Could I use this system for tutoring?

Hello everyone, I knew about JohnnyDecimal from the Obsidian forum and I was quite mesmerized by it.

Currently, I am trying to implement this system into my tutoring business (most of the folders and documents are on Google Drive) and here is what I have come up with.

One of the problems that I have found with the way I am organizing things is that

  1. What if I tutor 100 people, am I going to run out of numbers to use?
  2. Should I stop using the numbers after reaching a certain folder level?

I guess that’s pretty much it. What are your thoughts on this?

Hey there! Sorry, I just saw this one. I’ll get back to you in a day or so, and how was point 3. supposed to end, the suspense is killing me! :wink:

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LOL. You could say that the electricity cut off right when I was writing point 3. However, it is just a typo, let me just remove the entire point 3.

Edit 1: It seems the site won’t let me edit the blog post again.

Ha, no problem. I deleted it for you.

So this is one of those interesting edge cases where I recommend using the system part of the way but then deviating at the end.

The thing you’re trying to manage, that you might one day have 100+ of, is one of the few exceptions where I think it makes sense to stick with the alphabet.

I’ve struggled with this myself in my People & Organisations category. That’s where I might put bills, or documentation related to friends, or whatever.

It felt a bit weird to put numbers in front of something that my brain told me was best left as the alphabet. So now what I do is this:

12 People & Orgs
   Bristol Real Estate [12.05]
   Chambers, Susan [12.01]
   Jones, Bob [12.04]
   Moon Industries Ltd [12.02]
   Xylophones Pty [12.03] 

– I stick with the alphabet, but I also give each thing a number in case I need to reference it from elsewhere. Each thing still gets the next available number depending on when it was created.

Now, this doesn’t actually answer your question of ‘what if I go over 100’! I’d say in this case it probably doesn’t matter. But for your list of students, I’d list them in the folder as Smith, Jane and potentially not even worry about numbers for now.

Remember: you’re a hundred times more organised than you were before. The system is here to help you find things. As long as you can do that, you’ve won.

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Cool. I am going to try to apply your method here. I’m also thinking about dividing the students according to class, semester or year quarter if it ever reaches 100.

Ah yep, good idea too.

if you run out of the numbers, then you can use XX.XXX triple digits for ID, or even more…why should you be limiting yourself?

Generally I agree, the system should work for you not the other way round.

I am developing software for this thing (s … l … o … w … l … y) and it will (initially*) enforce the AC.ID system where ID >=0 && ID <=99. So that’s one little consideration, or maybe if you’re making your own scripts/software with an assumption that this will be the case.

(*Perhaps I can add a ‘not strict mode’ toggle at some point.)

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