> the domain.
Also on my to-do list: get a few example structures up there. But drop me a mail and I’ll send you my home structure for inspiration. hello <at> the domain.
Hey, thanks for putting it out there. Without ideas, it would be a pretty boring world.
What if you have more than 100 IDs in a folder, and it makes sense to do that?
I'm gonna organize my 2TB thumb drive this way tomorrow (I'll at least start) and see how it goes...
I'm gonna organize my 2TB thumb drive this way tomorrow (I'll at least start) and see how it goes...
That is a problem that I haven’t solved.
Elsewhere someone suggested going 36-bit. Or hex, or whatever. So after 99 you’d go A0 and so on.
I don’t love that — the neatness gene is making me itch — but it’d work.
I’d say perhaps you’re being too granular if you have 100+ of a thing in a category. I’d love to know what it is, if you want to mail me. All this info adds to the system.
Elsewhere someone suggested going 36-bit. Or hex, or whatever. So after 99 you’d go A0 and so on.
I don’t love that — the neatness gene is making me itch — but it’d work.
I’d say perhaps you’re being too granular if you have 100+ of a thing in a category. I’d love to know what it is, if you want to mail me. All this info adds to the system.
I had a go at this today and was instantly reminded of why all my past organization efforts fell flat on their face: I don't know how to categorize things, and I can't seem to figure it out.
If there is an obvious delineation, I will accept it and use it. If there is a line separating categories and that line is blurry at all, I find it impossible to both confidently choose where it goes and know where I filed it later on. I can know where to put something or I can know where to pull it from. Never both, somehow. (I am as confused by this as you are, but it is true for me.)
So everything winds up in piles, both physically in real life and in my filesystems. The only way I can remember where something is, is to remember what the pile looked like when I placed that thing on the pile. Then I know exactly where it is.
In network file folders I can find something by remembering my own history in that folder and remembering about how many items were there when I created the thing I'm looking for. Then I sort by creation time and I count that many down, and it's usually one or two away from that number, in one direction or the other.
My windows desktop is organized autobiographically as well. I can never remember what I named a folder, but I know exactly where it is on the desktop.
I'm basically a nightmare for anyone that needs a tidy environment. If you clean up my stuff, everything you organized is lost to me forever.
If there is an obvious delineation, I will accept it and use it. If there is a line separating categories and that line is blurry at all, I find it impossible to both confidently choose where it goes and know where I filed it later on. I can know where to put something or I can know where to pull it from. Never both, somehow. (I am as confused by this as you are, but it is true for me.)
So everything winds up in piles, both physically in real life and in my filesystems. The only way I can remember where something is, is to remember what the pile looked like when I placed that thing on the pile. Then I know exactly where it is.
In network file folders I can find something by remembering my own history in that folder and remembering about how many items were there when I created the thing I'm looking for. Then I sort by creation time and I count that many down, and it's usually one or two away from that number, in one direction or the other.
My windows desktop is organized autobiographically as well. I can never remember what I named a folder, but I know exactly where it is on the desktop.
I'm basically a nightmare for anyone that needs a tidy environment. If you clean up my stuff, everything you organized is lost to me forever.
Say I have two businesses. How do I go from here? Do I have to have separate spaces with separate enumeration within each of them? Thank you!
See this comment to save me repeating myself. :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415022
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415022
Just wanted to vouch that I was one such emailer last year... and I did indeed get a reply. Thanks again and may God bless you!
> I’ve been using this successfully for a decade.
Given how the system is setup, I find this amusing in a meta-way.
Given how the system is setup, I find this amusing in a meta-way.
Very similar system to what we have been using for a good 10 times or 15 years. It works quiet well.
I remember when everything was on network drives, and no-one understood the folders other people had created, so they created their own. So you end up with three 'IT Projects' folders, in three different places. And worse, multiple copies of the same document in different places, all slightly different.
Sharepoint should have been able to fix all that, but somehow it just made it the same, but slower. Even after 20 years, I never know where the f__k I am in sharepoint, or when someone sends me a link to a sharepoint doc, I can open the doc, but I don't know where the f__k the document _is_. I dont know quite why sharepoint is so confusing, I think its because it tries hard to pretend to be something other than the document store that it should so obviously be. Just when I get the hang of it, they redesign it all, and add some new front end like Delve.
If I join a project, something that rings alarm bells is if the Project Manager has created sixty empty folders in Sharepoint arranged into a three level hierarchy with different folders for every stage and stream of the project. Most of the time, most of the folders remain empty for the duration.
So yep I really like this Johnny.Decimal idea, simple and workable.
Sharepoint should have been able to fix all that, but somehow it just made it the same, but slower. Even after 20 years, I never know where the f__k I am in sharepoint, or when someone sends me a link to a sharepoint doc, I can open the doc, but I don't know where the f__k the document _is_. I dont know quite why sharepoint is so confusing, I think its because it tries hard to pretend to be something other than the document store that it should so obviously be. Just when I get the hang of it, they redesign it all, and add some new front end like Delve.
If I join a project, something that rings alarm bells is if the Project Manager has created sixty empty folders in Sharepoint arranged into a three level hierarchy with different folders for every stage and stream of the project. Most of the time, most of the folders remain empty for the duration.
So yep I really like this Johnny.Decimal idea, simple and workable.
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
This. One hundred times this.
Those here arguing that things can, in fact, be found, or saying that my claim that "nobody can find anything any more" is absurd, clearly haven't worked in the ~5 large enterprises that I've worked in over the last decade.
Internal organisation in enterprises is shockingly bad. Remember, these people aren't techs. They have no idea what `find / -iname file | grep whatever` means. They crack open SharePoint and rummage around. When they want to save a thing, they just put it wherever. It's chaos.
I'm just implementing this for a few new projects at my current place and my boss has messaged me a number of times expressing his joy at just knowing where stuff is.
This. One hundred times this.
Those here arguing that things can, in fact, be found, or saying that my claim that "nobody can find anything any more" is absurd, clearly haven't worked in the ~5 large enterprises that I've worked in over the last decade.
Internal organisation in enterprises is shockingly bad. Remember, these people aren't techs. They have no idea what `find / -iname file | grep whatever` means. They crack open SharePoint and rummage around. When they want to save a thing, they just put it wherever. It's chaos.
I'm just implementing this for a few new projects at my current place and my boss has messaged me a number of times expressing his joy at just knowing where stuff is.
> So yep I really like this Johnny.Decimal idea, simple and workable.
Seems to be no different than this:
>something that rings alarm bells is if the Project Manager has created sixty empty folders in Sharepoint arranged into a three level hierarchy
Except that it's a hundred empty folders in a two level hierarchy replicated by convention across different systems, including Sharepoint if your organization uses it.
Seems to be no different than this:
>something that rings alarm bells is if the Project Manager has created sixty empty folders in Sharepoint arranged into a three level hierarchy
Except that it's a hundred empty folders in a two level hierarchy replicated by convention across different systems, including Sharepoint if your organization uses it.
Something jen729w doesn't talk about, but possibly should: if you have two categories that have similar things in them, have the same IDs in both. For example, I'm a low level manager. I've got an area for admin paperwork. One category is Me, other categories are for each of my subordinates. Each of those has a ID for annual performance reports. So mine is 11.01. My subordinates are all 12.01/13.01/14.01. This may result in skipped IDs, as not all subordinates have all of the IDs in use. But this is still helpful, as I know that 01 is always for annual performance reports, 02 is always for training, etc.
Another thing for Johnny: You may not need to get the IT team to make you a Sharepoint list for tracking your IDs. You may have your own little Sharepoint site if they use MS365. OneDrive for MS365 business runs on Sharepoint. So just make your own there.
Admittedly, I don't, because I'm actually using OneNote for that, as well as storing the notes. So every Area is a section group, Category is a section, and every ID is a page. And if I need to make more notes in an ID, I can make a subpage. But normally it's group-section-page. This leads into: the default page is 00.00, which is the table of contents. If you want to go really crazy, you could just embed any files into the pages as well, but I currently think that's a kinda nasty way to do it.
A third thing: if somehow you end up with more than 9 categories (see prior note on categories corresponding to people), nothing stops you from using Base36 for the category numbers. As above, if I became a middle manager, and had to track more than just a few guys, I'd still continue with lexicographic sorting category "numbers". It'd just be non-numeric. This goes into breaking the rules, but rules are there to be broke when necessary and sensible.
Another thing for Johnny: You may not need to get the IT team to make you a Sharepoint list for tracking your IDs. You may have your own little Sharepoint site if they use MS365. OneDrive for MS365 business runs on Sharepoint. So just make your own there.
Admittedly, I don't, because I'm actually using OneNote for that, as well as storing the notes. So every Area is a section group, Category is a section, and every ID is a page. And if I need to make more notes in an ID, I can make a subpage. But normally it's group-section-page. This leads into: the default page is 00.00, which is the table of contents. If you want to go really crazy, you could just embed any files into the pages as well, but I currently think that's a kinda nasty way to do it.
A third thing: if somehow you end up with more than 9 categories (see prior note on categories corresponding to people), nothing stops you from using Base36 for the category numbers. As above, if I became a middle manager, and had to track more than just a few guys, I'd still continue with lexicographic sorting category "numbers". It'd just be non-numeric. This goes into breaking the rules, but rules are there to be broke when necessary and sensible.
Repeating your IDs is very powerful indeed.
This system started when I ran a dance production. We were touring to multiple venues in multiple states, but they all have ticketing, seating plans, merch sales, etc.
I can still remember that system and I literally haven’t looked at it in ten years.
- 40-49 Venues
This system started when I ran a dance production. We were touring to multiple venues in multiple states, but they all have ticketing, seating plans, merch sales, etc.
I can still remember that system and I literally haven’t looked at it in ten years.
- 40-49 Venues
- 41 Melbourne, VIC
- 41.01 Tickets
- 41.02 Seating plan
- ...etc.
- 42 Sydney, NSW
- 42.01 Tickets
- etc...
Regarding the bash script [0] to jump to Johnny Decimal directories, you can also use the CDPATH feature that's built into bash (and other POSIX shells, including dash and zsh) so that you can jump directly to a category using the normal `cd` command, with tab completion:
1: https://linux.101hacks.com/cd-command/cdpath/
$ CDPATH=$(find /path/to/cjd/* -maxdepth 0 -type d -print0 | xargs -0 printf "%s:")
$ cd 34[tab]
$ cd 34\ Events\34.[tab]
34.18 Product Launch
34.19 Company All-Hands
34.20 Holiday Party
$ cd 34\ Events\34.18[tab]
$ cd 34\ Events\34.18\ Product\ Launch
1: https://linux.101hacks.com/cd-command/cdpath/
Would you mind if I (eventually) put this up on the site? This is gold.
Happy to link it back to this comment or any other profile you send my way.
Happy to link it back to this comment or any other profile you send my way.
Go for it! CDPATH is an underrated tool.
You can do a simpler version and just set
Or you could change the path in the find command to
You can do a simpler version and just set
CDPATH=/path/to/cjd
Or you could change the path in the find command to
/path/to/cjd/*/*
This is not a good idea. Here is why:
- It only solves the problem of communicating categories to another person/party with its brevity. 12.03, easy to tell others. But all this at the expense of the following things.
- There is no way to immediately know what 12.03 means. One has to carry a look up table. You can replace it with 2 char code. For example, Finance.Taxes to FN.TX. Why use numbers? Is the ordering important? Why not use char?
- What if categories do overlap? GMail solved this problem in 2005 with labels instead of folders. You can apply multiple tags. Tagging should be enum-like, while tagging it should show what tags already exist so that you dont create two seperate but similar tags, for e.g. Finance and Finances.
- The author dismisses search without giving any reason. Search is amazing for digital documents that is not possible in physical analog documents. The focus should be on tags + keywords or description of the document. Then use something like Algolia search to find stuff - it is extremely forgiving and powerful. Ofcourse, I am just speaking in general about data organization, not specifically about OS-level folders. For that, I think we're stuck with what the OS provides as a search engine. On MacOS, I think Alfred does a better job of searching, haven't used it personally though.
- You can still assign a unique ID to the document, after all thats all the 12.03 scheme does. You can communicate precisely to Jane, "Hey Jane, the document is B75AE2". Jane types that in the search engine and there is no need to weed through folders.
- Additional metadata such as year, author, owner, etc. would help with search.
Instead of making search powerful and contextualizing it, the author expends his arguments on frivolous pursuit of Johnny.Decimal.
- It only solves the problem of communicating categories to another person/party with its brevity. 12.03, easy to tell others. But all this at the expense of the following things.
- There is no way to immediately know what 12.03 means. One has to carry a look up table. You can replace it with 2 char code. For example, Finance.Taxes to FN.TX. Why use numbers? Is the ordering important? Why not use char?
- What if categories do overlap? GMail solved this problem in 2005 with labels instead of folders. You can apply multiple tags. Tagging should be enum-like, while tagging it should show what tags already exist so that you dont create two seperate but similar tags, for e.g. Finance and Finances.
- The author dismisses search without giving any reason. Search is amazing for digital documents that is not possible in physical analog documents. The focus should be on tags + keywords or description of the document. Then use something like Algolia search to find stuff - it is extremely forgiving and powerful. Ofcourse, I am just speaking in general about data organization, not specifically about OS-level folders. For that, I think we're stuck with what the OS provides as a search engine. On MacOS, I think Alfred does a better job of searching, haven't used it personally though.
- You can still assign a unique ID to the document, after all thats all the 12.03 scheme does. You can communicate precisely to Jane, "Hey Jane, the document is B75AE2". Jane types that in the search engine and there is no need to weed through folders.
- Additional metadata such as year, author, owner, etc. would help with search.
Instead of making search powerful and contextualizing it, the author expends his arguments on frivolous pursuit of Johnny.Decimal.
> Instead of making search powerful and contextualizing it, the author expends his arguments on frivolous pursuit of Johnny.Decimal.
What do you mean? How do you expect the author to "make search powerful"? This system is clearly in the context of a desktop/NAS filesystem, so they're stuck with whatever search systems exist. I honestly don't plan to use this system, and still feel the need to respond to this critique of it.
> Why use numbers?
Is answered here[0], to intentionally preserve ordering. You don't need to know what a plain ID means, because the only reason to use it is in context.
> What if categories do overlap?
There's nothing to stop you from tagging things in addition to using this system, if you want.
> dismisses search without giving any reason
Again, the author is not building their own document storage system.
> Additional metadata
This system is trying to solve the problem of having to supply a bunch of information to find a specific document.
Overall, there are lots of anecdotes here about how this system is useful in some situations. There's really no reason to sound so incredulous about it, even if it's not for you.
[0]: https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/areas-categories/
What do you mean? How do you expect the author to "make search powerful"? This system is clearly in the context of a desktop/NAS filesystem, so they're stuck with whatever search systems exist. I honestly don't plan to use this system, and still feel the need to respond to this critique of it.
> Why use numbers?
Is answered here[0], to intentionally preserve ordering. You don't need to know what a plain ID means, because the only reason to use it is in context.
> What if categories do overlap?
There's nothing to stop you from tagging things in addition to using this system, if you want.
> dismisses search without giving any reason
Again, the author is not building their own document storage system.
> Additional metadata
This system is trying to solve the problem of having to supply a bunch of information to find a specific document.
Overall, there are lots of anecdotes here about how this system is useful in some situations. There's really no reason to sound so incredulous about it, even if it's not for you.
[0]: https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/areas-categories/
Thanks for the color. I'll add one more thing against my argument:
- Discoverability: How many times have you opened glossary of a book just to explore and discover what else is in this book? Or open up a telephone directory with no specific person or business in mind, but a general category - "Shoe repair"? I think when things are organized by category, it allows for discoverability which would be difficult in a flat-searchable structure. Search works great when you know what you're looking for.
This can be half-solved by listing all items in a tag. Just that they'd appear in multiple tag archives as duplicates.
- Discoverability: How many times have you opened glossary of a book just to explore and discover what else is in this book? Or open up a telephone directory with no specific person or business in mind, but a general category - "Shoe repair"? I think when things are organized by category, it allows for discoverability which would be difficult in a flat-searchable structure. Search works great when you know what you're looking for.
This can be half-solved by listing all items in a tag. Just that they'd appear in multiple tag archives as duplicates.
It seems to me that the purpose of numbers over character codes is to constrain the available identifiers to force you to define a fairly small set of broad areas (you only have ten) and drill down within that. When we release that restriction and go with categories I think that would lead to making more and more categories with fuzzy overlap -- and that overlap is precisely what you don't want in a filing system where (unlike labels or tags) each item must have one and only one location.
You went on to mention labels and tags as a solution there -- but the point here is to implement the structure in a common filing system, isn't it? Your point works fine for email, but for documents on my drive tags don't seem like a great approach because at least on my machine even though tagging is an option, it's not robust and reliable.
It didn't feel totally fair to say that the author needed to address search more; the ability to search doesn't go away when you implement a system like this, it's still a powerful tool available to you if you know what you're searching for. If you don't know, then a system like this is a good way to explore the topics and assets in your file tree in a way that allows you to discover collections of related files.
Lastly, true that you can assign a unique ID -- but again, isn't that introducing and solving a different problem? Uniquely addressing every file might be a really useful thing, but as you mentioned, there's no context clue to help you decode B75AE2 -- you would need a lookup table. Even then, presumably you would want to know which categories and families that file should belong to.
Overall, everything you listed here is thought provoking and I think points out some of the limitations of the way our digital file systems emulate physical ones, but this collection of objections isn't persuasive that the Johnny decimal system isn't a good idea.
You went on to mention labels and tags as a solution there -- but the point here is to implement the structure in a common filing system, isn't it? Your point works fine for email, but for documents on my drive tags don't seem like a great approach because at least on my machine even though tagging is an option, it's not robust and reliable.
It didn't feel totally fair to say that the author needed to address search more; the ability to search doesn't go away when you implement a system like this, it's still a powerful tool available to you if you know what you're searching for. If you don't know, then a system like this is a good way to explore the topics and assets in your file tree in a way that allows you to discover collections of related files.
Lastly, true that you can assign a unique ID -- but again, isn't that introducing and solving a different problem? Uniquely addressing every file might be a really useful thing, but as you mentioned, there's no context clue to help you decode B75AE2 -- you would need a lookup table. Even then, presumably you would want to know which categories and families that file should belong to.
Overall, everything you listed here is thought provoking and I think points out some of the limitations of the way our digital file systems emulate physical ones, but this collection of objections isn't persuasive that the Johnny decimal system isn't a good idea.
> Your point works fine for email
I'm not sure it even works there. I have emails both categorized and tagged and still can't find anything between the thousands of work emails I get a week from coworkers, mailing lists, and automated systems. Any search brings up dozens to thousands of results.
> but for documents on my drive tags don't seem like a great approach because at least on my machine even though tagging is an option, it's not robust and reliable.
Not to mention that most users aren't interested in tagging every file they have. I never tag files. My emails can get auto-tagged by mail rules, but I don't have time to add tags to all of my files.
I'm not sure it even works there. I have emails both categorized and tagged and still can't find anything between the thousands of work emails I get a week from coworkers, mailing lists, and automated systems. Any search brings up dozens to thousands of results.
> but for documents on my drive tags don't seem like a great approach because at least on my machine even though tagging is an option, it's not robust and reliable.
Not to mention that most users aren't interested in tagging every file they have. I never tag files. My emails can get auto-tagged by mail rules, but I don't have time to add tags to all of my files.
> For example, Finance.Taxes to FN.TX.
I've tried this (in the context of multiple projects [0]). Believe me, I've tried everything!
The reason the JD site is the way it is is that I've been doing this myself for a decade and this is what I consider to be The Best Way.
[0]: https://play.johnnydecimal.com/johnny.decimal/projects
I've tried this (in the context of multiple projects [0]). Believe me, I've tried everything!
The reason the JD site is the way it is is that I've been doing this myself for a decade and this is what I consider to be The Best Way.
[0]: https://play.johnnydecimal.com/johnny.decimal/projects
This magical search system doesn't exist. In reality we have dozens of different search backends searching different stuff in different places with different relevance and UIs and results. And if you're going to use labels then this is the same thing, except picking 1 major label to organize with.
It's why we have street numbers to find buildings. It's why libraries use catalogs to locate books. It's why financial systems use a chart of accounts with numbers and prefixes to organize transactions.
Location is important, and abstracting that away into a giant file share with search only makes things worse.
It's why we have street numbers to find buildings. It's why libraries use catalogs to locate books. It's why financial systems use a chart of accounts with numbers and prefixes to organize transactions.
Location is important, and abstracting that away into a giant file share with search only makes things worse.
This is why fzf is so great in my mind. The longer a file path is, the better chance I have of finding it later (whereas deeply nested file paths make it harder to find files using something like Finder or ls)
These days I hardly ever bring up file naming in code reviews—fzf just makes it so easy to find everything.
https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
These days I hardly ever bring up file naming in code reviews—fzf just makes it so easy to find everything.
https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
Yep, real time fuzzy finding makes it so easy to find stuff quickly.
You can hit CTRL+t from the terminal after installing FZF and it will let you fuzzy search for any file you have. So you can do something like run `vim [CTRL+t]` to quickly find and open any file you want, or `cd [CTRL+t]` to switch into some deeply nested directory.
Even inside of WSL 2 with a 6 year old workstation on a first generation SSD it takes ~3 seconds to index 190,000 files and once that index is built, narrowing down results while typing is close to instant when using ripgrep as FZF's search back-end.
The amazing thing about all of this is it's dynamic. There's no having to create aliases or pre-defined directory structures. I only discovered CTRL+t from FZF a few weeks ago but once I did it was almost as good as discovering CTRL+r for the first time.
You can hit CTRL+t from the terminal after installing FZF and it will let you fuzzy search for any file you have. So you can do something like run `vim [CTRL+t]` to quickly find and open any file you want, or `cd [CTRL+t]` to switch into some deeply nested directory.
Even inside of WSL 2 with a 6 year old workstation on a first generation SSD it takes ~3 seconds to index 190,000 files and once that index is built, narrowing down results while typing is close to instant when using ripgrep as FZF's search back-end.
The amazing thing about all of this is it's dynamic. There's no having to create aliases or pre-defined directory structures. I only discovered CTRL+t from FZF a few weeks ago but once I did it was almost as good as discovering CTRL+r for the first time.
Protip for people that spend a lot of time on Github: press the letter "t" when browsing a project to fuzzy find on filenames like fzf in Github.
This is why I love love love Gmail and Google Photos. The search engine is so powerful.
I search "driveway" and get all the photos my wife and I ever took that shows our driveway. Ah yes the cracks are getting worse.
I search email for "driveway repair" and find that old recommendation from a friend despite the word driveway having never been mentioned.
I don't need a sorting system. I need a big pile of all my data ever with a fantastic search engine.
I'd prefer if it wasn't google.
I search "driveway" and get all the photos my wife and I ever took that shows our driveway. Ah yes the cracks are getting worse.
I search email for "driveway repair" and find that old recommendation from a friend despite the word driveway having never been mentioned.
I don't need a sorting system. I need a big pile of all my data ever with a fantastic search engine.
I'd prefer if it wasn't google.
Search is awesome. I agree, gmail's is great. Apple's Spotlight is also fabulous. So why does the article say "search doesn't fix this?"
The problem is when search extends across domains. I can search files with Spotlight, but not my google emails. On my phone, it's worse because there are so many different comms systems. I can search my Whatsapp messages; my SMS messages; my email; Facebook messenger; Skype.... Each individual search is fine, but no one tool does them all. Hence, the idea of using manual labels to classify stuff - including emails - can still be useful. Crazy that we're forced back to this.
The problem is when search extends across domains. I can search files with Spotlight, but not my google emails. On my phone, it's worse because there are so many different comms systems. I can search my Whatsapp messages; my SMS messages; my email; Facebook messenger; Skype.... Each individual search is fine, but no one tool does them all. Hence, the idea of using manual labels to classify stuff - including emails - can still be useful. Crazy that we're forced back to this.
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
Yep, search is great in Google-world or on your Mac. But try it at work where everything is in disparate SharePoints if you're lucky.
> Hence, the idea of using manual labels to classify stuff - including emails - can still be useful. Crazy that we're forced back to this.
I know!
Yep, search is great in Google-world or on your Mac. But try it at work where everything is in disparate SharePoints if you're lucky.
> Hence, the idea of using manual labels to classify stuff - including emails - can still be useful. Crazy that we're forced back to this.
I know!
Couldn’t agree with this more. Local folder organisation isn’t the problem, silo’d data in proprietary ecosystems is.
There is a product who's name I cannot remember that indexes all your stuff (local, cloud) to make it all searchable - it's not Google but your index is in their system.
Edit: Seva and Cloudtenna
I wish I had a local one that just packed it all into Solr
Edit: Seva and Cloudtenna
I wish I had a local one that just packed it all into Solr
It would be super nice if this concept would come with a couple of templates validated by years of experience how to organize this.
In my previous org we did this but had a couple of things which were hard to file:
- Where to put templates (letters, powerpoints to be used by more than one department/function). Is it marketing or communication or management?
- Should we put products or processes on top-level?
- How to split access control?
- How to archive (old/backup folders)?
In my previous org we did this but had a couple of things which were hard to file:
- Where to put templates (letters, powerpoints to be used by more than one department/function). Is it marketing or communication or management?
- Should we put products or processes on top-level?
- How to split access control?
- How to archive (old/backup folders)?
Great to see this here! I came across it maybe a year or two ago and I love how it lines up with my thinking. I rely on search as well but over and over I come back to the basic issue that search only offers up things you know to search for. A category system like this one resolves some of the anxiety that comes along with trying to establish a universal category system, while also organizing things to support future exploration and discovery.
One thing that stuck with me when I wanted to experiment with this system is the fear of exhausting the top level namespace: the system as described blocks the first number into areas of ten. I remember feeling like it would be pretty normal to need more subcategories in some areas than others and worrying about running out.
On reflection I think that's probably more of an academic problem, and that if I took the dive things would work out. I would be curious about whether there are any suggestions around for how to handle it if you're running short on areas to assign.
One thing that stuck with me when I wanted to experiment with this system is the fear of exhausting the top level namespace: the system as described blocks the first number into areas of ten. I remember feeling like it would be pretty normal to need more subcategories in some areas than others and worrying about running out.
On reflection I think that's probably more of an academic problem, and that if I took the dive things would work out. I would be curious about whether there are any suggestions around for how to handle it if you're running short on areas to assign.
Yep!
https://play.johnnydecimal.com/johnny.decimal/projects
This is actually what I’m running at work now. Over Xmas when I get some time an edited/updated version of this will become a page on the main site, it’s easily the #1 question I get by email.
https://play.johnnydecimal.com/johnny.decimal/projects
This is actually what I’m running at work now. Over Xmas when I get some time an edited/updated version of this will become a page on the main site, it’s easily the #1 question I get by email.
This is actually pretty similar to the NATO system for organising departments - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_(military)#Continental_s...
The officer in charge of operations and plans for a warship can sit in an office with "N3/N5" on the door and everybody in NATO will understand what's going on.
The officer in charge of operations and plans for a warship can sit in an office with "N3/N5" on the door and everybody in NATO will understand what's going on.
I have a creeping feeling that systems like this (one of the most famous of them is GTD, but there are many, many others) are designed by people with a certain temperament: they are organized anyway, and their ability to continually keep things neat and orderly, following the same algorithm day after day, is what really helps them, and what particular system they choose to follow, doesn't really matter much.
But then they are unsuccessfully applied by people with a completely different, chaotic temperament, which are not able to maintain any such system for a significant amount of time anyway. We (as I'm certainly from the second kind) try one system after another, hoping that this will be the one that finally saves us from ourselves, but the real difference lies not in the system, but in something very fundamental in our psyche. It doesn't matter how beautiful the system is, or how fancy are the pens that we buy each september (school memories are the best example of this) - a couple of months later it will lie abandoned and forgotten.
May be I'm wrong? Has there been a single HN user that has been unorganized and chaotic most of his life, but then have actually turned things around because of such a system? Would love to hear about it.
But then they are unsuccessfully applied by people with a completely different, chaotic temperament, which are not able to maintain any such system for a significant amount of time anyway. We (as I'm certainly from the second kind) try one system after another, hoping that this will be the one that finally saves us from ourselves, but the real difference lies not in the system, but in something very fundamental in our psyche. It doesn't matter how beautiful the system is, or how fancy are the pens that we buy each september (school memories are the best example of this) - a couple of months later it will lie abandoned and forgotten.
May be I'm wrong? Has there been a single HN user that has been unorganized and chaotic most of his life, but then have actually turned things around because of such a system? Would love to hear about it.
You're probably right in your general conclusion. I definitely understand - I'm on the "unorganized and chaotic" end of the scale. That is, I desperately try to get myself organized. I have been, for almost two decades now. I've started with GTD, done it numerous times, and went through pretty much anything I could find on-line. What always happened is as you describe: it "doesn't matter how beautiful the system is, (...) - a couple of months later it will lie abandoned and forgotten".
But! Every now and then, something from one of these systems will stick for longer. Perhaps a technique, or vocabulary, or a piece of tooling. Over time, it coalesces into this chaotic, very idiosyncratic organizational system that kind of works for you. I'm definitely much more productive today than I was those two decades ago.
But! Every now and then, something from one of these systems will stick for longer. Perhaps a technique, or vocabulary, or a piece of tooling. Over time, it coalesces into this chaotic, very idiosyncratic organizational system that kind of works for you. I'm definitely much more productive today than I was those two decades ago.
I think you’re right, and recognising that some people just aren’t organised people is a valuable emotional skill.
Those of us that are organised just need to help those people. Or be the person in our organisation that takes control of this stuff and does it. Hey, I’m making a decent living partially because of this system.
Those of us that are organised just need to help those people. Or be the person in our organisation that takes control of this stuff and does it. Hey, I’m making a decent living partially because of this system.
I've seriously considered making a file/folder organizer based on an old program called "animal" that I saw on some mainframe in the '80s.
Animal asked you to think of an animal, then it tried to identify it by asking you yes/no questions. Let's say it asked you if it has four legs (no), does it have wings (yes), and then it guesses that you are thinking of a hummingbird.
That's wrong, because you were thinking of a penguin. It would then ask you what yes/no question it could have asked to tell a penguin from a hummingbird, and you could tell it to ask "Does it fly?" and the answer is "no" for a penguin.
It would add that question to its decision tree, so if anyone else thought of a penguin it would get it.
For much of my stuff at work, I use an unfiled filing system. I started this one day when I was asked to write some one time report to solve some mystery.
I spent a half hour with the line "mkdir " typed into my terminal window unable to think of a good name for the directory to do this task in. Finally I gave up on naming the thing, and did "mkdir unfiled". Then in unfiled I did "mkdir 1", and "vi directory.txt". In "directory.txt" I added something like this:
"1 Report for Alice and Bob to identify source of unexpected load on main website"
and then went into the "1" directory and wrote the code to gather the data and analyze it and produce that report.
I intended to figure out a real name for the thing later and rename/move it.
I never got around to figuring out a real name, and unfiled/1 is still there. Along with unfiled/2, unfiled/3, ..., unfiled/314.
This has actually worked out well for me. Suppose I run into some kind of issue with UTF-8 handling in MySQL. I remember I've dealt with that before, and grep in directory.txt for terms like mysql and utf. That turns up that the work for those earlier problems is in unfiled/258, and so that's where I go to find the programs I wrote for investigating that kind of issue.
Not everything goes in unfiled, of course. A good rule of thumb is that if it is something my replacement would need to takeover if I got hit by a bus, it should not be in unfiled. It should be in a well named repo on my department's git server.
Animal asked you to think of an animal, then it tried to identify it by asking you yes/no questions. Let's say it asked you if it has four legs (no), does it have wings (yes), and then it guesses that you are thinking of a hummingbird.
That's wrong, because you were thinking of a penguin. It would then ask you what yes/no question it could have asked to tell a penguin from a hummingbird, and you could tell it to ask "Does it fly?" and the answer is "no" for a penguin.
It would add that question to its decision tree, so if anyone else thought of a penguin it would get it.
For much of my stuff at work, I use an unfiled filing system. I started this one day when I was asked to write some one time report to solve some mystery.
I spent a half hour with the line "mkdir " typed into my terminal window unable to think of a good name for the directory to do this task in. Finally I gave up on naming the thing, and did "mkdir unfiled". Then in unfiled I did "mkdir 1", and "vi directory.txt". In "directory.txt" I added something like this:
"1 Report for Alice and Bob to identify source of unexpected load on main website"
and then went into the "1" directory and wrote the code to gather the data and analyze it and produce that report.
I intended to figure out a real name for the thing later and rename/move it.
I never got around to figuring out a real name, and unfiled/1 is still there. Along with unfiled/2, unfiled/3, ..., unfiled/314.
This has actually worked out well for me. Suppose I run into some kind of issue with UTF-8 handling in MySQL. I remember I've dealt with that before, and grep in directory.txt for terms like mysql and utf. That turns up that the work for those earlier problems is in unfiled/258, and so that's where I go to find the programs I wrote for investigating that kind of issue.
Not everything goes in unfiled, of course. A good rule of thumb is that if it is something my replacement would need to takeover if I got hit by a bus, it should not be in unfiled. It should be in a well named repo on my department's git server.
It seems that for this to work, existing directories can't be renamed. However with time the initial structure might turn out (or become) not optimal. In general I like the idea but not having a way to rotate the structure is a significant downside to me.
I assume see also and/or inspired by good the ol' Dewey Decimal System?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes
You probably don't know much about Dewey, he's got a pretty "interesting" life story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey
"At the June 2019 conference of the American Library Association the Council voted to remove Dewey's name from its top honor, the Melvil Dewey Medal; the resolution cited Dewey's history of racism, anti-Semitism, and sexual harassment. The resolution was passed overwhelmingly with no debate. The award was renamed the ALA Medal of Excellence at the Association's January 2020 conference"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes
You probably don't know much about Dewey, he's got a pretty "interesting" life story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey
"At the June 2019 conference of the American Library Association the Council voted to remove Dewey's name from its top honor, the Melvil Dewey Medal; the resolution cited Dewey's history of racism, anti-Semitism, and sexual harassment. The resolution was passed overwhelmingly with no debate. The award was renamed the ALA Medal of Excellence at the Association's January 2020 conference"
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
Yep, a friend of mine named it in 'honour' of Dewey Decimal. Kinda genius, which I can say because that wasn't my idea. :-)
But yeah had no idea he was a terrible human, that's a shame.
Yep, a friend of mine named it in 'honour' of Dewey Decimal. Kinda genius, which I can say because that wasn't my idea. :-)
But yeah had no idea he was a terrible human, that's a shame.
I wonder when it was created in his name? Given:
> He resigned from the American Library Association due to allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and antisemitism in 1905.
> He resigned from the American Library Association due to allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and antisemitism in 1905.
I’m not a historian, my friend. Dewey’s kinda famous, my mate basically said it out loud one day, my name is Johnny, the system has a decimal in it, boom, that was it. At the time I was the only person using it and the idea of a website was years away. Let’s not read too much in to it eh.
> “Hey Kristy, where can I find the payroll schedule?”
> “Twelve dot oh-three.”
Or, you know, don't encumber the brains of people with useless numbers, and use computers for what they are actually good are, at least better than people, e.g. use the search feature of your file browser for "payroll schedule".
Or, you know, don't encumber the brains of people with useless numbers, and use computers for what they are actually good are, at least better than people, e.g. use the search feature of your file browser for "payroll schedule".
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
This is a real example from a past life, and really works when you're shouting across an office or talking down the phone.
The longer original, edited down for brevity, went something like:
"Hey Kristy, where can I find the payroll schedule?"
"Okay go to the Finance folder. No, the one in the G: drive. Yeah now go to Payroll ... oh sorry, it's Payroll 2020. Yeah no not the Payroll 2020 in the Payroll folder, the one at the root. Yeah. Now in there ... hang on let me have a look ... okay there's a 'Janice' folder and in there..." ... and so on, ad. absurdium.
This is a real example from a past life, and really works when you're shouting across an office or talking down the phone.
The longer original, edited down for brevity, went something like:
"Hey Kristy, where can I find the payroll schedule?"
"Okay go to the Finance folder. No, the one in the G: drive. Yeah now go to Payroll ... oh sorry, it's Payroll 2020. Yeah no not the Payroll 2020 in the Payroll folder, the one at the root. Yeah. Now in there ... hang on let me have a look ... okay there's a 'Janice' folder and in there..." ... and so on, ad. absurdium.
Triggered. :)
In practice it looks like this: here's stuff matching "payroll schedule" - "payroll schedule 2018", "payroll schedule template", "payroll schedule for contractors", "payroll to reschedule July 2017", etc.
It's a common issue with intranets. There's lots of content, but not enough traffic to figure out what you may be interested in. And even if there was, you may not be after the "most popular" item.
It's a common issue with intranets. There's lots of content, but not enough traffic to figure out what you may be interested in. And even if there was, you may not be after the "most popular" item.
Don't forget that the document you may be looking for may actually be called "payment schedule" instead of payroll schedule because someone wasn't good at following the implicit, unwritten naming convention.
That's cool if you know exactly what you're searching for. It gets less useful as the amount of information you have drops - you basically have to do multiple searches and hope one of the terms you're guessing will be a hit. Having categorised folders on the other hand means you can narrow it down and be sure that your search process is "exhaustive".
Search is not reliable or reproducible. People search for things in different ways, and the content of a file is separate from the location while both are important.
And search systems today are still terrible. Different interfaces, searching different locations and content, with different ranking and relevance and operators. Much faster to just direct someone where something is and let their brain figure out the rest, because we're actually very good at that.
And search systems today are still terrible. Different interfaces, searching different locations and content, with different ranking and relevance and operators. Much faster to just direct someone where something is and let their brain figure out the rest, because we're actually very good at that.
When my team started moving everything over to shared drives I made it a point that the top folder on every share would be the year. So the top of the hierarchy is just folders named '2019', '2020', etc.
This means that every year we get to recategorize the stuff underneath it and we learn as we go. Most of the sub-folders have stayed the same year to year, but some are different. It lets people see what works and what doesn't, and it prevents the cruft of ages to accumulate. Sometimes work bleeds from one year into the next, but if you're starting something new, create it in this year's folder.
Having been the victim of lots of shared folder catastrophes in the past, this simple rule has really worked out well for my team so far.
This means that every year we get to recategorize the stuff underneath it and we learn as we go. Most of the sub-folders have stayed the same year to year, but some are different. It lets people see what works and what doesn't, and it prevents the cruft of ages to accumulate. Sometimes work bleeds from one year into the next, but if you're starting something new, create it in this year's folder.
Having been the victim of lots of shared folder catastrophes in the past, this simple rule has really worked out well for my team so far.
This idea looks great, and it would be great if it worked: I've been struggling to keep all my documents organized many times, and I think I've followed basically the same system (except for the number.mapping).
This is my gotcha: how do you decide where a document go? The categories might be clearly split, but documents typically won't fall in exactly one category.
How do you manage temporary tags? That is: how do you operate on the documents? You might be having some documents for your "2020 tax return" in several categories of your system. And what now? Do you duplicate them in another category (tax return?)? Do you tag them? How do you keep track that you moved them? (In case they're real objects, like pieces of paper).
This is my gotcha: how do you decide where a document go? The categories might be clearly split, but documents typically won't fall in exactly one category.
How do you manage temporary tags? That is: how do you operate on the documents? You might be having some documents for your "2020 tax return" in several categories of your system. And what now? Do you duplicate them in another category (tax return?)? Do you tag them? How do you keep track that you moved them? (In case they're real objects, like pieces of paper).
> This is my gotcha: how do you decide where a document go? The categories might be clearly split, but documents typically won't fall in exactly one category.
Symlinks!
> How do you manage temporary tags?
Symlinks again!
Basically you put everything in an incoming folder, maybe organized by year or month/year or even type. Then you symlink to all of the categories it would be interesting to you.
Your temporary tags would just all be a folder of symlinks, so you can kill the tag and retain your document.
Symlinks!
> How do you manage temporary tags?
Symlinks again!
Basically you put everything in an incoming folder, maybe organized by year or month/year or even type. Then you symlink to all of the categories it would be interesting to you.
Your temporary tags would just all be a folder of symlinks, so you can kill the tag and retain your document.
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
Symlinks can work, and I've used them.
My advice to people is usually, though, that your brain will sort it out for you. And it really does.
The canonical example is "home insurance". Say you have a category of "home" and a category elsewhere of "insurance". Perfectly possible.
Which one does it go in? Well, you designed this system. Your brain came up with it. I've found that in nearly all cases, you just know.
I see where this may fall down in a shared environment (work), which is why I advocate (in one of the many unwritten posts on my as-yet-to-exist blog) for the role of a 'librarian' at work. We seem to think that 20 people can work on a project together and all just magically decide where everything goes. That has been shown again and again to be a fallacy that we believe search will help us with. My argument -- from experience -- is that it does not, and that we need to go back to a world where we organise things, and that people are responsible for this organisation.
Symlinks can work, and I've used them.
My advice to people is usually, though, that your brain will sort it out for you. And it really does.
The canonical example is "home insurance". Say you have a category of "home" and a category elsewhere of "insurance". Perfectly possible.
Which one does it go in? Well, you designed this system. Your brain came up with it. I've found that in nearly all cases, you just know.
I see where this may fall down in a shared environment (work), which is why I advocate (in one of the many unwritten posts on my as-yet-to-exist blog) for the role of a 'librarian' at work. We seem to think that 20 people can work on a project together and all just magically decide where everything goes. That has been shown again and again to be a fallacy that we believe search will help us with. My argument -- from experience -- is that it does not, and that we need to go back to a world where we organise things, and that people are responsible for this organisation.
I do not like your organizational system (nested folders are a great way to collapse conceptual complexity
IMHO) but I thoroughly agree with the need for someone to dictate organizational systems for a group project - my time in the animation world taught me the value of everyone who touches a project having a little cheat sheet or two stuck on the wall near their desk that tells them how to name things so as to not cause conflicts when merging with others’ work, and to make it easy for other folks to find stuff!
Eh, I'm not convinced. This might be nice for a static hierarchy of not too many office documents, but for the very heterogenous files I deal with, I'm happy with the first level of division being a "project". There are only ever a handful of projects I'm working on at a time, and different projects' files are usually suited to very different directory structures.
That said, the only documents I need to keep in long-term storage are invoices and contracts, which I can just put into two directories. If I ever get too many of such official documents, I might look into a structure like this.
That said, the only documents I need to keep in long-term storage are invoices and contracts, which I can just put into two directories. If I ever get too many of such official documents, I might look into a structure like this.
Such systems help you get the structure of things up into YOUR head, so it becomes a mental ladder for YOU.
The main shared network folder for my company is organised like this, it makes it easy to figure out "do we have X/anything about X", and it makes it easy to figure out where to put stuff.
We have other systems, e.g. a wiki, but cruft accumulates in the wiki, because no employee can grasp what's in it, the wiki is just a black bag of "lots of stuff someone put in there at some point". Because the clutter isn't visible, nobody feels an urge to clean it up.
> None of the areas or categories overlap. There’s only one place anything can ever be.
Exactly unlike actual documents. Where do I put the sales figures we use for marketing?
Exactly unlike actual documents. Where do I put the sales figures we use for marketing?
This, so much.
This is what basically kills the whole idea. It's what made people want to switch from folders to search, which this site claims doesn't work.
This is what basically kills the whole idea. It's what made people want to switch from folders to search, which this site claims doesn't work.
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
Yep, this can be an issue. See my sibling comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412455
Yep, this can be an issue. See my sibling comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412455
While sales figures are 'Financials' the actual figures are just reports.
so something like:
so something like:
## Marketing
- ##.## Reports (as a timestamped pdf etc)I could see this working better for a shared folder structure. I tried it for about six months with my personal documents and it went horribly. Between maintaining the index, constantly trying to decide where something should go, and running out of IDs once and having to rename a bunch of stuff, it was just a huge pain.
Now I just name things verbosely and use Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/).
Now I just name things verbosely and use Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/).
Hierarchically organized information vs. searchable information ... rings a bell.
Oh yeah: Yahoo directory vs. Google.
I've given up on organizing documents in hierarchies a long time ago. Specifically because many things actually belong in many places.
Search is the way to go.
[edit]: and by "Search" and mean "indexed search"
Oh yeah: Yahoo directory vs. Google.
I've given up on organizing documents in hierarchies a long time ago. Specifically because many things actually belong in many places.
Search is the way to go.
[edit]: and by "Search" and mean "indexed search"
Ontology is overrated: https://web.archive.org/web/20191117162526/http://shirky.com...
I organize my folders with 2 ~ 4 letter prefixes:
/[CO] My Company/[OR] Organizations/[GOOG] Google/
I then put these prefixes in front of my files:
COORGOOGINV-20201214 Some Invoice.pdf
The number of prefix characters should be consistent within each folder of course.
I might sometimes add other tags:
COORGOOGINV-20201214 Some Invoice [No 345750][E 87][Payed].pdf
/[CO] My Company/[OR] Organizations/[GOOG] Google/
I then put these prefixes in front of my files:
COORGOOGINV-20201214 Some Invoice.pdf
The number of prefix characters should be consistent within each folder of course.
I might sometimes add other tags:
COORGOOGINV-20201214 Some Invoice [No 345750][E 87][Payed].pdf
How about a filesystem that just provided tagging as a first class citizen?
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
I don't find tags useful for many of the same reasons that I invented this system.
What's the tag for the payroll schedule? Is it 'Payroll'? 'Finance'? Something else?
Who manages the tags? Can anyone add one?
Tags need managing just as much as -- if not more than -- a well-organised folder structure. Tags aren't just some free magical way to organise stuff ... otherwise I dare say they'd be more popular.
I don't find tags useful for many of the same reasons that I invented this system.
What's the tag for the payroll schedule? Is it 'Payroll'? 'Finance'? Something else?
Who manages the tags? Can anyone add one?
Tags need managing just as much as -- if not more than -- a well-organised folder structure. Tags aren't just some free magical way to organise stuff ... otherwise I dare say they'd be more popular.
Sorry if the comment came off as critical to what you've done; it was not meant to be. I just find the ability to tag data to be useful for organization and discoverability and I find it interesting that in 2020 there's no widely used file systems that have it out of the box.
I'm not GP, but I would love to have everything organised with tags, and my tags themselves would use your system (or something very similar).
Some observations, and thanks: -
"What is the tag?" is a category error. It's "what are the tags?" Tags are not paths.
Is it Payroll? Yes. Is it Finance? Yes, if that's how your org does things. Is it other things besides? Yes. A "superseded" tag would likely be useful to many organisations.
The idea of tags as opposed to paths is that a leaf object can have lots of them.
Of course tags are not free. The question is, does the value they bring outweigh their costs? Like you, I think the answer is usually "no". People suck at tagging.
If tags are to be used, "who manages the tags" is a key question that needs to be explicitly asked and answered at the same time as, or before, deciding your categories.
However the same applies to managing the "chart of accounts" that Johnny Decimal requires. The structure that is best for the organisation almost certainly won't be optimal for any given staff member. So management is required.
These are both stewardship problems.
The Johnny Decimal website is silent on the subject of stewardship. Here I want to focus on two aspects: keeping things working, and managing succession.
Keeping things working: using a gardening metaphor, is planting and weeding, re-potting, trimming and pruning and harvesting, turning over the garden beds, and so on. Like gardening, this part of records stewardship is best carried out regularly and frequently.
Obsoleting things is a key part of this. Contra the poster above who says "just delete it"[1], often you have to keep no-longer-current versions of filed objects around for a long time, for some combination of reasons: the maintenance and repair manual for a machine tool model we stopped selling 20 years ago, minutes of board meetings from an equivalent time ago, commemorative photos, old logo artwork, client records (if, say, you're a dentist) for the life of the client, even if you haven't seen them for a decade, ...
Succession is about ensuring groups have the right access, new people belong to the right groups and are properly indoctrinated, and things are handed over when staff leave or change roles, and ex-staff have their access removed; and about revising the structure, ontology, and access rights so that they stay relevant as the organisation they serve changes.
Records management is somewhat like plumbing--good drains, no-one notices; with bad ones, everyone is miserable. And keeping the drains "good" requires work.
The problems that are now universal ("Acme Corp Contract", "Acme Corp Contract - final version", "Acme Corp Contract - final with client revisions", "Acme Corp Contract - senior management approval", "Acme Corp Contract Brian", etc.) have indeed come about because computer-illiterate and filing-illiterate office workers thought the FAT file system (and then NTFS and/or Sharepoint) was a magic, zero-effort substitute for having a system both for keeping records and for training/indoctrinating new staff to keep records properly.
We have had two generations of office workers who have never experienced properly functioning filing systems (except possibly at a university library). Just like people who browse the web without an ad blocker, they don't know any different, so this is an invisible problem to them.
Johnny Decimal is a step towards opening people's eyes (or noses). Thanks for publishing your website!
1. Deleting things that should be deleted is an important skill, but another one is knowing what should not be deleted, but instead moved out of the main stream.
"What is the tag?" is a category error. It's "what are the tags?" Tags are not paths.
Is it Payroll? Yes. Is it Finance? Yes, if that's how your org does things. Is it other things besides? Yes. A "superseded" tag would likely be useful to many organisations.
The idea of tags as opposed to paths is that a leaf object can have lots of them.
Of course tags are not free. The question is, does the value they bring outweigh their costs? Like you, I think the answer is usually "no". People suck at tagging.
If tags are to be used, "who manages the tags" is a key question that needs to be explicitly asked and answered at the same time as, or before, deciding your categories.
However the same applies to managing the "chart of accounts" that Johnny Decimal requires. The structure that is best for the organisation almost certainly won't be optimal for any given staff member. So management is required.
These are both stewardship problems.
The Johnny Decimal website is silent on the subject of stewardship. Here I want to focus on two aspects: keeping things working, and managing succession.
Keeping things working: using a gardening metaphor, is planting and weeding, re-potting, trimming and pruning and harvesting, turning over the garden beds, and so on. Like gardening, this part of records stewardship is best carried out regularly and frequently.
Obsoleting things is a key part of this. Contra the poster above who says "just delete it"[1], often you have to keep no-longer-current versions of filed objects around for a long time, for some combination of reasons: the maintenance and repair manual for a machine tool model we stopped selling 20 years ago, minutes of board meetings from an equivalent time ago, commemorative photos, old logo artwork, client records (if, say, you're a dentist) for the life of the client, even if you haven't seen them for a decade, ...
Succession is about ensuring groups have the right access, new people belong to the right groups and are properly indoctrinated, and things are handed over when staff leave or change roles, and ex-staff have their access removed; and about revising the structure, ontology, and access rights so that they stay relevant as the organisation they serve changes.
Records management is somewhat like plumbing--good drains, no-one notices; with bad ones, everyone is miserable. And keeping the drains "good" requires work.
The problems that are now universal ("Acme Corp Contract", "Acme Corp Contract - final version", "Acme Corp Contract - final with client revisions", "Acme Corp Contract - senior management approval", "Acme Corp Contract Brian", etc.) have indeed come about because computer-illiterate and filing-illiterate office workers thought the FAT file system (and then NTFS and/or Sharepoint) was a magic, zero-effort substitute for having a system both for keeping records and for training/indoctrinating new staff to keep records properly.
We have had two generations of office workers who have never experienced properly functioning filing systems (except possibly at a university library). Just like people who browse the web without an ad blocker, they don't know any different, so this is an invisible problem to them.
Johnny Decimal is a step towards opening people's eyes (or noses). Thanks for publishing your website!
1. Deleting things that should be deleted is an important skill, but another one is knowing what should not be deleted, but instead moved out of the main stream.
> The Johnny Decimal website is silent on the subject of stewardship. Here I want to focus on two aspects: keeping things working, and managing succession.
An error I intend to correct! On sufficiently large projects I believe you need a ‘librarian’ who has ownership of the system. I’ll expand on this on the site eventually.
Ah, if only I didn’t have an actual job. :-/
> We have had two generations of office workers who have never experienced properly functioning filing systems
This sentiment inspired the opening paragraphs of the site. We literally used to have people - women - called ‘administrators’. Their job would be to file things so that people could find them again. Then we all got a computer, the number of files exploded 100x, and we pretended like we could just search for what we needed.
An error I intend to correct! On sufficiently large projects I believe you need a ‘librarian’ who has ownership of the system. I’ll expand on this on the site eventually.
Ah, if only I didn’t have an actual job. :-/
> We have had two generations of office workers who have never experienced properly functioning filing systems
This sentiment inspired the opening paragraphs of the site. We literally used to have people - women - called ‘administrators’. Their job would be to file things so that people could find them again. Then we all got a computer, the number of files exploded 100x, and we pretended like we could just search for what we needed.
My blogging engine [1] allows tagging of each post, and after twenty years of entries, I have:
* over 5,000 entries * over 3,000 tags
And I still have issues finding posts I've known I made via the tags.
[1] https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog
* over 5,000 entries * over 3,000 tags
And I still have issues finding posts I've known I made via the tags.
[1] https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog
I'd be more interested in a tagging file system for personal data like music, photos, documents etc. I orgainize my data in a hierarchical file system like most but I think tagging would be better for discoverability.
There's been a numbmer of those, but I'm fairly certain that you don't use one (or many people for that matter).
I'm not aware of any file system that supports tagging out of the box accept for BeFS and it only supports it indirectly.
I think many people here miss the point when they point to search. The upside of an arguably arbitrary manual organization is that now everybody who contributes to it have to play book. They have to put in the effort to not break the system, and it can result in overall less chaos.
You can have additional tagging and full text search on top of it.
You can have additional tagging and full text search on top of it.
I just delete stuff regularly. If you don’t own it you don’t have to organise it.
My addition to this: I add “Destroy after {reasonable future date}” to documents that I need to “keep”. I know, for example, that I need to keep my medical receipts for 12 months, but will never reference them after that.
When I go through old documents, I don’t even skim through the contents. I just check the date and remove them if necessary.
When I go through old documents, I don’t even skim through the contents. I just check the date and remove them if necessary.
... “Destroy after {reasonable future date}” ...
A whole book on this is "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (2011).
A longer piece with the author in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/30/remember-...
And the book: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t09g
A whole book on this is "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (2011).
A longer piece with the author in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/30/remember-...
And the book: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t09g
This one sparks joy.
This is it. The key aspect for any productivity or "second brain" tool is the overarching taxonomy. Wheter you use Johnny.Decimal or Zettelkasten or whatever the trend is, you need to sit, think this stuff hard enough, configure the same exact taxonomy in your weapons of choice (say Evernote, Omnifocus, Gmail) and then stick, stick, stick to it. Also remember to review it from time to time, is it working as expected?
Otherwise you end up with a digital ball of mud, and you can only extract info from your system using the search. Maybe this works for you, maybe not.
I like that Johnny.Decimal assigns memorable ids to the categories, this is absolutely nice and is easy to follow by members of a team.
Otherwise you end up with a digital ball of mud, and you can only extract info from your system using the search. Maybe this works for you, maybe not.
I like that Johnny.Decimal assigns memorable ids to the categories, this is absolutely nice and is easy to follow by members of a team.
`find |grep -i ...` and `find -type f |xargs grep -i ...` have become old favourites.
This seems like an interesting system, provided you don't have more categories than you can easily remember.
If you use it in a team setting, there must not be more categories than the team as a whole can remember which is, perhaps counter-intuitively, fewer than you can probably remember on your own.
As with all classification systems, one should beware the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevole... or be doomed to repeat it.
This seems like an interesting system, provided you don't have more categories than you can easily remember.
If you use it in a team setting, there must not be more categories than the team as a whole can remember which is, perhaps counter-intuitively, fewer than you can probably remember on your own.
As with all classification systems, one should beware the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevole... or be doomed to repeat it.
Any reason to use `find -type f |xargs grep -i ...` instead of `grep -i -r "whatever" .`?
I usually put a few paths in between "find" and "-type", use the other predicates of "find" and often rewrite if from a just executed `find ... | grep`.
One particular modification is to extend the pipeline between the "find" and the "xargs" to filter the file list, especially `grep -v .git` ;-)
One particular modification is to extend the pipeline between the "find" and the "xargs" to filter the file list, especially `grep -v .git` ;-)
Couldn't you use `rg` (ripgrep) instead `find -type f |xargs grep -i ...`?
Fantastic system. I've used something similar after file sharing mayhem in a startup of just 3 people. We finally created a few major folders and agreed to never change them.
Search today is still terrible. Nothing reaches across all content or platforms easily, and different scoring systems and operators in different interfaces means it's just as big of a mess as the files it's meant to find.
The ability to direct someone else to a location is also incredibly important, especially because "where" something is can be just as important as "what" is in it. Most systems seem to forget or abstract that away, to their own detriment.
Search today is still terrible. Nothing reaches across all content or platforms easily, and different scoring systems and operators in different interfaces means it's just as big of a mess as the files it's meant to find.
The ability to direct someone else to a location is also incredibly important, especially because "where" something is can be just as important as "what" is in it. Most systems seem to forget or abstract that away, to their own detriment.
Here's the counter argument: https://heyluddite.com/post/4043411544/how-to-name-folders
Oh, wow. And 9 years old. Thanks for showing me this.
People do just naturally put numbers in front of things, though, and I’m convinced it’s to solve the muscle-memory issue. Or it’s that I generally work with nerds and we find it easier to remember that our folder is 34 in the list of 67 rather than remembering that it’s ‘SQL designs’ or whatever.
I mean literally back at a major bank 15 years ago the root structure just had numbers in front of every folder. Long before I meddled with it.
People do just naturally put numbers in front of things, though, and I’m convinced it’s to solve the muscle-memory issue. Or it’s that I generally work with nerds and we find it easier to remember that our folder is 34 in the list of 67 rather than remembering that it’s ‘SQL designs’ or whatever.
I mean literally back at a major bank 15 years ago the root structure just had numbers in front of every folder. Long before I meddled with it.
FWIW, I've seen a number of financial systems, and even though accounts in the hierarchy might have names, they often have a hierarchically-oriented number with them.
e.g. Accounts Receivable #15000, A/R for Foo Corp #15001 and so on.
e.g. Accounts Receivable #15000, A/R for Foo Corp #15001 and so on.
Some accounting laws actually mandate a numbered system of accounts that is a bit like Johnny Decimal, just without subdividing for specific companies (though it's definitely possible in some approaches - it's just that you need to categorize according to official hierarchy as well)
Counter counter argument:
New Folder New Folder(2) New Folder(3) New Folder(4) New Folder(5) New Folder(6) New Folder(7)
Muscle memory can be important as well. If I'm going through the Finder/Explorer, being able to pick the 4th item down and having it be the one I'm concerned about is helpful.
Johnny Decimal also helps with avoiding having too wide of a hierarchy, as well as having too deep of a hierarchy. Can't be more than 10 folders wide at the area or category levels, and can't be more than 4 levels deep.
New Folder New Folder(2) New Folder(3) New Folder(4) New Folder(5) New Folder(6) New Folder(7)
Muscle memory can be important as well. If I'm going through the Finder/Explorer, being able to pick the 4th item down and having it be the one I'm concerned about is helpful.
Johnny Decimal also helps with avoiding having too wide of a hierarchy, as well as having too deep of a hierarchy. Can't be more than 10 folders wide at the area or category levels, and can't be more than 4 levels deep.
Reverse classic HN meta comment: this website is crazy fast and easy to read. Well done Johnny Noble, thank you.
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
Thanks! I put a lot of work in to it and I'm no designer let me tell you.
FWIW it's running on Gatsby. SHOCK HORROR JAVASCRIPT. ;-)
Helps a lot that it's very light on images.
Thanks! I put a lot of work in to it and I'm no designer let me tell you.
FWIW it's running on Gatsby. SHOCK HORROR JAVASCRIPT. ;-)
Helps a lot that it's very light on images.
and I'll add, It's not just fast, its incredibly beautiful and a joy to browse. Thankyou :) Its added to my list of inspiration for beautiful simple websites.
I needed to hear that, thank you. <3
I'd love to know if you have any tips on your images like were they preprocessed or scaled down? They're really well done and still high quality despite loading quick?
Blood sweat and tears? I tried really really hard to get them as small as possible while still being original-sharp.
It’s a real PITA to be honest. I’m typing this from bed and can’t remember the exact details but chuck me an email and I’ll have a look over the weekend. (Or just scan the repo if you can be bothered, but I’m happy to try to remember what I did and put it in a mail.)
https://github.com/johnnydecimal/johnnydecimal.com or hello <at> the domain.
It’s a real PITA to be honest. I’m typing this from bed and can’t remember the exact details but chuck me an email and I’ll have a look over the weekend. (Or just scan the repo if you can be bothered, but I’m happy to try to remember what I did and put it in a mail.)
https://github.com/johnnydecimal/johnnydecimal.com or hello <at> the domain.
Okay so the pain I had was taking retina screenshots and having them show up in retina resolution.
The site is written in MDX and then `gatsby-plugin-mdx` does the heavy lifting. What I could not get to work was Markdown formatting for inline images, especially not for smaller images. They always ended up being shown at 2x.
So now it's just an image, imported in to the file at the top, and displayed further down.
As for making them sharp and small, they're just screenshots from my Mac run through one of the many online PNG resizers. From memory that gave me a file with a 78% saving and if it wasn't near magic then I couldn't tell you how it did it because there was zero difference to my eye. I can't remember which one I used, just try a few.
The site is written in MDX and then `gatsby-plugin-mdx` does the heavy lifting. What I could not get to work was Markdown formatting for inline images, especially not for smaller images. They always ended up being shown at 2x.
So now it's just an image, imported in to the file at the top, and displayed further down.
import outlook_folder_structure_1232_expanded from "./Outlook__folder-structure-12-32-expanded-min.png"
As for making them sharp and small, they're just screenshots from my Mac run through one of the many online PNG resizers. From memory that gave me a file with a 78% saving and if it wasn't near magic then I couldn't tell you how it did it because there was zero difference to my eye. I can't remember which one I used, just try a few.
When I discovered this before, I gave it a try and organized my email account.
What I can say is that I like it for helping you choose levels of hierarchy. So far I've squeezed 10 or fewer sub-categories into each chosen category. (I use the 0s, so within 10-19, I start with a sub-folder of 10...)
What I do not do is any of the other suggestions - searching by it, memorizing numbers (though I have an intuitive sense now when organizing email or looking through it.)
I have not tried this folder structure yet for files.
What I can say is that I like it for helping you choose levels of hierarchy. So far I've squeezed 10 or fewer sub-categories into each chosen category. (I use the 0s, so within 10-19, I start with a sub-folder of 10...)
What I do not do is any of the other suggestions - searching by it, memorizing numbers (though I have an intuitive sense now when organizing email or looking through it.)
I have not tried this folder structure yet for files.
This is a nice idea. It is also applied in a similar way to the so called "SKR Kontorahmen" which is basically a system for categorizing transactions in accounting. see: https://www.datev.de/web/de/datev-shop/material/skr-04-engli...
I’m working on Amna (getamna.com) which lets you organize things into a todo list. Search is definitely a problem, and should not be our primary way of getting to things - especially if we know where they live already (or supposed to live). With a todo list - we make the lookup a little easier because you can ask yourself “what was I working on”?
This looks cool, there's a bunch of ideas here that are similar to scribbled notes on my wall!
I really like the idea of 'everything related to one task in one place'. What I'm planning on doing with the app I'm (trying to) write is extend this to make sense of the fact that your task is in a JD category and might therefore be related to other tasks in the same category.
So I'm looking at `11.01 Some item` and it has a bunch of tasks. Over in `11.04 Another item` I have other tasks, and optionally I can choose to show them -- because they're likely to be at least related to the thing I'm doing. Maybe I can do a bunch of related stuff at the same time?
One of the things I love about JD is the way it helps me stay in context. Everything in a category relates in some way to each other, so given that my job is mental and I do a hundred things a day, I can save myself some cognitive load and at least bunch similar things together.
I really like the idea of 'everything related to one task in one place'. What I'm planning on doing with the app I'm (trying to) write is extend this to make sense of the fact that your task is in a JD category and might therefore be related to other tasks in the same category.
So I'm looking at `11.01 Some item` and it has a bunch of tasks. Over in `11.04 Another item` I have other tasks, and optionally I can choose to show them -- because they're likely to be at least related to the thing I'm doing. Maybe I can do a bunch of related stuff at the same time?
One of the things I love about JD is the way it helps me stay in context. Everything in a category relates in some way to each other, so given that my job is mental and I do a hundred things a day, I can save myself some cognitive load and at least bunch similar things together.
That makes sense! I think context is a really big thing. If you could "merge" things together, that is super cool. Then you can relate two ideas together. Similar to Roam Research.
I like it a lot. The only thing that stops me from using system like this is the fact that I don't care that much if I can find stuff. Or I didn't until recently but I still don't want to acknowledge that this has changed, dunno.
I see a lot of comments claiming that either tags are superior or this is bad because you need an inventory for your system. Both ignore a very real problem: with tags you'll end up with near-identical tags which doesn't really improve your ability to find stuff. You can have a hierarchy of tags, sure, but then once again you need some sort of inventory of tags.
Which brings me to my observation: if you think that tree hierarchy is limiting you and you need free form tags, your hierarchy is probably bad and you're simply tagging things to feel like you're organized.
I see a lot of comments claiming that either tags are superior or this is bad because you need an inventory for your system. Both ignore a very real problem: with tags you'll end up with near-identical tags which doesn't really improve your ability to find stuff. You can have a hierarchy of tags, sure, but then once again you need some sort of inventory of tags.
Which brings me to my observation: if you think that tree hierarchy is limiting you and you need free form tags, your hierarchy is probably bad and you're simply tagging things to feel like you're organized.
I've been using very similar system for years. Your's takes it to the next level. Thanks!
My take is to organize everything by projects using a predictable structure and naming.[0]
[0] https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system
[0] https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system
This is truly a great system. Simple to use and simple to maintain. Kudos for formalizing the data organization methodology.
What happens when the counter reaches 0.99?
> “What happens when I get to 99?”
> You never will. And if you do, the category you defined was almost certainly too broad. Split it up.[0]
Alternatively, your IDs are too narrow, so you should be stuffing more into each ID folder. That is, to modify an example from the website: You have "14.01 1601 Timesheet". But you have a new ID for every pay period. So you have "14.02 1602 Timesheet".
Better would just be have "14.01 Timesheets", and each timesheet gets the year and week prepended to it.
He discusses this a bit in the exceptions page[1]. This is where he both makes subfolders, and talks about storing things with dates in them.
[0]:https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/ids/ [1]:https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/exceptions-to-the-rules/
> You never will. And if you do, the category you defined was almost certainly too broad. Split it up.[0]
Alternatively, your IDs are too narrow, so you should be stuffing more into each ID folder. That is, to modify an example from the website: You have "14.01 1601 Timesheet". But you have a new ID for every pay period. So you have "14.02 1602 Timesheet".
Better would just be have "14.01 Timesheets", and each timesheet gets the year and week prepended to it.
He discusses this a bit in the exceptions page[1]. This is where he both makes subfolders, and talks about storing things with dates in them.
[0]:https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/ids/ [1]:https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/exceptions-to-the-rules/
> Better would just be have "14.01 Timesheets", and each timesheet gets the year and week prepended to it.
This is what I do. Isn’t the site clear?
I (still, 5 years later) have `14.01 Timesheets`, and within there I have `yymm` folders which contain each entry.
14.02 is still free. So yep, a ‘wasted’ category there ... but I have a hundred to play with, and really rarely use more than about 30 in a complete system.
This is what I do. Isn’t the site clear?
I (still, 5 years later) have `14.01 Timesheets`, and within there I have `yymm` folders which contain each entry.
14.02 is still free. So yep, a ‘wasted’ category there ... but I have a hundred to play with, and really rarely use more than about 30 in a complete system.
I, uh... first modified an example, then found the actual example, changed the text, but not all the way. That's why it appears near verbatim from your website.
[deleted]
> It’s very unlikely you will end up with a hundred categories.
The Internet Advertising Bureau uses a similar structure to categorise things. For example:
- IAB20 Travel
- IAB20-1 Adventure Travel
- IAB20-2 Africa
The problem is that sometimes you cannot find an appropriate category despite there being hundreds of them defined.
The Internet Advertising Bureau uses a similar structure to categorise things. For example:
- IAB20 Travel
- IAB20-1 Adventure Travel
- IAB20-2 Africa
The problem is that sometimes you cannot find an appropriate category despite there being hundreds of them defined.
Nice ideas!
! cdj script is not found on github https://gist.github.com/jen729w/cab3a02bce70dab7a4567d460d5c...
! cdj script is not found on github https://gist.github.com/jen729w/cab3a02bce70dab7a4567d460d5c...
Cheers, noted. I have a bunch of work to do on the site...
I can definitely see the appeal of this. Even for my personal files it’s a struggle sometimes to remember the exact name or structure I gave to files, even if the broad category in my head is memorised.
I use it to categorize my video course material, guess what, if i have to add a video ill just add it 12.99 - oops i cant create another video in that sequence, but i can make it 12.99.01 :)
> “Hey Kristy, where can I find the payroll schedule?”
> “Twelve dot oh-three.”
"In payroll (pause) schedule" (which you'd interpret as /payroll/schedule)
"In payroll (pause) schedule" (which you'd interpret as /payroll/schedule)
I have been using johnydecimal system as a basis to organize the folders in my computer for past few years, and the main area category ie buckets are ordered by priority/importance. My main bucket directories kinda look like this:
I can use this to partition type of files I have into separate external disk or flash drives, too. For work, when I'm on the road, I can just have the folder 20/* and 30/* in an external USB drive instead of taking the entire NAS. If I need to escape a burning building, I can just take the small SD card which contains 10/* backup.
It also helps me with backup strategy, as 10/ gets backed up most frequently (ie daily/weekly), while 40/ gets backed up only once in a while.
(EDITED to show example directory)
* 10/11 notes/
* 10/11 notes/11.01 notes/ (... all my text notes)
+ (I usually use a shortcut / alias of `notes` since it is the most frequently accessed directory)
* 10/11 notes/11.02 onenote/ (... all OneNote docs)
* 10/12 home/
* 10/12 home/12.01 123 MainSt/ (... deed, map,...)
* 10/12 home/12.02 insurance/
* 10/12 home/12.03 HOA payments/
* 10/13 finance/
* 10/13 finance/13.01 paychecks/
* 10/14 tax/
* 10/14 tax/2020/ (... tax by years, this is one place I use year instead of sequential id#)
* ...
* 20-29/21 projectX/ (... current working project)
* 20-29/21 projectX/21.01 src/ (.... this is usually from git)
* 20-29/21 projectX/21.02 assets/
* 20-29/21 projectX/21.03 docs/
* 20-29/22 projectY/ (... side or 2nd project or project I'm planning on working in future )
* 20-29/23 blog/ (... all my blog post source)
* 20-29/23 blog/23.01 siteX/ (... hugo blog post files for siteX)
* ...
* 30-39/31 JSFramework/
* 30-39/32 VideoResource/
* 30-39/33 AudioResource
* 30-39/34 Reference/ (...programming books, doc related to work)
* 30-39/34 Reference/34.01 javascript
* 30-39/34 Reference/34.02 reactjs
* 30-39/34 Reference/34.03 dotnet
* ...
* 40-49/41 tv_movies/
* 40-49/41 tv_movies/41.01 futurama/
* 40-49/41 tv_movies/41.02 trailers/
* 40-49/42 music/
* 40-49/43 os/
* 40-49/43 os/43.01 debian/
* 40-49/43 os/43.02 ubuntu/
* 40-49/43 os/43.03 freebsd/
* 40-49/43 os/43.04 windows/
* 40-49/43 os/43.05 mac/
* 40-49/44 games/
* 40-49/44 games/44.01 DOS/
* 40-49/44 games/44.02 retro/
* 40-49/44 games/44.03 mac/
* 40-49/45 books/ (...books not related to work, ie fiction, non-fiction)
* ...
* 50-59/51 archive/
* 50-59/52 backup1/
* 50-59/52 backup2/
* ...
I can use this to partition type of files I have into separate external disk or flash drives, too. For work, when I'm on the road, I can just have the folder 20/* and 30/* in an external USB drive instead of taking the entire NAS. If I need to escape a burning building, I can just take the small SD card which contains 10/* backup.
It also helps me with backup strategy, as 10/ gets backed up most frequently (ie daily/weekly), while 40/ gets backed up only once in a while.
(EDITED to show example directory)
I love the idea and congratulate you on its execution, but I’d discourage others from trying the same, at least initially. The problem is that you have analysis-paralysis. You worry that you’ll make your 40-49 folder then realise that you missed something and want to re-arrange.
In most situations — you’ve found an exception — it’s better to think about it a bit but then just start. The numbers have no meaning, even if that doesn’t tickle my neatness gene quite as much as it might. ;-)
In most situations — you’ve found an exception — it’s better to think about it a bit but then just start. The numbers have no meaning, even if that doesn’t tickle my neatness gene quite as much as it might. ;-)
This would be a good system for managing Tasks and TODOs.
(I'm the eponymous 'Johnny'.)
Yep, and the numbers tie things together across disparate systems, e.g. your file system and your to-do system.
So I have a project, `12.34 Whatever`, and it has some files in the file system. I also have an OmniFocus project named the same. And an email folder.
It's real easy to line those things up together when you want to work on that thing.
Yep, and the numbers tie things together across disparate systems, e.g. your file system and your to-do system.
So I have a project, `12.34 Whatever`, and it has some files in the file system. I also have an OmniFocus project named the same. And an email folder.
It's real easy to line those things up together when you want to work on that thing.
Be sure to mention this on the web site under the "I get the idea, but why bother?" section. I just saw a reference to the JD system on the Evernote subreddit, and I'm very excited to try it. I am trying to figure out my Areas and Categories now, and I think one of the values of the system is applying it everywhere. That's a great idea. Right now I have different folders on my drive, different folders in my browser bookmarks, different folders for email, etc. Unifying them all to follow the same Areas and Categories makes good sense so the brain doesn't have to ask itself "ok, where am I and what naming convention does this tool follow so I know where to find something."
Thanks for sharing your system.
Was I the only one who was disappointed this wasn't about Johnny Silverhand or Cyberpunk 2077 at all?
I just want to be able to tag files and be able to move them across filesystem.
This scheme is the best I’ve found (some tagging software used it): `report[important,sales,veronica].pdf`.
This scheme is the best I’ve found (some tagging software used it): `report[important,sales,veronica].pdf`.
mdfind taxes | grep 2019
>When we kept everything on paper, organised people had these things called filing cabinets. They stored all of their documents in them in a structured way so that they could find them again.
>Now those same people store all of their files in arbitrarily named folders on their company’s shared drive and wonder why they can’t find anything.
This is the most outrageously false premise on which to base an argument. It's staggering.
>Now those same people store all of their files in arbitrarily named folders on their company’s shared drive and wonder why they can’t find anything.
This is the most outrageously false premise on which to base an argument. It's staggering.
What's false about it?
Edit: yep. As suspected.
Let me just say this, if I may:
1. You don’t have to like every idea, but please consider that some people do.
2. I’ve been using this successfully for a decade. I’m using it right now to organise a project. My boss loves me for it, because guess what? We can find things!
3. I’m not alone. I’ve done essentially nothing to promote this yet still I get multiple emails a week from strangers telling me that they love it and asking for guidance.
Okay, carry on. I’ll answer questions here where doing so feels productive.