@LucyDecimal insightful answer!
@leemajors nice progress on the system. Looking good. If you have more clients, you could consider going into the 90000.
The lastone is the only screenshot where I have one point. Is there some way you could not go that folder deeper to 01, 02, 03. Is there a way you could make those IDs. You have 99 of them 
Thanks, @LucyDecimal for such a great and helpful response!
You’re right, of course - it wasn’t working.
In the end, I rolled up 30-39 into a category - 18 Interests and moved it into the personal projects ares, renamed to 10-19 Personal which gives me much more freedom to have many more interests!
I’m 48 
I could absolutely forsee getting new ones, but perhaps at most one or two, but not really more than that; I’m far more likely to go back to doing more work for the same agencies, or working for individual companies.
I watched that video too, I think, so where I started was using something like:
_template folders [A00]
Airline [A01]
Agency1 [P01]
P01.01 TransportCo
P01.02 EduCo
In this brave new world of bringing the clients of those agencies out into the top level it might look like:
_template folders [A00]
Airline [A01]
Agency1 [A02]
TransportCo [T01]
ZBank [Z01]
Z01.01 Payments page
Z01.02 Transactions page
This would leave me with individual projects page looking like:
ZBank [Z01]
Z01.01 Payments page
Z01.01.01 Client Input
Z01.01.02 Docs
Z01.01.03 Assets
Z01.01.04 Working files
Z01.01.04 Development
Z01.01.05 Presentations
Z01.01.06 Exports
Which, you know, actually is starting to look quite appealing again
I guess the only thing is knowing that the fully resolved “url” of the “exports” folder for that Payments page project I did for Agency1’s client ZBank is
96 Clients > Z01.01.06 Exports
or
96.Z01.01.06 Exports
Which is pretty crazy.
Kind of feels like I’m going round in circles a bit!
I’ll chip in as I was with Lucy when she was writing her post yesterday.
From what she told me, this issue of the full, canonical number for a thing being a bit absurd — 96.Z01.01.06 — really just isn’t an issue.
Because you’ll never actually use that number for anything. It exists, in theory, but in practice? It doesn’t matter. In practice you’re down there in client folder land and that’s where you’re doing your work, and when you’re there, nothing much else matters.
48! Good age. I think I turn 48 this year? I honestly just asked Siri how old I am but it didn’t know.
I’m just not sure how I would do that - those folders will be the same for every project. In that last example, they would be in the Payments project I did for Agency 9100’s client 9102 Zbank. the Transactions project would have those exact same folders (or a reduced version of them if they weren’t all needed. If I was going to bring them up as IDs, I’d need the projects to be categories…
ps. I forgot to mention that when Johnny saw my work template draft, he asked “So how will this work with search in your index”?
Me: [crickets chirping]
He had some ideas that we’ll work on. But I’d totally forgotten about the index since I’ve only had mine a few weeks … 
I’ll be practising searches to double check I can zoom in on stuff before committing to anything.
I’m inclined to agree; probably more likely that i’ll see a thing with “Z01” in it and know exactly what it is.
So - that sort of, well, leaves me way back at my first post with respect to how clients and projects are organised:
With the other contender being all the clients being rolled in to the Area folder, Separated by starting at 9000, and agencies at multiples of 100:
What neither of these options do is give me that history of what clients were done for which agency. I think I’d always remember, but would everyone?
I can’t say enough how awesome it is that there are people willing to have this discussion with me - I’m so thankful.
The exact question I asked Lucy! She said you just tend to remember. But I do think this needs to integrate with your index so that if you do forget, you can look it up.
Index entries can probably stop at this client/project level, you don’t need to create index entries for all of those standard sub-folders at the very end of the tree.
Hey @leemajors I might rename this thread if that’s okay with you? Given how useful it’s turning out to be, I might title it ‘A discussion about the freelancer/agency problem’ or similar to make it more obvious in the future.
please do!
Actually - I just realised the second of the two options I posted does give that history, as each agency begins with the multiple of 100: 9100 Generic Digital Agency and each client under them is an extra digit: 9101 ZBank.
It’s just a big more restrictive with respect to the max numbers of clients and agencies etc.
This is a very interesting thread!
Being very new to J.D, it’s obvious I have a lot to learn so will need to complete the course and workbook, and dive back into the next iteration of the workshop (when is that happening?) before even thinking of offering anything tangible to this conversation…
But…
I’m beginning to see how defining scope at the very beginning of the process is so important — getting it right (or nearly right) is essential to successfully building our own J.D system to meet our own needs.
One thing that confuses me is how in this case the whole ACID trip seems to have grown into a 5 deep structure, with 01 being used in the deepest level again. Would this not affect searches? Does going 5 deep into the 9000’s not work against the thought of having everything as visible as possible at the higher levels?
I’ve started using Bear (love it, and thanks for the recommend @johnnydecimal) and can’t wait to see your mini-course on J.D/Bear — but don’t want to get too far into Bear before developing my J.D system itself.
I’m wondering if this current structure of using 9000’s isn’t complicating something by adding extra levels to our system, as it seems the data/ID’s would be better served within a database with reference and links within J.D to the DB. I switched from Airtable to AITable a short while ago and am trying to learn how to incorporate J.D, Bear, and AITable together.
Again, just a J.D newb.
