_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Johnny.Decimal â A system to organise your life
edgarvaldes wrote 41 min ago:
Is there any solution that works inside Google Docs? The lack of a
native tree view in GD is a big stopper for me.
CompoundEyes wrote 50 min ago:
This reminds me of IBM Rational DOORS requirements documentation
softwareâs approach
URI [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=263&v=Reff4ELfwrM
pkilgore wrote 1 hour 32 min ago:
It's beautiful things like this exist for people and they are happy
with them, but I cannot think of anything more stressful to me!
Flat system of tags + Search + Fuzzy Find + Scanner + OCR + Giant Pile
has been the route to happiness for me.
My brain just isn't wired for hierarchy at all.
fortran77 wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
I scan and ocr everything. Itâs filed by year, with a subfolder for
month. I narrow down the year range and search. I have files for
decades arranged this way.
sotix wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
It reminds me of accounting systems.
Asset accounts are 1000. Liability accounts are 2000. Stockholders'
Equity are 3000. Revenue are 4000. Expenses are 5000.
Then the second digit differentiates which specific category of account
it is.
The final two digits are the sub accounts of that broader category.
spmcl wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
I use Johnny.Decimal in my Obsidian vault, but its purpose is less
about being able to find things in the future and more like "this is a
simple well-trodden system so you may as well use it for some semblance
of organization of your folder hierarchy." But I only label the
folders. I don't label files with numerical values â folders are just
dumping grounds for a certain type of notes. Like I have a folder for
journal entries, unique notes, blog posts, book notes, recipes, and
individual side-projects. A few tags (most auto-generated in templates)
help me search past notes if I need to, but that's a very infrequent
need.
My point is that switching just the folder hierarchy to Johnny.Decimal
was very easy and I don't have to think about how I organize my work
ever. Contrast that with some of the other PKM organization schemes
you'll find (such as using Johnny.Decimal in its entirety), and you'll
see that they both take a ton of time to set up and a ton of effort to
maintain. Those are massive wastes of time. There are far more
meaningful things you could be doing outside of marginal gains to
productivity, if you can even call PKM optimization a "marginal gain."
fleshmonad wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
>organise your file hierarchy in a common sense manner and add numbers
>write way too long blog post in """hacker aesthetic"""
>It gets to the HN front page
Apart from that, the spaces in all filenames are questionable. I truly
don't understand how something like this gets 450 points on HN
hasbot wrote 3 hours 23 min ago:
Maybe the root problem is keeping too much stuff? IRL, I have one bank
box that has a folder for everything I truly need (e.g. dog papers,
vehicle repair records, tax documents, deeds, and um... that's about it
really). In my digital life, I just don't keep much stuff. Songs,
audiobooks, ebooks, tax returns, and that's about it.
41d wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
I think it's an interesting observation, and I understand that there
are pros and cons to this. I like organized designs, grid styles,
neatly arranged bookshelves, things that fit together perfectly, and
clean environments, and I was always thinking about how to keep folders
neat and avoid a state where I get tired of looking at them every time.
And it's true that there are many people who don't particularly mind
that. Is it similar to the location of a remote control, which looks
messy but is perfectly placed for that person?
Anyway, I really like it, and the introduction is very easy to
understand. I also like the design of the WEB site.
And your WEB tool is very useful for making the hierarchy easy to see
at a glance (because it's very difficult to build it suddenly and edit
it later).
keepamovin wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
I love the website design: the IBM code page 437 block characters and
text styles are fantastic.
dack wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
Man, I completely recoiled when reading this.
I spent a bunch of time in my 20s and early 30s trying out different
organizational systems but I realized I just don't care. I care about
doing interesting things, not organizing them.
Also computers are pretty good at full-text searching for things, or
tagging so you don't have to come up with a perfect hierarchy. And I
think LLMs will make it even easier to find stuff using fuzzy language.
Life's too short to spend it organizing.
binbag wrote 6 hours 35 min ago:
I must be missing something. This is recommending folders are numbered.
Is that it? Is this a "system" now? I think that may have been used
previously - for example by humanity for the last 5,000 years or so.
ss64 wrote 6 hours 40 min ago:
Using numerical prefixes like the 'Johnny Decimal' system for folder
organization is fine for personal files, if that floats your boat, but
trying to implement it in a shared team area can be a recipe for
strife. At best people will think you are slightly mad expecting them
to memorise lists of numbers just to file things.
mock-possum wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
> You assign a unique ID to everything in your life.
Ah - thatâs fun, but no. Using codes to organize stuff like that is
unnecessary complication. Just label them robustly, and search for what
you want, when you want it.
> In real life, if you stored your stuff in piles of badly-labelled
boxes you'd never find anything again.
Okay but this isnât real life, this is a computer. The robotâs
entire job is to process data automatically in a way that would be
tedious for you to accomplish manually.
Forcing a user to remember an indexing system that matches concepts
describable in plain English to esoteric numeral codes is just - why,
why are you doing this to yourself. Itâs not better.
ySteeK wrote 8 hours 13 min ago:
I was on a search for the 'perfect' system all my life.
And I found it after 40 years : The No-System System... and it's the
exactly opposite of op's suggestion :-)
All together in somewhat chaotic folders and subfolders... the clou is
that I use "recoll" everytime i search something. It's an Index based
search engine. Take a look...
I never missed something since I use just recoll and throw things just
anywhere in the huge black box.
The main pro: it costs me no time to "sort" things into things.
meander_water wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
This is a neat system, but like many others here I doubt I could be
disciplined enough to maintain it.
Organising a second brain appears to be something that people have been
grappling with for ages. For e.g. here's John Locke's system for
organising his commonplace book -
URI [1]: https://fs.blog/john-locke-common-place-book/
PeterStuer wrote 9 hours 18 min ago:
After having tried to be organised for decades, I gave in to my inner
holistic self and gave up on (most) explicit organization and just
became very good at searching/finding things.
I could theorize about how no taxonomy deals with multiple contexts or
remains valid over time, how filing errors will always happen so you
will need search anyway, how unstructured scales to seamless
incorporate outside sources etc., but thruth be told big piles of
unorganised stuff with keen finding skills more naturally allign with
my nature. Ymmv, and that's just fine.
SoftTalker wrote 9 hours 25 min ago:
I feel like if you are disciplined and organized enough to use a system
like this, you probably don't need it.
krykp wrote 9 hours 34 min ago:
I think this gets the 'imposed limits' part right.
What I've found is that I am unable to be organized or keep things
organized if I have too much stuff. It doesn't matter if I organize by
'category' then 'thing' or 'thing' then 'category' or if I keep myself
to 2 levels of nesting or 3.
I have been decluttering every now and then, say, I will dedicate a
weekend once every 6 months. I have started by getting rid of what is
_obviously_ not necessary.
By necessity I'm not talking in a materialistic sense, I find joy in
the tiny statues I own and a physical photo album, even if they are not
_vital_ for my life.
I started by getting rid of things that are useful but just wasn't up
to par anymore. Like old clothes. I would wear old clothes inside the
home and justify their existence, but I have come to value myself
enough to wear my nicer clothes, which are honestly still just
relatively cheap shirts, inside the home too.
After that, it was getting rid of things that are working, in good
condition, but I had no use for anymore. For example I had built a
computer, this meant ending up with a stock cooler, stock fans, stock
thermal paste, my old PSU that was still very much working, all that. I
wouldn't throw these away as they had no issues, but wasn't of use to
me anymore. For these donating was easiest for me, as I would feel bad
about getting rid of tons of in-working-situation hardware.
I must note, all this requires certain privileges in life. Just getting
rid of things you don't use but might, by some low chance, need,
requires you to be wealthy enough to replace that without worrying
about the price tag.
I have also come to find out gender also matters. My clothes fit in a
single-side wardrobe, and no one pays enough attention to my clothes to
realize I'm cycling through 10 t-shirts and 5 shirts. Or if they did,
that's plenty anyway. For women there's a certain social expectation
and imposed necessity and a deeper sense of fashion. For a man a
dress-shirt functions well in the workplace just as it functions in a
job interview and it functions just as well in a wedding. For a women
what they can wear to a wedding and what they can wear to work are very
different, so there is a natural difference of expectation and
necessity. But I digress.
stevage wrote 10 hours 55 min ago:
This seems to solve a problem I don't have, in a way that seems
particularly irritating.
In their example of travel as a category, I just have a folder called
adventures, and underneath it, one folder per year.
Is anyone really storing that many folders these days?
kras143 wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
The more I tried to control and organize my life, the more stressed I
became. Digitizing and organizing my knowledge base, in particular,
wasted countless precious hours. Recently, I decided to let go of that
rigid structure and instead focus on naturally prioritizing the most
important tasks for the day, week, and month. So far, this approach
has been working well, or at least it feels like it is.
kkoncevicius wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
I had the same experience with using a paper notebook. There are
various systems and tips about how and what to write in a notebook to
become more productive. But the best way for me was just to use it as
a sheet of paper and write about what feels necessary at the moment
with no structure whatever.
kovek wrote 11 hours 42 min ago:
I like to have a category (folder, list, document, etc.) per entity
that I am interacting with. That entity can be a government, a company,
a person, an object, or other.
What do you think?
asasidh wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
search, don't sort
linhns wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
I tried this. Simply does not work for me. In the end more time will be
spent looking for the box
noisy_boy wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
> an area is a shelf, a category is a box, and an ID is a manila
folder.
I mean isn't that almost the 101 of organization? I have N big clear
plastic bags for each member of my family - each has smaller bags for
educational certificates, birth certificates and other legal documents.
All of these are in a shelf together. I can immediately produce any of
those.
I have been thinking of another low-effort system for other lesser
important documents that can be annoying to find. Put a box in each
room and dump any lesser important papers in it, just dump it - whoever
stays in that room dumps their such papers in it. Periodically clean as
needed. Main rule is to not dump such papers _anywhere_ else.
thallukrish wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
The problem with organizing is not the lack of tools or techniques.
It is simply not possible to devise a system which works automatically
with little effort.
Everything requires varying levels of discipline which is hard to keep
up with time and a different situation.
Appsmith wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
I kind of agree with you! But still wanted to take a shot at it:
URI [1]: https://thoughtscape.app/
Terretta wrote 12 hours 58 min ago:
> It is simply not possible to devise a system which works
automatically with little effort.
I use one.
See [1] in this thread.
Truly ZERO effort, yet a backup way to find things without search.
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43135927
Terretta wrote 13 hours 7 min ago:
Hey, anyone who can't/won't/doesn't stick with a system... THIS IS FOR
YOU.
Most organization methods predate search.
PARA, for example, can be a decent first cut (active Projects, Areas of
responsibility, Reference(research/reading/recreation/really anything),
Archive, and you could use that with the below, but don't need to
thanks to search.*
The real reason we're still trying systems instead of search is we
don't remember what to look for, and hope we'll find it where we should
have filed it. Turns out we don't always file it there... Usually we
don't file it at all.
So: whether you use PARA at the top or not, within that...
DON'T ORGANIZE!
Don't even try.
Instead, "journal" or "log" by simply saving all files to your desktop,
then using a tool such as Hazel for Mac (or a python script, or
whatever) "log sort" by renaming files once you haven't modified them
for a while (I like once untouched for 7 days) into folders and
filename like "./YYYY/WW/YYYY-MM-DD - Original Title.ext". Pay
attention to WW, that means Week Number. Month folders get too many
files in them, day folders are too sparse. Life and ideas tend to
cluster by the week, so week folders are a natural fit, with only 50 of
them in a year, so you can see them all in one window.
Why this works is you can find anything that goes with anything you
worked on at the time by searching for anything you can remember from
the time. Heck, you don't even have to remember anything, just,
roughly when. The things from then will be adjacent.
When you find anything at all from then, what you want will be in that
week's folder, or at most go back a couple weeks before or after, and
you see what you created or modified around then. Boost your odds by
stuffing some other keywords into (parens) in the end of the filename
when you first save it, there's no downside.
If you can't even find by week, use YYYY-MM* and file type to see
everything for a given month...
Auto log sort is low (zero) effort day over day, week over week, but
when you start being able to resurface anything you want, even if you
can't remember it only things around the same time as it, you may be
amazed you ever bothered any other way.
---
* Note: If you collab with others, try to organize everyone by
responsibilty areas managed by known owners of those responsibilities,
then let them organize in their area, and just deal with figuring out
whose thing this is and let them file it if it's not evident where it
should go in their scheme. But still rename files by date last changed,
since most file systems don't keep dates intact when, say, emailing
files, etc., and it's still helpful to see what was being modified
along with what. Because of the temporal order, the "sorts" tend to
cluster things better than alphabetic sort.
Appsmith wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
While search works in most cases, sometimes some sort of organization
comes in handy because recognition is easier than recall.
That said, I do like PARA so built this centered around it, with a
few GTD and ZK additions:
URI [1]: https://thoughtscape.app/
projektfu wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
It took me about 2 hours to organize a disorganized syncthing folder
for my business into this system as I understood it. Now to see if it
helps. I am diagnosed with ADHD.
For what it is worth, some tools actively work against the use of
folders on Windows now, including Office. Acrobat is another offender.
(Not using Windows is not currently possible, too many assume Windows
use in my industry). Even Google Drive hides the folders and makes you
go through hoops to get to them each time. Reading the comments here,
putting everything in one directory and relying on search seems to be
the most popular filing system. In my space, I feel like everything
gets lost as a result of that "system", and work is constantly
duplicated because people don't know where to look.
This system, at least, doesn't require much to keep organized. The
ontology is shallow and it doesn't require me to constantly worry about
where something should go best.
fonema wrote 10 hours 39 min ago:
On Windows for many years now I've been putting things anywhere and
then relying on a program called "Everything" to find stuff. I'm very
happy with this set up. It allows extremely quick file system
searches. I've tried to work with neatly organized folders at times
but I would always get lost in them and things end up in the wrong
place anyway.
davikr wrote 16 hours 25 min ago:
This is so obtuse - why does "15.22 Checklists" start at ID 22 instead
of 11?
dmje wrote 17 hours 49 min ago:
Been using JD for ~5 years or so. Itâs great. Sufficient structure to
make sense of chaos, not too much to create more
mattfrommars wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
Another system to organize my life? I JUST got started with
BulletJournal :)
Tbh, a person with ADHD and in my mid 30s, the biggest problem I have
faced and none of these system [haven't tried Johnny.Decimal] yet is
'given my current situation, be it career and life, what should I
prioritize' and the second hard part if keep track/progress.
I do miss school/university days where we had a curriculum to follow
with deadline and all. That brought structure and with fixed milestone.
But in personal life, with unknowns everywhere, it is challenging. I
have tried multiple strategies but they don't seem to work or
eventually are forgotten. From two minute rule to this, I can't
remember the exact details but something like invest x hours and if it
doesn't work out, move on.
whalesalad wrote 19 hours 29 min ago:
The aesthetic of this website immediately tells me that this person has
no qualifications to tell me how to organize my life.
urda wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
I'm still working a lot of my internal tribal knowledge out around
this, but as I work that blog post out my general flow of organizing
information in my life has been as follows:
- Starts with a physical Moleskine notebook and fountain pen. This is
the most free flowing and easiest way to get information saved. It is
literally pen to paper, it does not crash, it does not fail.
- From there ideas and notes are migrated, shaped, and restructured in
digital ink and text on a Freeform board on my iPad, Mac, and Apple
Vision.
- Finally, as those ideas become more real and solid, they are formed
into well understood wiki pages and saved there. From that point all
new and changing information is committed to the wiki.
Not all my information needs to flow into the wiki, but it is nice to
have a knowledge "funnel" when keeping notes. When I think about
information and notes, I always think about my favorite quote:
> âFor this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down,
formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where youâve
been, where youâre going and where you want to get. In scientific
work and electronics technology this is necessary because otherwise the
problems get so complex you get lost in them and confused and forget
what you know and what you donât know and have to give up.â
> Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
groby_b wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
For anybody going to implement it: Good luck, enjoy the journey and
learning from it.
At the end of the road, there will be a sign. It will say "hierarchical
taxonomies never work". You will likely ignore it. (We all do). Ab
initio.
ediwdlrow wrote 20 hours 8 min ago:
"If you put those boxes in boxes, in boxes, you'd never know which box
to open to find the next box. It would be chaos."
Not really...
If my outermost box says "Tools", a box in that box says "Automotive",
and the box in that box says "Trim Removal".
There's no chaos, I drill down from the generic to the specific and
find what I need.
Using Tags (keywords, etc) you can cross reference things too -- for
example Tools that may have uses in both the Automotive, Household,
Computer realms get those as keywords, and ideally the tool will have a
primary role so it can exist in that box, or otherwise if it truly
doesn't belong in any one box then it can just be in the Tools box
along w/ the boxes that contain all the task-specific stuff...
raajg wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
I think that local search, retrieval, and filing will become much
easier with LLMs.
There are already tools and products in the market that allow you to
rename and organize files. I believe this is the future.
We have developed various systems over decades, but I anticipate with
LLMs it'll be so easy to file and retrieve things that we won't even
have to think about it.
nilslindemann wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
Looks like a task oriented sorting - "for what do I need this?" - and
the numbers are a workaround for a shortcoming in file managers, which
does not allow giving a user defined sorting to a list of
files/folders.
marcusestes wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
[IQ distribution chart meme]
* Just use Apple Notes
* No! You can't just use Apple Notes. You need a full ontological graph
structure based on an open standard!
* Just use Apple Notes
hdrz wrote 7 hours 31 min ago:
This. Just use the most immediate thing available.
For me its:
* Apple Notes
* Apple Reminders
Thatâs it. Gets the job done.
0x457 wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
This one actually works with Apple Notes.
mattlondon wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
This seems overly complex? 15.2.234 for example is not remotely
memorable or intuitive - no one knows what that is.
Why limit yourself to this low-signal approach? It seems deliberately
obtuse for no obvious benefits?
What has worked for me is a folder per financial year, then just rough
semantic groupings in each year folder called e.g. "cars" "health"
"house" "tax" etc and just chuck files into those as needed. I usually
change the filename to be something descriptive and information dense
too like e.g. " Home Insurance Aug 2024-2025.pdf" etc. Store it all on
some cloud service (OneDrive or Google Docs or whatever - local backup
of your choice) and then you can just drill-down or even better just
search. Simples.
So e.g.
2024-2025/
--house/
----123 ABC Street Home Insurance April 2024-2025.pdf
----123 ABC Street Mortgage statement Jan 2024.pdf
--cars/
----Honda repair invoice June 2024.pdf
----Honda insurance Feb 2024-2025.pdf
----BMW insurance Mar 2024-2025
Not rocket science. Anyone reading this understands this "system", and
it is trivial to search. No rote memorisation of random numbers
needed!
reedlaw wrote 2 hours 21 min ago:
I used something similar based on [1] which I found helpful.
URI [1]: https://karl-voit.at/folder-hierarchy/
0x457 wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
Well, you only need to remember "00.00 Index" which is where
description of all categories is.
Your version IMO is awful. Year on root level means you have to
remember year that document was created. Unless you constantly need
to lookup insurance documents (only thing besides taxes I can
remember which year I'm looking for) that's not going to work IMO.
Since we threw away core organization principle of this system (limit
your choices), why not all documents realted to house1/car1/car2 into
corresponding folders?
Also, you used 2 different ways to write a month and date. Now I have
to remeber is this document on Jan or January, don't want to confuse
with documents about my friend Jan and Jane either.
mattlondon wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
Well time is the only constant in life, so it makes sense to me to
store by time since that is always moving forwards and things
happen at a point in time.
But it is a valid that you have to remember the year, but this is
why if you store on a cloud service, they all come with excellent
search facilities that I expect will continue to improve with AI.
So you don't need to remember, you just search for e.g. "insurance"
and then you pick the doc with the date in it's filename etc.
Sure you could group by theme at the top level too, but again time
is a constant - you always have 2024, 2025, 2026 etc, but you don't
always have a need to store things about e.g. "car2" in every year
etc. so it makes sense to me that if car2 comes into your life in
say 2025 and leaves you in 2028 or whatever, that you have car2
folders in those specific years only and not permanently polluting
the top-level folders because after car2 leaves you, you don't want
it hanging around ~forever at the top level. You're just building
up "organisation-debt" for something you'll need to "archive" in
the future.
I think perhaps we're thinking about different things though. I
store documents about day to day life - statements, invoices,
insurance certificates, etc etc. These all tend to be dated and
repeat monthly/quarterly/annually or thereabouts, and for me the
most frequent retrieval need is for the current financial year.
I don't store my friend Jane's or Jan's documents, not do I have
documents about them either. I don't just have random notes
documents about random things.
At work where I have non-time-based documents (including random
notes documents!) coming out of my ears - both written by me,
reviewed by me, read by me, CC'd but I read etc - thousands and
thousands etc - I just rely entirely on search and it's never been
a problem. No filing system at all - just search. It's fine.
Cloud-based storage and search really is key here I think. I can
be on calls to utility companies etc and I can search and have my
most recent statement up on my screen quicker than the people in
the call center folks most of the time.
MailleQuiMaille wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
I think the key for me, a lifelong messy person, was to find out what I
like or don't.
Like :
-Taking notes on the fly for capturing fleeting ideas.
-When working on a project, embracing the mess by having as many
documents/spreadsheets as possible.
-When a project is over, putting everything in a folder and letting it
there.
Don't like :
-Using fancy tools like Notion, Obsidian and the likes.
-Getting stuck on rigid systems, and even worse : tied to a
subscription.
-Being forced to use a specific device.
My solution ?
Upnote.
Proton Drive.
A messy desktop.
Am I the most "optimized" I could be ? No. But I can quickly find out
everything I need fast, and when I'm working on a project, I know what
to do.
More than that seems overkill, for me at least.
subpixel wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
Holy smokes this does not resonate with me. Not the need for
organization, but the implementation of some watered down Dewey decimal
system.
f1shy wrote 10 hours 50 min ago:
Seems to be good for people who prefer to remember the IPs instead of
domain namesâ¦
g8oz wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
It doesn't have to be all or nothing for the Johnny decimal system.
Start with a life area like home ownership. Ask AI to generate a Johnny
decimal system on this topic. I was impressed with the comprehensive
structure I got.
dubeye wrote 21 hours 33 min ago:
I set this up a few weeks ago and it's working great so far. You start
to develop muscle memory and now i organise everything to the same
order, eg bookmarks
i think it's partly that i remember location phsyically. i can remember
bookmarks in real books, my remembering where certain words are on a
page and flicking through until i find them. i wouldn't stand a chanec
ofremembering page number. somehow the JD system recreates thsi for me
tonymet wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
the concept is very good, and i like the approach to distinguish
personal , business etc. It's not the system that matters, but the
continued practice of inventorying and assessing your library.
One approach is to imagine your archives as a physical library and what
regular maintenance you would need to keep the library in order for
others to enjoy it.
These include indexing like the author talked about. but also curating
& summarization ( meta-summaries of the catalog). Also disaster
preparation (backup) , replication (e.g. keeping repositories in sync
between the archive and active work).
Every well built engineering system started as a neglected concept that
got elevated into a formal area worthy of attention
camkego wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
If this is a system to organize files and folders, rather than physical
real life files and folders, it should say so in the first sentence.
nicebyte wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
I bet 90% of the reason this is on the front page is the Berkeley mono
font. the system itself sucks.
f1shy wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
The first time it was posted I said: I hate the system, but I like
the presentation.
The system is great if you like to remember the IPs of the sites you
need instead of the urlsâ¦
NetOpWibby wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
I wish someone made an OS that just did this for me
sureIy wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
I realized that I'm very good at remembering time and location more
than anything. If I want to look at something, I know when I did it
more than what it contained.
For this purpose the photos app is amazing: "April 2020 cat video" and
it's exactly what I was looking for.
I really wish file explorers were more consistent with their date
management and didn't change "creation date" just because the file was
moved or whenever the app/OS decides.
NetOpWibby wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
I've been attempting to integrate this into my life for a few years
now, and failing. Doing this manually is never going to work, HOWEVER,
automating it will. I periodically run this script[1] to organize my
Downloads folder.
Pretty sure I can figure out a way to make macOS watch that folder and
run the script but I want to live with this more before doing that.
Note that all this does is move stuff around...you still gotta go to
the destination folders and continue organizing there but at least half
the work is done for you.
---
[1]
URI [1]: https://gist.github.com/NetOpWibby/7e39068c1d0209e4412e3a05e80...
ConanRus wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
What we really need is a personal AI assistant that handles labeling,
tagging, and organizing documents by creating categories and
connections. The fact that, in 2025, someone would propose doing all of
this manually and consider it a good system is just ridiculous.
Centigonal wrote 23 hours 36 min ago:
I tried this for a year, but the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for me.
I went back to my previous homegrown folder tree.
Beestie wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
Its a beautiful system but where my head explodes (and has been
exploding for 4 decades) is over the following scenario.
So in Johnny's system, I assign 21 to automobiles. My VW van gets
21.1, my Citron is 21.2, etc. and the insurance for each car gets a .8
so 21.1.8, 21.2.8, etc.
And I assign 13 to Money. Insurance belongs under money so 13.5 is
insurance and life insurance gets 13.5.1, E&O insurance gets 13.5.2,
etc.
I also need a top folder for Medical for doc visits, vaxes, ER visits,
Surgeries, the kids' allergies and stuff.
So where all this is going is two months later, where is the health
insurance policy? Is it under medical or under money? Is the car
insurance under Automobiles or Insurance under Money?
Back to my head exploding - this is my issue - I can never remember
which branch of the tree to find a specific leaf? Does my annual car
tax belong with the Money or with the Auto branch? If I want to see
the tax for all the cars at the same time, I put it under Money - Taxes
- Auto but when I need to know the last time I paid the tax on the VW,
I will assume its filed under Auto-VW-Car Tax.
This is why I can never find anything. All due respect to Johnny but
I'm too retarded to use it properly.
threecheese wrote 13 min ago:
Youâve hit the nail on its head here. Almost every piece of
information I save has more than one type of contextual relevance,
this is not handled by any hierarchical organization system no matter
how clever the addressing is. At a certain scale and complexity, I
simply cannot remember the magic incantation URL for whatever it is I
need. Even search falls apart frequently, because I saved some
reference using an abbreviation or synonym to what I think I need.
It doesnt take so much âscaleâ if one has deficient short term
memory/recall/adhd or is (as youve elegantly put it) âtoo
retardedâ. (hey - samesies)
Tags/content classifiers/ontologies are I think the solution here,
but require continuously grooming your data to ensure itâs
classified correctly - a time investment.
My opinion is that modern ML classifiers are helping,l - Ive found
some help with tools that recently added auto-tagging - and I think
the real magic bullet will be augmenting this capability with
relevant personal/activity context. An algorithm can infer much of
the contextual relevances that are missing from the current tools if
it can match some incoming information to any or all of the
areas/topics/projects/horizons/decimal-things that users of
organizational tools have decided are important to them.
Vegenoid wrote 17 hours 50 min ago:
This is why I like Obsidian (or some other linked-documents wiki type
of system), because it makes linking things easy, so you can take
multiple routes to find a thing. I have a health note and a finances
note. Which one does health insurance go under? I pick whichever one
seems to make the most sense at the time. Then, in the future, if I'm
looking for health insurance and look in the wrong place first, I can
easily make a link there to the "health insurance" note/section. Now,
I will find health insurance whether I look under health or finances.
The "Obsidian way" that many people recommend is notes that are as
small as possible to maximize this kind of effect, but that's not how
I like to do it. I prefer bigger notes with lots of headings (that
can be nested up to 6 levels), and lots of links within a note and
between notes to specific headings. I find this to be a nice blend of
hierarchical navigation and link navigation.
Non-text files (like receipts or pictures) get linked from the
relevant note or section, and many types of media can be viewed
inline in the WYSIWYG editor.
jen729w wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
Johnny here. This is the canonical example, and I quote it myself: is
it `Insurance > Car` or `Car > Insurance`?
In reality you just decide. One feels better to your brain. And you
tend to remember that.
It helps of course if you remain consistent. In the systems we design
weâve realised that most people want the insurance close to the
thing being insured.
So in our life admin system we have health, pet, home, motor, and
travel insurance as IDs alongside your records for those things.
Seems to suit most people.
And donât forget youâve got your index as a fallback. I donât
remember most of these numbers but I just launched Bear, typed
`insurance` in the search field, and there they are. Now in three
clicks I can get to my home insurance which, turns out, is at
`12.12`.
URI [1]: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0afQRa-furBCpa9rOIc3r3Q7g
tener wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
> And you tend to remember that.
Haha, nope. Different brains work differently. One day I genuinely
prefer one, a week later another.
dubeye wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
it's only going to be one of a few places though, and the key thing
is you know where those places are and can get to them quickly
gloomyday wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
I've had this problem for a long time. My solution was to keep my
organization as flat as possible. This means everything
insurance-related would go to 13.
A flat structure seems less organized, since you are âmixingâ
stuff, but as long as there isn't too much stuff inside, going
through stuff one-by-one is faster than you think. If I do have a lot
of stuff in a section, I either split into several sections in the
top structure (so 13 is life insurance, 14 is other...), or go one
level deeper (not preferred, but I do it when it's very clear and
there is too much stuff, like photos, which btw sorting
chronologically works best for me).
It is really not much of an issue having 50 top sections. It makes
the organization transparent, and indexing, sorting and going
one-by-one remains easy.
mindwork wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
symlinks or hardlinks might help with that, depending on your needs.
With hardlinks you will see the same file in both locations, and if
you change or remove the file it will be removed in the other
directory as well
arbitrandomuser wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
This!
i prefer tags over folders for this reason. All notes go into single
folder , no sub directories . Because a note can have multiple
classifications a tree structure is not natural way to organize them.
Add tags , if you have note taking program will show you all possible
existing tags you it makes this easier.
benrutter wrote 3 hours 48 min ago:
I love tags until I actually use them, I always wind up using them
inconsistently, or not at all for a specific file, and them bam, I
can't find anything at all.
The benefit of file structures is that things have to have a place,
you can't not put something in a folder, so for car insurance, it
might be in "insurance" or "cars" but it's definitely one or the
other. With tags, it could be "insurance", "finance", "cars",
"automobiles", "vehicles", "veihcles", etc.
Any tips of how to funnel some strictness into tags so that they're
actually usable?
edgarvaldes wrote 46 min ago:
Sometimes autocomplete works for me, so I avoid the "auto" vs
"automobile" but it falls apart as soon as I realize I have
"autombile" suggested and now I wonder what to do to re-tag
files.
lblume wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Additionally, tags naturally form hierarchies in the form of trees
(or ADGs), so any possible taxonomy should support that.
beAbU wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
I had exactly this issue before, an I blame overthinking things.
Trying to put in place a system where none is needed.
I ended up with a box, in the box there are large plastic envelopes,
and each envelope is labelled.
I have:
- "assets" (cars, warrantees, service records, purchase invoices etc)
- "health" (all medical related things)
- "insurance" (everything insurance related)
- "guns" (I like guns... so licenses, legal paperwork, etc etc)
The best thing is, this is a box. So worst case, even if I misfiled
something, all I need to do is rifle through a box. The box is
portable and universal, and if my wife needs something, I can easily
guide her to where to find it.
xixixao wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
What you need is a tree where the items can be in multiple places.
Bear does this really well with its hierarchical tags.
Most filesystems can do this with hardlinks (but the UX mostly
sucks).
Beestie wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
omigosh - genius idea - I need a Schrödinger's file system!
WooHoo! The dumb insurance policy is wherever I look for it! :-)
jppope wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
I think this is definitely a cool system so not meaning to knock it,
but I used to hyper-optimize all parts of my life and it was
exhausting. So one day I just stopped. I started focusing on just being
present, prioritizing, and trying to remember things that were
important. I still take notes and have todo lists and stuff but they
are similarly for being in the moment- just for the time right when I'm
using them. I may have lost some things over the years but the removing
the stress has made me better at all the things I was working on in
general.
erganemic wrote 23 hours 59 min ago:
Off the top of my head, all PKMs make trade-offs on discoverability,
portability, maintainability, and ease of recall. Broadly,
"discoverability" is how likely you are to stumble on something you'd
forgotten (just recently, I found a file in my "taxes" directory
listing all the documents I needed last year, which was a big help, and
which I did not remember writing), "portability" is how resistant the
system is to a company shutting down/project being abandoned,
"maintainability" is how easy to keep your system consistent with its
principles (including inserting a new note), and "ease of recall" is
how easy it is to find something if you know you're looking for it.
When thinking about a lifelong PKM, I feel like I value portability
more than most; something highly tied to a particular company like
Notion is right out for me, and I'm leery of stuff like Obsidian or
even org-roam, since even if the entries in those systems are just
text, I just know that someday the logic that ties them together will
stop being developed/maintained and I'll have to migrate.
I feel confident in directory structures and text files as long-term
mediums though, and so JD is appealing to me, but its maintainability
(specifically the cognitive load around inserting a new note) is such a
stumbling block for actually creating content for it. Not to mention
the primary thing it trades maintainability off for (ease of recall) is
almost entirely solved by search functionality, leaving discoverability
as the only benefit over just chucking everything in a flat "notes"
directory.
I do something PARA-adjacent now, and I might just commit to that,
although denote is interesting as an Emacs user for a slightly more
portable tagging- and search-based option.
disqard wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
You and I are in the same boat!
I keep everything in a single folder, as plaintext Markdown files.
Even if my own software breaks someday, I can always ingest these
into a flavor-of-the-month indexer (though I think sqlite + fts
plugin goes a long way) and carry on.
hbarka wrote 1 day ago:
In 2025 someone discovered the ancient Dewey Decimal system.
kstrauser wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
More like, someone realized a few years ago that you can make your
own Dewey Decimal system and apply it to your own library.
NetOpWibby wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
This has existed before 2025
f1shy wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
It was sarcasm to make a point , in case you did not notice.
bpev wrote 1 day ago:
My filesystem organization has been based off of Johnny decimal for
some years now. TBH, I don't know how much I specifically recommend it,
since it did take quite a long time (years) for me to really figure out
my organization and become comfortable. But now, because my system is
now pretty set in my brain, the big benefit is that I can pretty much
navigate to mostly any directory instantly from anywhere without too
much thought, using scripts I wrote. ( [1] , which is really mainly [2]
). But it makes my filesystem feel much flatter and simpler to me.
For example...
- My latest large coding project spans from `22.00` - `22.20` (clients
from `.01`, server from `.11`, libs from `.21`), and I can navigate to
any of those directories from anywhere in my filesystem via `jd 22.10`.
Or if I forget which one, `jd ls 22`.
- For things like photos and completed music production projects, I
organize in more of a date system, but that entire system is housed in
the jd structure, so if I want to look at some photos, I can easily
open `31.02` and navigate internally to that.
Oh fwiw, I only use a few broad categories:
- `10-19 Notes`
- `20-29 Projects` (active projects, code and music mostly)
- `30-39 Archives` (closed projects)
URI [1]: https://johnny.bpev.me/guide
URI [2]: https://github.com/bpevs/johnny_decimal/blob/main/source/shell...
galfarragem wrote 1 day ago:
My take on "systems to organise your life". It may help somebody:
URI [1]: https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system
pavlov wrote 1 day ago:
A cousin of Johnny Mnemonic?
MetaWhirledPeas wrote 1 day ago:
As a system, this makes sense and I love it. As a personal practice
it's completely impractical for all but a narrow band of the
population. And when those people need to collaborate with others, good
luck getting everyone else to follow the system.
I recommend embracing the chaos instead. Enhance the tools for finding
information, and make it easy to apply metadata.
At a certain point you can get no further without demanding more
personal discipline, but that point is way beyond what is prescribed
here.
react_nodejs wrote 1 day ago:
So are you selling several file explorer folders for $15? ;D
diimdeep wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
no, he is selling lifestyle
hn_throwaway_99 wrote 1 day ago:
Just a general observation as someone nearing 50. I'm honestly very
curious to see if someone has had a different experience than me. I'm
am, to put it mildly, not an "organized person". I have tried a million
different systems throughout my life - GTD, Inbox Zero, spreadsheets,
etc. etc.
To be honest, I don't believe that any of these "organization systems"
really help people that have problems being organized in the first
place. I think it's just a fundamentally different way of how I'm
wired. My general conclusion is that trying to "fight" my natural way
of doing things is always going to be a losing battle, and that instead
I just need to figure out ways to handle my general messiness and get
it to work for me. I mean, I can certainly be organized for sizable
stretches of time, but whenever I start getting pressed for time, or
stressed, or lose my motivation for some other reason, it always
reverts to the mean.
I'd honestly be really interested to hear if anyone has ever changed
from being a "unorganized person" to an "organized person", because it
my few decades of life I've never seen it be successfully accomplished.
jliptzin wrote 9 min ago:
I'm the same way. I just send myself emails when I need to save or
keep track of something. I throw in some keywords that I'll know I'll
search for in the future if/when I need to reference back. This works
95%+ of the time. For physical documents I need to save, I'll just
keep it in a stack and periodically throw them in my scanner and save
them in one PDF file and put it in a google drive folder for
searching (using AI or otherwise) later. Most of these documents I
never need again anyway, but at least they're there.
I know the organization people are probably horrified by all this,
but I know myself well enough by now to know that I just won't stick
to any system more complicated than this. The most important thing is
that all that stuff is there, somewhere, if I really need it. I am
essentially saving the effort up-front that I will 100% have to do in
exchange for a little more effort later down the line which I
probably won't have to do because I usually never need any of that
stuff anyway.
ccppurcell wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
I think you're right and I have a few systems I've implemented that
work with me not against me. For example I organise my kitchen
drawers by putting things in higher drawers if I use them a lot and
lower if I don't. If I "mess up" it doesn't matter: things I use more
will naturally rise to the top. Similarly spices, I return the spices
to the cupboard at the front of the shelf and a natural ordering by
usage develops over time.
In software terms the closest is that I switched to kiss launcher on
my phone. It just shows you the apps in the order you used them, plus
one horizontal line of faves and one vertical line of widgets. It can
also learn what you do but I prefer the basic ordering. I use zoxide
in the terminal for navigation and on the desktop I just press Super
and search for everything.
jerieljan wrote 3 hours 33 min ago:
After seeing this and the stories after this comment, I... can relate
to this.
I went from being unorganized to somewhat organized, then went back
and now it's a case of "I'll keep things organized when it makes
sense, but the rest is up to my memory, the natural way of doing
things and wherever I left it."
I'm just going to try the next thing, see and adopt whatever works,
but if it doesn't, I'll just stick to whatever does.
At the end of the day, it's up to our brains on whether to use
systems or not and if they fit our needs or if it doesn't.
fmbb wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
The problem everyone are trying to solve is âI have too much to
doâ.
All these solutions are band-aids akin to sticking a queue in your
backend to try and cope with constant overload.
The simplest way to get organized I think is to say ânoâ more
often, and stop caring about crap.
GTD has one good idea, and that is that first step âcan you do it
in under five minutes, do it nowâ or however itâs written. The
rest is procrastination.
farley13 wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
You have many great replies about specific methods - but I found the
most important tip wasn't where I was looking. Tools, software,
books, methods all can come later. The most important part for me was
creating the time for cleanup and organization. Physically and
mentally.
Jumping from thing to thing without time set aside for "stop,
reflect, adjust" makes it very challenging to make
changes. I realized that you don't become organized if you don't
spend time on it. Picking up physical messes. Thinking about what
was important in your day vs what you got done. How the week went.
Writing it down.
I found it was only after I started consistently putting time aside
to catchup, think and adjust that I started being able to consider if
any particular methods would be helpful. Parts of GTD have helped me
(capture first) - but the aha moment really
came before that.
If you want to be organized, put time into
reflecting and adjusting (eg. organizing) the critical parts of your
life. Once a day, every day. Maybe more than once a day. Then use one
of those to reflect on the week. Not reading about it or endlessly
sorting the books on your shelf, but focusing intently on stuff
you'll remember 20 years from now.
jmorenoamor wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
I am on the same boat, passed 40 and after trying everything, I
peaked with Obsidian. Just MD files and a lightweight notes IDE
jvidalv wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
A few weeks ago, during a one-on-one with my manager, I had an
interesting realization about this topic.
I understood that my chaotic nature isnât due to a lack of
organizationâitâs because I thrive in chaos. I can function well
without strict structure because I donât need it to stay effective.
My manager, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. She needs
everything documented and noted, not because sheâs inherently more
organized, but because the absence of structure creates anxiety and
discomfort for her.
She actually complimented me on my ability to navigate uncertainty,
to adapt without needing full control, and still feel capable and at
ease.
It felt like an epiphany, shifting the way I perceive this entire
topic.
paufernandez wrote 1 hour 39 min ago:
You hit a very important point, the discomfort that orderly people
experience (I am that kind of person). I believe that to be innate.
At the same time, a disorganized person is still more effective in
an organized environment, but probably he hasn't realized this by
himself because he doesn't have the internal drive to be organized
in the first place.
You could say being organized is Nature's way of setting us up for
success in complex and very demanding situations.
dddw wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
Interesting I am in the same situation. There are are little fires
around me I just have to make sure they dont grow bigger. May I ask
what role you fullfill? I`m sysops/cloud engineer.
h4ny wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
Just personal experience, read with a grain of salt.
I don't consider myself an organised person (my calendar is chaotic,
I don't clean out my inbox and use it as a pseudo to-do list with
priorities, I don't have enough time and energy and constantly feel
like I'm being a shit friend/family/mentor, etc.) but everyone I have
worked with see me as a very organised person: I document every piece
of my work in detail that others can understand, I have good
estimates on tasks I'm assigned and very rarely miss deadline, I
remember when important events are without needing a calendar and am
always on time.
The thing is, GTD doesn't work for me. I have also worked with many
mangers who tried to shove the framework du jour onto everyone and
never had any success with it despite putting in a lot of effort into
"meeting expectations".
The cynical me now thinks that people who tells everyone certain
system work is because:
1. Someone published a popular book that managed to sell well from
the business section.
2. It just happened to work for some people. Even 2 out of 10 people
you meet talk about it is enough to make you think about it, now
imagine 6 out of 10 managers you meet knows about that system.
3. Most managers I have met (whose jobs are to get others to get
things done) don't really have time to understand you, that includes
most of them who say they care about my career (they didn't, they
cared about their own careers more than mine). If there is something
existing they can manage you with they'll use it because when it
doesn't work it's either your problem or the framework's problem, not
theirs.
4. (Cynical opinion) It's mostly just a facade for people who have
authority over you (especially the ones who are technically less
capable but somehow moved up) to show their bosses they are doing
_something_. Like the new lead designer who decided to change the
company brand color or the new head of department who thinks that
changing the department's name is going to invigorate everyone's
passion to do better work.
One thing that I have learned from the people who are smart and
productive is that they have actually spent time to continuously
develop and refine a system that works for them over time. They also
try new things and just move on if it doesn't.
You probably have met a lot of amazing people if you have mostly been
working with others so far. Just think about what the people you
truly admire professionally do -- I'd bet that they don't talk about
GTD and even if they do it's just an introduction to something
remotely similar to what they do and have refined over time.
I know it can be difficult at work sometimes when (whether you know
at that moment or not) people are offloading their responsibilities
and pressure onto you (it's particularly bad if you are a very
responsible person). However, if you believe that you usually have a
reasonable amount of time to get things done, just ask yourself if
you have done your job well and and delivered things on time. If you
have, then the problem probably isn't you or GTD or some other
framework that doesn't work for you.
albert_e wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
I am in same camp.
I recently read the book Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.
Resonates a lot with my experience and struggle with trying to stay
productive.
I may not have learnt any new skills from this book but at least feel
a tad bit more at peace with things as they as and as they unfold.
atoav wrote 8 hours 44 min ago:
I am an unorganized person who has a job that requires a certain
amount of organization to allow me to stay on top of what I am doing
and gives me very little time to do said organization.
The following things work for me:
1. Whenever you leave a project you leave with it all the info to
quickly get started again. If it is physical that can be a paper
note, if it is digital thats a readme note (or a note directly in the
thing). This is not just for documentation, it means the shelved
project requires zero mental capacity as everything I need to
remember is shelved as well.
2. Lists for ephemeral todos. There are so many ways of organizing to
do lists, the only thing that worked for me over long and intense
periods was a little notebook where every Monday of a week I write
down what needs to be done in principle. This typically just contains
urgent things and the occasional lkng term project.
3. Digital Calendar: everything that is an appointment or some
preparation for an appointment goes in here. Appointments do not land
in the todos unless they are majorly crucial ones.
4. Travel stuff: most of the travel info will be in the calendar as
well, for notes/tickets I add them either in the calendar or in my
obsidian notes
5.Knowledgebase: everything that has long form relevance is either in
my password manager (surprisingly good for storing info like your tax
ID) or into the obsidian notebook
That is roughly it.
SoftTalker wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
I'm roughly the same. Here's what I do.
I go to Staples and buy some bankers boxes. These are cardboard boxes
that come in a flat pack and you fold the flaps in and make a box.
It's sized to hold file folders, but I don't use file folders.
I write the year on the side and top of the box. Every imporant piece
of paper, paid bill, receipt, credit card and bank statements,
anything I want to hang on to goes into the box. That's it. No other
organization. On January 1, I start a new box, and I put the old box
on a shelf.
If I need something (which is much more rare than you might expect) I
go through the box and find it. It's in roughly chronological order
and generally doesn't take more than a few minutes.
After 5 years the oldest box goes in the shredder.
OK there are a few exceptions. Stuff I need to save longer than that
(car titles, etc.) goes in a fireproof document safe. But all the
common stuff goes in the box.
wingerlang wrote 8 hours 6 min ago:
Similar here, documents goes into the documents drawer. Digital
documents has been going into /Dropbox/docs/$current_year (without
much organization within them). New year, new folder.
xivzgrev wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
Thanks for sharing.
When you said, â I mean, I can certainly be organized for sizable
stretches of time, but whenever I start getting pressed for time, or
stressed, or lose my motivation for some other reason, it always
reverts to the mean.â, I wanted to share my experience.
Iâd consider myself a somewhat organized person. But I only stick
with a particular system for a few months at most.
I find whatâs most helpful to me is to keep writing down top of
mind stuff and focus on getting it done. Sometimes thatâs in a
text doc, sometimes itâs in a bullet list, sometimes in a
spreadsheet. Just whatever feels right in the moment.
Also I have a wide gap between my professional life and personal
life. I almost never miss commitments at work. In personal Iâm
always intending to do stuff and not getting it done. More competing
priorities / less urgency.
bamboozled wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
Similar situation, my cure is to do less and slow down. For example
after a day on the slopes I make a habit of just putting all my stuff
away carefully. To do this I need more time (do less) and slow things
down.
tomcam wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
Iâm well past 60 and seem to have something approximating bad ADHD.
I became financially very successful by being fairly obsessed with
one thing at a time: software and services companies, real estate,
etc. For many years, this meant leaving extra things like guitar
practice to the middle of the night. My goal since before marriage
was to balance my primary jobs out with family time, which also means
caring for handicapped family members. I succeeded. I have never been
able to balance work, life, and health altogether, unfortunately. So
Iâm diabetic and overweight.
I too tried many forms of organization and always ended up abandoning
them. What has worked with me was being very focused on the main
project and using all kinds of gross little ad hoc ways to keep it
going.
There is a second version of me for day each dayâs tasks and
requirements. That person was revolutionized by phones that
understand voice input. I use the one from Apple but I think itâs
utterly horrible. However, it is still good enough for me to use
about 15 alarms per day that say things like âset an alarm to Get
the boysâ laundry at 4 PMâ. I have daily alarms to remind me to
do things like feed the chickens, and monthly alarms to do things
like pay bills or change batteries. I have an annual calendar entry
with a master list of things I need to do every month or year.
So the long-term project me is pretty good at planning things in my
head and a couple of lists in the source code or source code repos.
The short term is completely interrupt-driven.
I am not recommending this system for everyone, or anyone at all. All
I can say is that it works well for me, even though it is
aesthetically brutal.
plagiarist wrote 15 hours 54 min ago:
Setting constant reminders is a good life hack. Sometimes I wonder
if I might be better at life with a haptic tap on the wrist every
ten minutes, like just a nudge to think if I am doing what I want
to do.
treetalker wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
I have an Apple Watch app that does this! It's called Tap Me
Every X Minutes.[1] (I'm not the creator, no affiliation, just a
happy user.)
Every so often I'll decide to track/log my time and activities
every 15 minutes over a few days, just to keep tabs on where my
time and energy are really going. This app fits the bill: it's
silent and unobtrusive to others and it's never failed to perform
properly for me. I just wish it had an option to display a
countdown timer for the upcoming tap.
[1]
URI [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tap-me-every-x-minutes/id1...
thfuran wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
The real trick would be for it to be able to tell whether what
you're doing is what you want to be doing so it doesn't interrupt
you when you already are.
BakirKreso wrote 10 hours 24 min ago:
You can use a thumb counter (a small clicker on your thumb) to
count how many times you were able to get yourself back on
track
kenada wrote 17 hours 2 min ago:
Iâm in my mid-40s. Iâve been practicing GTD for about a decade.
My system used to be fairly elaborate in the beginning, but now
itâs fairly simple. However, I donât view it as an organizational
system. Itâs a tool for me to be confident that Iâm doing the
right thing right now.
For organizing reference material, I have a drawer with files for
physical things and cloud storage and notes for digital things. I
label it by topic as it seems appropriate/obvious. I review my
reference material annually, deleting or destroying anything thatâs
not still needed.
In practice, I donât actually engage with my system much. I review
it weekly to clear out any next actions I did. Itâs there as a
backstop (i.e., I use deadlines as appropriate in OmniFocus) and to
help keep me aware of my hard and soft landscapes.
(I lost my weekly review habit for a while, and that was bad for me
and my system. Iâm glad Iâve reestablished it.)
If (for example) I decide to hack on nixpkgs stuff tonight, I donât
need a task for that. I may capture one to resume later, but whatâs
important is that I know what Iâm not doing, and Iâm fine with
that. If it turns out Iâm not, then thatâs a sign I need to
renegotiate or delegate some of those things.
eawgewag wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
I'm a big fan of the Jibun Techo system of planners. I have a yearly
planner that I get a new one every year that handles all of my every
day things. I move the "LIFE" book around to each new year which
holds things that matter on a yearly/longer than yearly basis.
This system is beautifully not tied to any software or thing that I
have to manage. It's helped me ensure that my basic yearly needs are
always handled
kisonecat wrote 18 hours 4 min ago:
I wouldn't say I'm organized, but org-mode is the only tool I've ever
really used to keep track of what I am doing. I've been using
org-mode for >= 15 years.
ra wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
I'm the same - just turned 50.
The lightbulb moment for me was when I found out my HBDI [1] profile
- my thinking preferences are heavily skewed toward analytical and
experimental, and away from practical / relational.
My management team compliment me by being a) orgasnised and b)
relationship focused.
URI [1]: https://www.thinkherrmann.com/hbdi
anktor wrote 19 hours 13 min ago:
Recently I have been thinking about this, because I feel I have
managed to become way more organized than I ever thought it was
possible.
What is working for me right now is noting everything in a calendar
so I cannot forget it or as TODO in a somewhat heavy personalized
Obsidian configuration.
A few years ago (5-6 aprox) I started copying my older co-workers
habits to see myself improve. Physical notebooks were soon discarded
because I never remember where I wrote down things.
I used a TODO plugin in sublime which worked for several months,
until I felt I needed screenshots so I moved to OneNote. After a
while I became frustrated with not being able to customize it enough,
so I started trying out different things. I saw a coworker using
Obsidian, watched a couple long YouTube videos to learn how to
customize, and I'm never going back.
My team this week told me they are impressed with how much info I
write down and it was a very proud moment for me!
a-saleh wrote 19 hours 25 min ago:
There is some level of organization you have to achieve to be at
least somewhat successful.
I think these sort of more complex systems are there to help you if
your problem is being overwhelmed, or if you have need to have things
classified and under control.
If your problem is the baseline fact that sticking to any sort of
system is hard ... haha, same, and then you need a system that is
simple.
I currently live by my google-calendar. Alerts in advance, trying to
put everything there, to a point I [1] as my watchface on my
smartwatch, just so that I won't forget what I need to do today.
Also, writing out my daily todo-list in a ~private-ish channel I have
on friend's discord suprisingly works better just having a todolist.
Because my friends see that and that makes my brain actually care :)
So, yeah, "just need to figure out ways to handle my general
messiness and get it to work" is right on the money.
It is like with that Bullet Journal thing. You see the elaborate ones
from people that love their melticulous templates. But when I used it
for a month or so successfully, it was just about the simple
bulet-points, sometimes with dates, review once a day. I stopped
because I lost the notebook, so ... oversharing on discord it is - I
probably am procrastinating there anyway :D
URI [1]: https://sectograph.com/
ghaff wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
I found GTD had a few basic concepts I try--sometimes even
successfully--to follow. But I've basically never been an
"organizational system" person.
hnthrowaway0315 wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
I agree. I tried a few times but they never stick. I admit that my
life would receive a positive buff if I stick to one of the
systems, but I just don't have the heart.
pillefitz wrote 10 hours 35 min ago:
Why is that? GTD for me was the only system that stuck. Set it up
once and have it synced across all devices (I use MS ToDo, as
it's free, comes pre installed ony work computer and doesn't have
many fancy features).
The secret is to set up a weekly reminder to review tasks.
GarnetFloride wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
I love exploring different organizational systems.
Getting Things Done is good for project management but falls down for
organizing.
Marie Kondo is good at organizing and deciding if something is worth
keeping or not, but has issues with scale.
Covey/Daytimer was good for time management but didn't do project
management all that well.
Jamie Hynaman has a massive wall of transparent boxes for organizing
materials for his shop but all the hammers are in one box and you
have to go to that box to get the hammer whenever you need one.
Adam Savage's system puts his most needed tools right around each
workstation but it's expensive as he had multiple copies of many
tools.
Kitchens use mise en place to prep and organize the ingredients for
cooking so they can 100-200 plates out to table a day.
There's PARA, and Zettlekasten for organizing information.
There are, all told, tens of thousands of rules for writers.
In the end I see them all as tools for solving problems and not all
of them work for all problems and that's okay, if I can find a tool
to make solving a problem I am currently working on easier, that's
wonderful or I make something myself.
ghaff wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
>Adam Savage's system puts his most needed tools right around each
workstation but it's expensive as he had multiple copies of many
tools.
It's a tradeoff. For travel, I obviously don't have multiple
passports or high-value items. But it's absolutely worth having
some extra cords and toiletries so I have dedicated travel kits for
those sorts of items. Not perfect or absolute but being able to
more or less grab a couple kits and throw them in my luggage works
for a lot of purposes.
monroewalker wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
The best approach Iâve found so far is to just have a single master
âevent logâ where I dump everything that I want to save by
default. I have specific places to put things but if I canât be
bothered to decide where or am not sure itâll just go to the event
log. Iâm using Notion for this where each entry is its own page in
a âdatabaseâ list. Adding a new page is trivial though through
the site or app. I have an iOS shortcut setup too to open the entry
creation
tonymet wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
the process of trying to organize is helpful, even if the
organization system itself fails. I think people resent organizing
because they expect magic to happen once they try. but like
exercise, learning, playing music, cooking -- it's the practice of
the habit that develops results . Everything great takes repetition
wink wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
I challenge the "organized person" thing already.
I'm very organized in some areas and make the biggest mess in others.
Also what does "unorganized" even mean? I usually don't forget work
TODOs but I regularly forget non-work TODOs. One has me have a text
file open on the same computer, and in the other area stuff comes up
left and right, and if I have my phone to jot it down it doesn't mean
I will look at my phone on time...
pillefitz wrote 10 hours 39 min ago:
I just use MS ToDo synced across all devices with GTD. My "Waiting
For" bucket currently contains around 20 items, most of them with
reminders to follow up on the status. No way I would keep on top of
it without a structured system.
arnonejoe wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
Same. My file system gets "cleaned up" every two years when I buy a
new macbook.
tikhonj wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
I am pretty ADD. For me, moving to a system using org-mode helped a
lot. It didn't make me an "organized" person (hah!), but it has
repeatedly kept me from losing track of important things and has
given me a place to take tasks/reminders/notes/etc off my mind. Being
able to write something down and trust that it will surface back when
I need it has reduced my mental load and general anxiety.
I haven't been super organized or consistent in how I use
org-modeâorg-mode is great at letting me discover my own workflow
and adapt the tool to what I need rather than adapting myself to the
toolâand I've gone through periods where I lost the habit, but,
overall, it's been a concrete improvement to my life. I've found that
seeing it as a tool rather than a "system" made a big difference for
me. I've never liked productivity systems (especially at work), but
having a tool I can use in whatever ways helps me is a qualitatively
differentâand better!âthing.
puffybuf wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
I love org-mode with emacs. I use it to organize my notes / game
hacks / todo / pretty much anything using a tree structure. You can
use drawers to hide things like sample code.
updatedprocess wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
How does this transfer to mobile when you're out and about?
tikhonj wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
I use Orgzly on Android. It isn't amazing, but it's pretty
good; I just wait on more complicated and bulk operations until
I get back to a computer.
_emacsomancer_ wrote 18 hours 14 min ago:
termux on android can run emacs
(for making it more usable, see: [1] )
URI [1]: https://babbagefiles.xyz/termux-extra-keys-emacs-org-r...
scrapcode wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
Same. A very simplified version of bullet journaling does quite a bit
for me to track tasks. I basically just use three bullets ( - for
information, * for an item requiring action, and > to indicate i need
to keep moving that task forward).
flessner wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
I have been an extraordinarily unorganized university student until
the begining of this year - I am still not fully organized, but doing
a lot better.
What helped me was looking at the "atomic concepts"
* What do I need to get done? (Tasks)
* When will I work on what? (Calendar)
* How do I keep information around? (Notes)
My "evergreen" information (like lecture notes, book notes) was
happily living in Obsidian the past years, so criteria three was
already "satisfied". I never found a true "system", so most of my
notes are in a Zettelkasten-esque style.
I was stunned to discover that I didn't have a proper solution for
"Tasks" or "Calendar". As an immediate fix I simply bought a DIN A6
notebook and a pen. Eventually, I started using the Apple Calendar
with a Shortcut that could tally up the time for me - it was
insightful. I went from >20 hours of social media a week to nothing
(except HN) within a month.
I am still experimenting, currently I am trying to move the "Tasks"
into a "daily note" in Obsidian. I have also tried to do some
"Journaling", but I found it to not be effective. What I have found
to be absolutely necessary though is having a dedicated time in the
morning and evening to review everything, plan the day, defer tasks
etc.
aeontech wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
I'm curious about the shortcut to tally up the time - how does that
work? Could you share it somewhere?
marttt wrote 22 hours 59 min ago:
These two older HN comments might relate to your lines of thinking. I
found both of these very insightful when I got stuck with trying out
all sorts of rigid systems, outliners, zettelkasten etc: [1]
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17893139
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8807252
jrootabega wrote 23 hours 5 min ago:
There is no voluntary system which can't be sabotaged by your own
feelings. Performance anxiety, overthinking, fear of success, etc.
And if you let things pile up without processing them, that becomes
another snowballing reason to avoid the system. One's thoughts and
feelings ABOUT the system seem to have no way to be processed BY the
system, so one just avoids all of it. There is also sometimes an
expectation that a system will do the hard work for you, instead of
just telling you what you should be putting hard work into in a
certain time slice.
I am not betting my life that there is no one who is psychologically
incapable of working with certain systems without intractable
distress. But I doubt it.
y33t wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
The best system I've come up with is to timestamp all my notes and
sort them chronologically in a filing cabinet. You can link to notes
by their timestamp, create indexes, calendars, weekly or daily todos
etc, as necessary. The idea is that a note can be whatever you want
or need it to be in that moment. Just make it addressable. Timestamps
also give temporal context to correlate with emails, phone calls, or
any other logged activity.
I found that trying to organize my notes one way or another
introduced more work and cognitive load than it saved. Just timestamp
it and let the rest happen naturally. Wu wei?
It's similar to a zettlekasten I guess, but without the effort.
cautious-fly wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
In terms of organising files over the years I have found that nothing
beats good file names and file search.
ipsento606 wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
For me, part of the tension stems from being unwilling to design a
system crappy enough that I will actually stick to.
To take a trivial example, say your problem is that you leave clothes
all over your bedroom floor, so you decide to set up a system to
solve that.
The naive approach is to design a system like "If it's too dirty to
wear again, put it in the laundry basket, coded by light or dark. If
it's clean, decide if it should go on a hanger or in a drawer. If it
needs a hanger, hang it up, being careful to select the right kind of
hanger for the right kind of clothing. If it needs to go in a
drawer..."
That's the system I want to design because that's how I want my life
to be.
It would feel very unnatural to design a system like "pile all
clothes on the chair in the corner and worry about them later",
because I don't want my life to be like that, and I don't want to
believe that that's the only kind of system I might have a chance of
sticking to.
But that is the only kind of system I'll stick to. And ultimately,
it's much better to have all your clothes piled on the chair in the
corner rather than strewn all over the bedroom floor.
haliskerbas wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
Iâm like you and Iâve slowly started to embrace it. Sometimes
that means three laundry baskets. One for clean one for dirty and
one for wear again. And then iterating on top of that!
4k93n2 wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
wont everything be wrinkled when you take it back out of
wear-again basket?!
i just tend to order most things on hangers with the most newly
washed things to the right, then every time i wear something and
put it back it goes a bit closer to the left. then when im
putting on a wash i know that its all the things on the very left
that need to be washed.
another useful way to keep track of things is to hang up anything
thats newly washed with the hook of the hanger facing towards
you, then hang it up the normal way once you worn it. and i still
order the newly washed things from right to left as well since
theres the odd thing i dont wear that often which can go musty if
its just sitting there for months, so when im putting on a wash
sometimes i check the very left side of the newly washed things
as well
LambdaComplex wrote 15 hours 50 min ago:
> wont everything be wrinkled when you take it back out of
wear-again basket?!
Throw it into the dryer while you take a shower. Problem
solved!
lostlogin wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
> wont everything be wrinkled when you take it back out of
wear-again basket?!
Yup. But when itâs t-shirt and shorts, or t-shirt and jeans,
I donât care. I donât really have any other clothes. I have
a jumper somewhere and a cycling top.
BigGreenJorts wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
I did the third laundry basket for a bit. I think it's missing
what's peak about the chair which is that I can still sorta see
what's in the pile. I'm trying to find a coat hook esque system.
bialpio wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
When I saw Simone Giertz's build, I immediately wished she'd
start selling those. [1] - "A chair built for your half-dirty
clothes". I'd love this to be my "3rd basket".
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H175G8NH2Cg
istjohn wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
My brother claims to have achieved that transformation with GTD. My
personal experience is that complex rigid systems like GTD require
high initial investments in effort and can be brittle. They are sort
of like doing a total rewrite of a codebase. My biggest wins have
come from making small incremental changes.
The biggest win I ever made was getting a small filing cabinet (a
banker box works, too) and putting it, a stack of manilla folders,
and a marker next to my desk. Then, when I get a piece of mail or
have a piece of paper, I file it in the appropriate folder, making a
new one if need be. If you have a huge, chaotic pile of papers
somewhere, try this. Take that pile and throw it in a box somewhere.
Don't try to organize it. You now have a Pile-Of-Papers-In-a-Box.
From now on, instead of putting new items on the POPIB, file them in
your new proper file system. And if you need to dig something out of
the POPIB, when you're done with it, file it away instead of
returning it to the POPIB. Soon, the POPIB will shrink to a pile of
mostly trash that you can store in a shoebox in the back of a closet.
My biggest loss was trying to digitize my home office with a fancy
Fujitsu scanner, Google Drive, and Airtable. It turned out to be a
bigger project than I anticipated, and I prematurely abandoned my
trusty analog system. Soon, AI will make this trivial, but for the
time being, I'm sticking to paper. I also prefer the user experience
of physical paper, at least until I can hand over all the paper
shuffling to an AI.
Other small gains I've made are using Obsidian on my phone for notes
and using Google Calendar religiously for all appointments and
scheduled activities.
Filing cabinets, digital calendars, note taking apps--these are all
simple, obvious things, but I think being organized is all about
acquiring a handful of these small habits and sticking to them. If
your system is simple enough to become reflexive, you'll be more
likely to stick to it under stress.
ghaff wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
>And if you need to dig something out of the POPIB, when you're
done with it, file it away instead of returning it to the POPIB.
Soon, the POPIB will shrink to a pile of mostly trash that you can
store in a shoebox in the back of a closet.
It's also the case that you may legitimately need something out of
the POPIB sometime over the next 12 months. Assuming you've been
smart about it (I did have an old doc I needed a while ago but I
had actually kept it in my fire box because it seemed like
something I might need) if something is a few years old, it can
probably go in the trash.
The problem with scanning is that there's work involved and if you
don't do a decent job with metadata, it's going to be pretty much
useless anyway. For a lot of people, file cabinet with folders is
probably a good system unless they really are on-the-go or have
multiple residences a lot of the time.
adastra22 wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
You may have ADHD. Medication helps. A personal support system (the
people in your life) helps more.
hemloc_io wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
I had to get organized in college because I was doing a lot of
additional coursework and still working. Previously I was completely
disorganized in terms of planning.
Honestly the best way to do it isn't even a "system" it's to take the
most lightweight level of organization and applying it to things you
use.
For me the main organizational tool is just google calendar, using an
all day event to denote due dates/trip planning/reminders, but even a
daily note with what you're looking to do and important dates could
be useful.
All these """systems""" have never caught on for me. It takes a lot
of time to understand to the system and adjust instead of building a
habit of surfacing information.
Get the system out of the way and just start putting stuff down. I
get a ton of stuff done now that I couldn't without organizing things
particularly when it comes to planning trips or work.
skydhash wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
Did so, but mostly due to increasing responsibility and general
laziness. If it's something in my ecosystem (either digital or real
life) I'm strongly against spending much energy to finding stuff and
redo things. I'm not against messiness, but things should either be
highly visible or arranged in a way that minimize thinking. And if
something can be automated, I will do so if the manual way is
cumbersome enough.
I try not to burden my memory with remembering trivia. So I note them
down, bookmark them in some ways that will resurface contextually.
Which is why I never took on with a particular method for all aspects
in my life, but will gladly use it within a specific context.
TOGoS wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
I have similar inner battles.
I think the key is to come up with a system that takes your natural
tendencies into account. Result might not be perfect but it will be
less of a disaster than if you had no system at all.
Things like 'slow recycle bin' (where you throw stuff that you
probably won't need to look at again, but you might) help with this.
e.g.
I have a lot of 6-quart sterilite bins where I keep various
tools/components/junk. Most of them contain specific things and are
labeled accordingly. There are also some that are labeled "random
crap from my pockets". Not ideal to have "random crap" bins but at
least I know which ones they are, and the option is open to go
through and better-organize them later.
I have periods where I carefully curate my digital photos and archive
them using a specific file structure. Sometimes I don't keep up, so
as a backup, I dump all the raw photos to a big hard drive and
generate manifest files with filenames, sizes, and bitprint hashes
that I keep in Git. This part is of course somewhat automated or it
would never happen at all.
emacsen wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
I'm in my mid-40s and have severe ADHD and I've tried many many
techniques and systems over the years. Over the last ~15 years I've
come to evolve a set of systems that work for me.
I'm starting (in my "ample free time") to document them and in a
series blog posts help people find systems that will work for them.
My experience is that the best systems are the ones that have five
characteristics:
1. They're simple
No complex patterns, no "we'll solve everything"
2. They require little or no task switching in the middle
This breaks my ADHD concentration.
3. They're forgiving if you fall off the wagon
You will always have bad days and need to restart. The system must
make it easy.
4. The system must be very general, maybe even "too simple" but easy
to customize.
There is a natural desire, especially in ADHD people, to over
complicate, so the system must allow you to be as simple as possible,
but then let you customize later.
5. They don't require any specialized tool (especially not an online
tool). No system should be invariably tied to a specific piece of
software or hardware. These may be excellent augmentations, but they
should never be requirements.
Am I an "organized" person? No, but I'm far better organized than I
was. Tasks rarely get missed now. I'm far more productive than I was
(and I have stats to back up my assertion). I can almost always
retrieve documents I need relatively quickly.
These systems won't change who you are, but they will assist you in
being better at being who you are.
disqard wrote 16 hours 58 min ago:
> They're forgiving if you fall off the wagon
Some (not all) of my personal systems are unforgiving in this
regard.
Thank you for pointing out this "Best Practice" explicitly!
ryanstorm wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
Your principles mirror my own, which have been developed and
refined over the last ten years (I'm 34 now). There have been
periods of overcomplicating things, but they've mostly reached a
natural state that works for me.
Maybe interesting is the evolution of my system:
⢠2015 and prior: Sticky notes, calendars, notebooks, sheets of
paper, chaos
⢠2016-2019: I found the bullet journal method and implemented
the most basic form found here: [1] (collections, future log,
monthly log, daily log) and never really evolved from that
utilitarian mode.
⢠2019-2025: I signed up for Notion and ported my bullet journal
system there. I miss the physical version, but prefer the easy
access and easy editing in the online version. In addition to
Notion, I heavily use Google Calendar, and also Google Keep as a
quicker-access and catch-all of smaller notes. I use Notion for
life admin and Obsidian for work notes and files.
OP's Johnny.Decimal system caught my attention since I've been
interested in a consistent and proven way to organize the files on
my laptop, SSDs, Drive, as well as all my physical docs. I could
also see it being a nice way to organize my Notion and Obsidian,
but I also tend to rely on search and backlinking as others have
commented about for their own systems.
URI [1]: https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq
emacsen wrote 16 hours 20 min ago:
I think these systems like Obsidian are great for notes.
PARA also (and for me primarily) helps with things like documents
I get from other places which I then scan in.
Yes, I could probably use a specialized program for this, but
this way it's all just files.
Appsmith wrote 12 hours 54 min ago:
This is centered around PARA and free for now. Would love your
feedback!
URI [1]: https://thoughtscape.app/
emacsen wrote 10 hours 39 min ago:
I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this, but you
asked!
What you are building is essentially what Tiago Forte calls a
"Second Brain". He has an entire book around Second Brain, as
well as the one on PARA.
Ironically, I've found myself using Second Brain less since
using PARA because PARA ends up solving my needs without it.
As an example, this week I received a letter from the tax
authority where I live. I took the letter, scanned it, and
placed it in my PARA/2 Areas/TAXES/2023 folder (since it was
in relation to my 2023 taxes). I used a descriptive filename
that included what the letter was about and the date.
I didn't need second brain to process the tax letter- what
was important is that it was stored quickly and easily, and
that I can retrieve it later if need be. I also don't need
any complex tagging or keyword systems- the folder and
filename help me find the relevant documents, and it takes no
more time than adding lots of keywords. I know because I've
tried more complex systems, and they ended up being more
trouble than they were worth.
But more importantly, I'm not tied to any specific service or
software. I'd never use a program that requires me to upload
my most sensitive data to a third party service. It would put
my data at risk and it would also mean that if the company
were to change its business model (like Notion did) or had a
breakin, or went out of business, my data would be at risk.
That's why I don't advocate for Second Brain services that do
this, even ones with lots of cool features.
I would love automated integrated voice notes (vs what I do
now which requires a bit of cut and paste) but the benefits
don't outweigh the extremely high cost to me.
Sorry!
Multiplayer wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
I implemented Johnny Decimal about 5 years ago in Google Drive.
The cool thing about it is it's just always there. It's pretty
much set and forget it.
I'll forget about it (because ADHD?) and when I open up drive,
there it is! :). And I'll use it.
It's a small investment upfront.
pjerem wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
May I ask your blog URL ? Or add it in your profile :)
emacsen wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
[1]
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134892
URI [2]: https://blog.emacsen.net
istjohn wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
I just wrote a sibling comment echoing essentially the same
philosophy, although you've elucidated the principles in more
detail. As I wrote, my system is basically use a paper filing
system (don't overthink it, just alphabetically ordered, labeled
manila files), Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Obsidian on my
phone for miscellaneous note-taking.
I'm eager to learn more about your systems. Where's your blog?
emacsen wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
My blog is at [1] but I haven't written much.
The problem I have is that writing the why is harder than the
what.
For example, I use a modified Cycle System, but some of my
modifications are around how many tasks I do a day, and how I
categorize which tasks I do.
As an example, understanding task limits and why you should use
them is important. As I write out my thoughts about them, it
feels boring.
Then I put the blog down and don't pick it up again. Maybe I
should do it anyway.
URI [1]: https://blog.emacsen.net
Moru wrote 7 hours 34 min ago:
I would love to read a continuation of this blog. I don't have
an ADHD diagnose or even a suspicion of one but these problems
of organizing everyone has. It's just easier or harder to get
to grips with them. We need more different views of how minds
work so we can find the one that resonates. Short posts that
solve one problem is perfect so one can get one step in the
right direction at a time.
morning-coffee wrote 1 day ago:
Similar age, slightly different experience.
I haven't tried a bunch of different systems, but I admit to liking
the principles behind this Johnny.Decimal system and might give it a
whirl.
I used to get frustrated that all of the information I'd carted along
over the years wasn't "organized". I realized a couple things:
- I really didn't need most of the stuff I thought I did. So I
cull/delete and generally try to minimize what is kept from the
start.
- For the stuff I do want forever, I use "Archive" for mail and a
similar concept for files. One folder per year and the entirety of
that year's activities dumped there. I'll use search over this when
needed.
- Each year I start somewhat fresh, carrying over current areas
still active from the previous year while archiving the rest. I then
re-evaluate and try to simplify the current "working index" for the
current year and its generally easy to find thing within that
narrowed context.
My analogy is that life is an immutable log of records ongoing in
chronological order... so a folder for each chronological year. Then
index in each year as you see fit... the index/categories/areas for
each year don't have to be the same as prior years... they likely
won't if life is interesting and changing!
niam wrote 1 day ago:
The closest I've come is in using an "outliner". I don't have it in
me to impose structure on notes.
I like how logseq works, where you don't need to name your files. You
just write into the "today" log about whatever. Then if you someday
want to create a page on a particular topic, the system combs through
your past daylogs for incidences of that phrase and throws a
reference to it into the doc for you.
There's no necessary starting structure besides the incidental
chronology of when you elect to write. But it's useful to me in the
same ways I think structure/organization is meant to afford.
Obsidian works similarly, but its unit of information is a document,
vs logseq which uses bullet points. I tend to prefer the latter since
even prose is too structured for me when I need to quickly jot
things.
smeej wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
Seconding Logseq, though I think the move to database structure is
going to ruin it for me. I'm one of those people for whom Notion is
counterintuitive to the point of being completely unusable, and all
I can suss out about this switch is that it's going to make Logseq
more like Notion.
Every time the Johnny.Decimal system resurfaces on HN, though, I'll
admit to spending a couple weeks revisiting the task of finally
systematizing the decades of old files stored on my hard drive,
until I remember that I haven't looked for any of them in many
years, never mind opened them, so it's probably not worth any
effort after all.
cldwalker wrote 21 hours 29 min ago:
> I'm one of those people for whom Notion is counterintuitive to
the point of being completely unusable
Most of the existing workflows remain the same and the DB version
opens up many more workflows. Would recommend trying it out if
you haven't already with [1] and [2] . If you have tried it out,
please give us feedback :)
URI [1]: https://test.logseq.com/
URI [2]: https://github.com/logseq/docs/blob/feat/db/db-version.m...
smeej wrote 13 hours 45 min ago:
I've played with it enough to know I don't intend to move
forward with it. It takes so many of the things that were
intuitive and functional for me, adds a ton of stuff I don't
want and wouldn't use, and ruins what made me love the product
so much.
For example, I like just popping "TODO" on the front of a line,
but the database version adds a bunch of stuff I don't want. I
don't want to have a drop-down list pop up with distracting
icons that don't even have a cohesive color scheme. I don't
want to have to move my cursor down a list. I just want to
click where it says TODO and have it change to DOING and then
change back when I click it again, and then change to DONE when
I click the box. I don't want tags on the ends of my lines. I
like having the status right at the front, not singled out as
just one more property, but just there, where I would put them
if I were writing things down without software. I don't want to
have to set properties, and I don't even use tags as a separate
thing to be attached to my blocks, certainly not right-aligned.
What made Logseq elegant in its simplicity is absolutely ruined
for me with the database version. It is the most concerted
effort I've ever seen to destroy the best parts of the product
to make it into something entirely different.
And it's fine that you're going to do it anyway. I'm just
disappointed I'll be stuck sitting on a version that never
moves forward, because there was SO much room for improvement,
especially on mobile, which now won't ever happen to the
product I actually love.
niam wrote 22 hours 53 min ago:
I've not been terribly worried about them running SQLite in the
background as long as their sync with the filesystem is seamless,
which they've highlighted is the goal.
Unless there's another set of reasons you're worried about it?
smeej wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
Instead of being the one product I've ever found in this niche
that actually is intuitive to the way my mind approaches
storing information, tasks, etc., now I have to try to fit my
brain around whatever structure they build into their database.
It's a completely different experience, interacting with
something where I have to change to fit it, rather than its
already fitting me.
If my brain worked like a database, I'd already be using one of
the dozens of products that depended on a database structure. I
don't doubt that this will be more mainstream because of the
decision, but it will ruin what made the product useful for me.
bongoman42 wrote 1 day ago:
In a similar boat and I'll add another point. Any new system leads to
a temporary increase in focus and productivity. Then it steadily
drops off. What this told me is that new systems, as long as they
don't have a steep entry ramp are good to get that temporary boost.
Just don't expect it to last for months. Also, I found a fair number
of high performing people are unorganized, but they often have
secretaries and coaches who are themselves organized to get things
done for them. But if you are not at a point where you can afford
one, you have to learn to get these things yourselves.
skolskoly wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
>Any new system leads to a temporary increase in focus and
productivity.
I used to try to be very organized and adopt different systems to
do so. Unfortunately due to the variety of things I do, I ended up
creating the XKCD "you now have 14 competing standards" problem. My
efforts to impose order only created more chaos. I have since just
created a big monolithic txt file for notes, and a directory sorted
by date modified. Delete old things, rename new things
appropriately, and then use proper search tools like Voidtools
Everything. When a project is complete, that's when I start
organizing it, because that's when I know what it should look like.
I don't understand how people can work with inconsistent and
constantly changing structure.
mo_42 wrote 1 day ago:
I wouldn't say that I was a very chaotic person but after moving
several times it felt like it takes longer to find some special tool
than buy it new. So I created a little program to keep track of all
my stuff [1]. It took quite a while to put everything in there but it
helps me to check for a tool if a friend asks for something. Also, I
like to be aware of what I own and what I should give away because I
don't need it anymore.
URI [1]: https://github.com/mo42/inven
smeej wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
The one logistical change I made that solved this for me was that
whenever I have to look for something, as soon as I find it, it
gets moved to wherever the first place I looked for it was. I take
that as an indication that my brain's default sorting system thinks
it belongs there.
I also have a tendency to go through everything I own once every
couple of years and get rid of anything a past version of me
thought a future version of me might want to do, but future me does
not want to do, though, so the total amount of "stuff" I have is
pretty manageable to start out with.
iyn wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
Brilliant idea (moving the found item to the location you first
looked at)! If you ever write a blog post about your org
system/such tricks I'd happily read it :)
mcgrath_sh wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
Check out Dana K. White. She uses this principle along with 5
other "rules" to declutter. Has really helped me get my space
in order.
smeej wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
I just spent fully 15 minutes trying to find anywhere there's
a simple list of what the 5 rules are. Couldn't get AI search
bots to pull it up for me either.
I don't know whether I'm more worried for her, that her work
is somehow disorganized enough for this not to be screaming
obvious, repeatedly, throughout her blog, or worried for the
state of my ability to search the internet anymore, when I
used to find it to easy to find specific things like lists of
rules online.
Still haven't actually found the list, but I'm done trying.
smeej wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
I don't know if there's more to it than these two sides of the
same coin, but every time I move house, when I pull something
out of the box and go to put it "away," wherever it's going to
stay from then on, I close my eyes for a second and think, "If
all I knew was that I had already unpacked this, but I couldn't
remember where I'd put it, where would I go look for it first?"
and then I go put it there and that becomes its home.
robofanatic wrote 1 day ago:
as long as you don't get harshly "punished" or judged for being
unorganized by others above you in the food chain then you are fine.
slightwinder wrote 1 day ago:
They don't need to help everyone, nor solve all problems. Just
helping some people to solve some problems is progress. Organization
is a spectrum, some parts are more organized, some less. And those
systems, tools, whatever, can be a guideline finding your way.
I don't know whether I'm a person with an organized nature (it's
probably more on the messy side), but I know that understanding how
those tools and systems work, and when, did help me to organize my
life a bit better. For me, the main problem is always that I need to
have reason for using something and stay with it. Just reading a book
and blindly following what it says is not really my thing. But when I
find a demand, knowing about those tools and systems did help me to
implement solutions for myself which stuck.
It's a bit like not needing all the buttons in a car in the
beginning, until it's cold, you want it warm, and you realize that
heating might be a good thing for you. You will not know that there
is heating in a car, without reading the manual, but if you need it,
the knowledge about it will help you find your solution.
superxpro12 wrote 1 day ago:
Im kind of like you. My answer to this is what I call "breadcrumbs".
I leave them everywhere, and rely on fast searching tools.
In onenote, I make sure things have unique keywords I can search for.
I use "Everything" or "Fsearch" to find files on my harddrive. It
even indexes my onedrive.
Emails? Git gud with searching boolean queries. From:fred AND
body:football
I've similarly tried various organization methods and I cant seem to
maintain them. Focusing on easy search has been my way forward.
dominicrose wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not organized by default but I can live or work with organized
people. It's possible to fit in and participate in the organization.
I tend to let my brain organize my life for me. The end result is
that I don't do many different things but I do the things I care
about.
However, A 4-colour pen and a small spiral notebook with a grid can
help.
The paper and colours allows you to be much more creative than just
using an ordered sequence of words or some more complex but still
limited note taking system.
ziddoap wrote 1 day ago:
I agree with your take. I think someone who can/will get organized
will do so regardless of which system they use. Someone who
can't/won't get organized isn't going to no matter what system is
proposed.
The benefits of these organization systems, in my experience, come
into play when there are multiple people involved (e.g. a workplace,
shared storage, etc.), so that everyone can be organized in the same
way rather than having a bunch of competing organization systems
created by each person.
chrisweekly wrote 1 day ago:
IME having a personal system can be invaluable. It HAS to be
something that resonates for you subjectively and personally -- it
could be a system someone else has created (bullet journal, PARA,
whatever) but if it's going to work, and stick, has to become
"yours" to some degree.
ziddoap wrote 1 day ago:
I definitely agree when it comes to personal storage. Making the
system (whatever it is) "yours" is the key.
But when dealing with shared storage, if everyone makes the
system "theirs" to some degree, you end up with a disorganized
mess. Which is where a rigorously defined system (this, something
else, something custom) is required to keep any sanity.
ejoso wrote 1 day ago:
Similar age. Similar realization.
krunck wrote 1 day ago:
Does it support symlinks? Because there is always stuff I want in two
different places.
drcongo wrote 1 day ago:
Previously:
URI [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=johnnydecimal.com
shoknawe wrote 1 day ago:
Joplin might be a good vehicle for the implementation of
Johnny.Decimal.
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote 1 day ago:
I've been using this for the past 18 months, and it works really well.
I'll write 19.01 on my calendar now instead of "review finances". I
don't maintain the index on a regular basis yet, and so far I haven't
needed an index.
Yes, I used to think tags were so neat, but I was fooling myself.
ashu1461 wrote 1 day ago:
I think with any documentation, specially something like life tracker
tracker, it is a daily effort to maintain it, clean it, figure out
which sections are outdated.
I make sure that with every new article which is added into my
documentation, I go through some past pages and organise / clean them
up. This also helps in revision of some of the past insights which were
collated.
lokimedes wrote 1 day ago:
I love the ADHD meets ASD of this one! As long as it requires
self-control, and long-term memory, it is DOA for me.
Oh the curse of knowing what one requires, but always having it out of
reach due to misfiring dopamine regulators/receptors.
edding4500 wrote 1 day ago:
So basically a Zettelkasten?
Tomte wrote 1 day ago:
No. It has practically nothing to do with Zettelkasten. For starters,
Johnny Decimal says nothing about links.
edding4500 wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
Uh, you are right, that was a silly comment I made.
markus_zhang wrote 1 day ago:
I probably need real-life shelves and boxes for organization. But I
think I failed strategically because I brought too many I do not enjoy
about into my life. Juggling 6 pieces of shit is not fun however good
I'm doing it.
I'll buy those shelves and boxes and just grit my teeth for another 15
years, and then it should be a lot better.
SvenL wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs pretty amazing that there are such systems. Everytime I try
something like this I fail following it just a few weeks later. I just
relay on search, I have one mailbox, one download folder and thatâs
it. If I look for something I have just 2 searchboxes, one in finder
and one in outlook.
satiric wrote 1 day ago:
I tried this with my personal Google drive and am not really using the
numbers. It's just a little extra work to set up. I don't see much of a
benefit to it personally, but if you do then great. The important thing
is to have a system you like
bluechair wrote 1 day ago:
I really appreciate what Johnny Decimal is trying to solve - we're all
struggling with digital organization and the appeal of a clean, simple
system is undeniable.
Having implemented similar approaches across several teams, I can say
it works beautifully for personal projects or well-defined small team
efforts. But here's the challenge: most real-world information refuses
to fit into single categories. A technical spec might be simultaneously
system architecture, compliance documentation, etc. While the Johnny
Decimal strength is its rigid simplicity, that's also its weakness when
facing actual organizational complexity.
Rather than fighting these natural interconnections, I've found more
success embracing them - using approaches that allow documents to exist
in multiple contexts while maintaining the Johnny Decimal core goal of
findability/searcability. The solution to chaos might not be enforcing
a decimal hierarchy, but rather building systems that match how
information actually flows in modern organizations.
raintrees wrote 1 day ago:
For me, that is the value of tags. No need to have duplicates to
have items represented in multiple categories, yet each appropriate
category gets a nod about the particular item.
lardissone wrote 1 day ago:
I tried many organization systems, including Johnny Decimal like PARA.
And none of them worked for me.
As an ADHD person, I've found the best way for me is not put effort in
organizing at all.
For that reason I've found tools like Logseq/Tana/Reflect does a great
job. I just write in the journal and tag items accordingly if required,
then if I need to write some long form document, I create specific
pages for it.
Then search and backlinks are everything I need. My brain works better
searching than browsing.
znpy wrote 1 day ago:
most stuff don't work, and don't stand the test of time.
anyway, here is what's has been working for me:
for physical stuff (documents, printouts etc): a dumb file organizer
box, one of those where you can hang those hanging manila folders.
and of course a few such folders. I bought fifty such folders some
years ago, have used about half so far?
for digital stuff: a simple mediawiki installation. it's hosted at
home and it's not accessible from the public internet. the visual
editor makes it low-friction to edit, the categories system works
well enough, a page can belong to more than one category and there's
always a search function that works well enough.
the nice thing about mediawiki is that you can upload and embed
images, you can link to other systems (like files in nextcloud) and
you can upload whole files and link to them from various pages.
jonaias wrote 1 day ago:
You might want to take a look at [1] We've received great feedback
from ADHD users about how it has helped them throughout their lives
URI [1]: https://www.limitless.ai/#pendant
multjoy wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
And if I don't want my conversation recorded? How do I know if I am
being recorded?
egglemonsoup wrote 1 day ago:
That's a very compelling pitch. I don't have the budget yet but
it's something I'll be keeping my eye on as yall launch and reviews
start coming out!
lardissone wrote 1 day ago:
I'm still waiting for shipping to my country. Pre-ordered on Oct/23
:(
a1ff00 wrote 1 day ago:
After years of searching for an organizational solution myself,
switching between countless applications, numerous applications, and
a concoufany of feedback, insights and ideas from xyz influencer,
this is exactly the same path i've settled on, despite not being
diagnosed with ADHD myself -- though, the signs are all there.
A structure loosely connected to past notes via a weekly
'cleaning/review' process in my "PKS", where I'll /search/ for tags,
filenames, file contents and loosely link things together.
It's saved me countless hours, but more importantly its drastically
reduced analysis paralysis and kept me focused on the most important
thing -- writing.
Invictus0 wrote 1 day ago:
> concoufany
cacophany?
URI [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cacophony
bicx wrote 1 day ago:
I donât have ADHD (that I know of) and still love Logseq. For me,
itâs the perfect mix of notetaking, journaling, outlining, task
tracking, and lightweight hierarchy/linking.
I find that if I have to organize or categorize entries in a system,
entries just donât get logged at all.
lardissone wrote 1 day ago:
I'm trying a lot of tools, but I end up using Logseq. It's amazing.
Only bad thing is their mobile app, it's so bad.
smeej wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
If the mobile app could handle PDF reading/highlighting like the
desktop app can, and especially if it could reflow PDFs like
KOreader can, I would never use another tool for information
management.
I have loads of epub books that I want to read on my Android eInk
reader (Boox Note 2 Color). I can convert them to PDF no problem,
if that's the only option, but man I wish I could read them right
in Logseq on Android. I've tried various syncing solutions to
export KOreader highlights, and it's just not nearly as good.
Even tried buying a ChromeOS tablet so I could run Linux Logseq
on it, but the form factor sucks compared to the Boox.
h14h wrote 1 day ago:
I've tried a number of KMS's and repeatly bounce off and wind up
back in Google Keep. Annoying mobile apps is usually the #1
reason.
I would love it if one of these KMS companies would give up
trying to create a mobile app w/ feature parity, and expend
energy making something way simpler. All I really want is a solid
UX for:
1. Quickly capturing multi-modal thoughts
2. Easily surfacing specofic KMS items
Thinking of my experience with Obsidian mobile... I don't want
markdown, I don't want finicky two-way sync that randomly deletes
directories, I don't want an entire file tree to tediously
navigate.
I just want to be able to hatily jam a thought into the system,
and to find specific items in the system, both as quickly as
humanly possible.
asystole wrote 1 day ago:
This is why I love Capacities. It's object oriented with properties
and tags. No folders.
lardissone wrote 1 day ago:
I just tried it, looks good. But TBH, I miss outlining. I would
like they offer a way to have an outlining mode (with collapsing
ability). Thanks for the recommendation.
asystole wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://capacities.io/tutorials/outliner-mode
lardissone wrote 23 hours 59 min ago:
Tried that, but I would like outliner mode to be the default.
Instead of writing a `-` at the beginning of the line.
Anyway, I'll give a better try. Thanks.
airstrike wrote 1 day ago:
> We believe that everybody should have access to tools for
building knowledge. Therefore, the core product of Capacities is
and will remain free. Read our promise
Wow, I'm sold.
mohaba wrote 1 day ago:
What is?
asystole wrote 1 day ago:
capacities.io
skoskie wrote 1 day ago:
This product looks awesome and the mobile app looks
exceptional. But if itâs not self-hosted and in some kind of
standard format,youâre SOL when the company shuts down. Even
though you can export your data, where are you supposed import
it to?
Here are some possible alternatives:
URI [1]: https://selfh.st/alternatives/notion/
asystole wrote 1 day ago:
Trust me, I do understand all that. My personal set of
trade-offs is such that I really can't be bothered with
self-hosting.
Capacities has one-click export of all of your objects
(notes/pages) with a sensible folder structure that produces
markdown with frontmatter and includes all media attachments.
That's good enough for me.
kossTKR wrote 1 day ago:
Exactly. Intricate systems are pure noise for me, a simple MD file
opened in a texteditor like Sublime is enough, or as you say just a
simple taggable system or really just a bunch of files in folder - as
long as you have great search you'll find stuff in no time and forget
most as you should.
I personnaly just have a huge file with various notes, text, todos or
whatever for each year divided into days, then i can just scroll up
through days, or search to find out what i did and what day - some
days have nothing, some have lots. Some topics / projects get their
own file.
doomnuts wrote 1 day ago:
Preach brother
niteshpant wrote 1 day ago:
> As an ADHD person, I've found the best way for me is not put effort
in organizing at all
Agreed - I looked at the website for a hot second, got overwhelmed
and immediately closed it
Consistency is key for a good organization system. Unfortunately,
consistency in such manners of life isnt our forte
pendingU wrote 1 day ago:
I'm always impressed by systems like this, but I've personally never
understood the point.
I'd be curious to learn from others what the benefits of this kind of
archiving are for them? And if the time cost is worth it.
For me, I feel like I treat most of my documents as very temporal
things. I need them for a certain period of time, but then after that,
they can be list to the ether. I have never really had a need to
reference old content, plans, documents, etc.
The only old things I ever need to reference are old code projects and
writings. But even that I can usually manage with just a single folder
for the project.
Everytime I get a new computer, I just start fresh. Keeping only a very
small amount of files backed up in cloud services. Which as I mentioned
are just a very small collection of code projects and writings. Am I
crazy? Haha.
Al-Khwarizmi wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
I have a cloud folder where I store pretty much all data I care
about, both for work and personal life (with exceptions like photos
and videos, for space reasons). It used to be a huge mess and I often
had a hard time finding a specific thing. I switched to J.D a few
years ago - or rather to a modification of it, it's not strict: I do
have a few "out of category" folders that were difficult to neatly
categorize, for example - but the principles are there. And now I
find it much easier to locate stuff.
In my case, though, looking for specific documents from several years
ago is very common. Maybe if you don't have that need and can find
things just fine with your current setup, J.D would do nothing for
you.
42lux wrote 1 day ago:
You will understand when you get into your 50-60s.
esafak wrote 1 day ago:
My parents are way older than that and never worried about such
things.
ocharles wrote 1 day ago:
Because of the volume of documents, or because of some cognitive
change at that age?
42lux wrote 1 day ago:
Volume is a factor but itâs more about melancholia and being
able to recall the years of your life.
raintrees wrote 1 day ago:
Both, for me. Memory not as sharp as it used to be, and more to
be organized.
emacsen wrote 1 day ago:
I originally started with Johnny.Decimal for my life and after giving
it a big try, switched to PARA.
J.D is fine (maybe even great) if your categories are relatively
static, such as a small business, but as an individual, I found it very
restrictive and challenging to remember. Moreover, while the decimals
are cool, I found them somewhat irrelevant if I was the only one
referencing them.
J.D is optimized for retrieval, where what I needed was optimized
storage, and then occasional retrial.
To each their own of course, and using any system is better than none.
awestley wrote 1 day ago:
I see this pop up every few years. I wish I had the follow though to do
this.
RationPhantoms wrote 1 day ago:
Can I ask what benefit it provides? I'm genuinely curious what it
could potentially provide.
zerkten wrote 1 day ago:
It's therapy for a lot of people. The act of organizing helps them
deal with information. That act of organizing and storing can help
with recall for me but not as much as writing something down on
paper does. The number of times people pull info out of these
systems is questionable.
An argument people use is that these systems help you later in
life. I find these systems really hard to adopt and also find it
difficult to work with people who expose these systems outwardly.
ashu1461 wrote 1 day ago:
I think it is for power users who document a lot, just think of it
as a better way to organise your documentation. I think the secret
behind good documentation is the effort which will go daily to
maintain it vs following a specific system.
If you are putting in daily effort you will automatically find a
system which suits your needs.
vander_elst wrote 1 day ago:
Previous discussions:
* [1] * [2] *
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36308366
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37506640
URI [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398027
oneeyedpigeon wrote 1 day ago:
I think having a system is more important than which system it is. I
don't see much benefit to limiting your hierarchy to 3 levels. Putting
metadata like creation time in filenames is probably the wrong thing to
do, since it's redundant, although it's mighty tempting-and I do it all
the time.
egypturnash wrote 1 day ago:
I have found that after multiple migrations from one computer to
another, some of my file creation dates are incorrect. I don't use JD
but I do have a lot of stuff in yearly folders and some of it's
clearly wrong. Like I know that I started one of my graphic novels in
2012 but some of the first few pages have dates in 2014 and 2019. Did
a computer migration change the dates? Did some edit I did later on
save it as a new file? I don't know. I just know the date's way off.
I agree that the choice to have any system is important.
MetaWhirledPeas wrote 1 day ago:
Totally agree. Consider the simple act of copying a file. Will it
retain the original date or start fresh? There is a correct answer,
but maybe it depends on the operating system, or the program you're
using to do the copy. But I don't care. "Ain't nobody got time for
that." When I want to know the creation date or if I just want a
unique name I add a the date as a suffix; 022125. It also helps
that it's much easier to see at a glance.
zerkten wrote 1 day ago:
Agree. The benefit of posts like these is that someone has documented
their system and iterated on it. You can then steal ideas that work
for you.
As a not very organized person, and having struggled with getting
personal systems running, guides like this help quite a bit. I've
only improved by taking bits that stick for me ( [1] ). Anytime I
tried a whole system, it failed to get going at all causing me more
stress.
URI [1]: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/one-email-rule-have-a-separat...
cloudfudge wrote 1 day ago:
Allowing the filesystem to track creation time means you have to
worry about how you move the data around and whether the tools you're
using preserve it properly. A folder named 20250221-nyc-trip is a
coarse but very durable way to store that.
ghostly_s wrote 1 day ago:
20250221-nyc-trip is not a creation time, it's an identifier of the
subject. they're both dates but they're different things.
tsumnia wrote 1 day ago:
I will say that I have a few hierarchies I use regularly that go
beyond 3 levels, and they are annoying to work with. There are times
where I will copy the entire sub-directory to my desktop just to
reduced how many levels I'm working from. Then once I'm done, I'll
copy the files back into their little "box" and delete the desktop
version.
WillAdams wrote 1 day ago:
That sort of thing really makes me miss the Miller Column
Filebrowser on my NeXT Cube (and wish that Apple's implementation
were more like to it --- it just doesn't "feel" right to me when I
use it on my MacBook).
hcarvalhoalves wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification
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