Thoughts on using JD with software that automatically makes folders?

[spoon]

Hey all, very new to this community and system; it seems like a really good way to keep my stuff organized, and it feels like just the thing I’ve been looking for (I’ve been on a bit of an organizational kick the last few months). I’m in the process of moving over my filesystem (which contain personal, professional art, and professional non-art things) over.

My question for y’all is pretty much spelled out in the topic.

For context, I’m a musician and artist, so I use lots of different software applications for different things. At first, I thought of having a “Music” area, but realized that between all the software programs I use, sheet music I collect, and music literature I consume, I might want to split that up (I have about 7 Categories for software alone…).

At this point, though, I realized that the programs themselves have certain filing systems that they depend on. As an example, a program I use called Splice is a hub for samples that are neatly organized in a tree of folders. I’ve attached a photo for reference:

The program needs to find things in a particular way, so simply disregarding things seems unwise. But then again, the “two layers of depth” philosophy really appeals to me so I’d rather not just chuck the whole thing in there by default (but it seems like that might be the way to go).

As far as my goals go, I’d like to have a central place where I can find all of the scattered things across my digital life, so I’d like to find a way to encompass my entire filesystem under one organizational scheme (I’d been thinking of using 3 digit codes as seen other places to help with this but we’ll see if that’s necessary; anyhow it doesn’t solve this “depth” problem).

Thanks for reading! Any thoughts on how to navigate this particular complication?

[johnnydecimal]

Hi! Yeah I have this similar problem with computer code. Typical and ‘conventional’ structures will often go 2+ layers deep and definitely won’t have numbers at the front. For example:

my-app/
├─ public/
│  ├─ images/
│  │  ├─ hero.jpg
├─ src/
│  ├─ assets/
│  │  ├─ style/
│  │  │  ├─ index.css
│  │  │  ├─ index.js

In these situations, I do not try to JD these structures. Similarly my photo library is just managed by Photos.app, my music by Music.app, and so on.

It’s about context. When I’m in the mental context of writing my app, do I then also need to concern yourself with numbers and areas/categories? I suggest that the answer is often ‘no’. These systems already have well accepted ways of arranging and finding things and trying to inject JD doesn’t feel helpful.

The question is probably, what is the highest level of abstraction that you should look for? At what point do you need to stop caring about what comes below, because an application is doing that for you? Manage to that level would be my suggestion.