I am currently setting up my JD system, moving notes and files around and I like what I’m seeing so far.
I understand that in JD there is no distinction between active items, that require action, and attention and inactive items, that are either completed or reference (you can see where I’m coming from). The system includes active and inactive and reference items all mixed up together. Now I’ve had time to process this, I’m rather fine with it. I have a few questions though.
where should I draw the line looking backwards? I have many years of archives, that in theory I could organize as items inside my JD system. But it’s not clear to me if doing so has any practical value. Are there guidelines that could help me decide what to organize, and what not to? Moreover, what do I do with the items I do not think are worth organizing? Where/how should there be classified? Or should they be kept outside the system?
is there really no distinction between active and inactive items? Are there maybe ways to track “hot” items that require particular attention? Currently I’ve made my 00.01 note a list of active items, but maybe there are other approaches?
Are there people who made the switch from PARA or GTD to JD and who could point out things one needs to be careful for when the active/inactive distinction goes away?
I took PARA from Tiago and combined it with the three filing levels and numbering logic from Johnny. PARA is therefore the first structuring level for me.
You probably shouldn’t bring everything over – or, at least, you shouldn’t worry about every thing you bring over being perfectly neatly organised in the new place. It usually isn’t worth the effort.
We’re just chatting about the ’standard zeros’ in another thread. A recent development.
One of them is AC.09 Archive. So for every category, assign ID .09 to be archive.
Now you’ve got this nice middle ground: your stuff isn’t just lost, outside your system. Nor do you have to worry about exactly where it goes inside your system. Just find the closest category and dump it in the .09 folder.
This .09 folder’s contents will, therefore, be a mess. That’s okay. Ideally you’ll never need this stuff again; it’s there just in case.
About bringing old stuff over, I do this when doing genealogy:
Correct it when you touch it. If you are looking for something old and you need it, that is the moment to correct it.
Yeah, that’s a good point – integrate things in the system the first time you look for them. If you never look for them, there was no need to integrate them in the system anyway
If we’re in a thing for a long time, say we’re recording a workshop, we’ll drag that folder over to the sidebar as a shortcut so it’s easily accessible. You don’t want to be click > click > clicking your way through your hierarchy every time.
