Diving back in...let's start with "People"

J.D Concepts 11 Core concepts
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In an effort to wrangle the mess I’ve made over the past few years, I’m back in J.D. Or at least that’s the intention.

I’m trying not to overthink it, but I’m overthinking it. There’s a constant undercurrent of, “but what if I end up with more than NN [THING]?!” Also, there’s a lot of “Is this [THING] this kind of thing or that other kind of thing?” I’m already exhausted and I’ve barely started :slight_smile:

I’ve moved everything I want in my “project” (the project is basically “My Life Stuff” and is not work-related) into a big temporary folder and am working on categorization.

I swore I wouldn’t come here to ask these kinds of questions, but it seems I’ll end up catatonic with decision fatigue before too long otherwise, so here goes:

Let’s start with People.

This time around, so far I’ve got a “20-29 Personal” area in the following burgeoning hierarchy:

.
├── 00-09 System
├── 10-19 Logs
├── 20-29 Personal
│   ├── 21 Self Improvement
│   ├── 22 Health
│   ├── 23 Career
│   ├── 24 Family
│   ├── 25 Pets
├── 30-39 Home and Auto
│   ├── 31 Household Projects
│   └── 32 Longwood Ct
├── 40-49 Writing and Creative Work
│   └── 41 Blogs
├── 50-59 Financial
├── 70-79 Media and Library
...

This paints each person into an ID-level corner (e.g. 24.02 Jessica) with a “24 Family” category. I’ve got tons of documents and history for her, so I’ve (gasp!) created subfolders in her folder. Others may only have one or two documents, but they’re still family.

How do others handle people, especially friends and/or family? Is it an area like “60-69 Family” or “60-69 People” then “61 Jessica”? Like I said, it feels like I’m overthinking it, but would still like to know how others handle this.

I’m trying to remember that once I get into a category, it’s organized enough and I’ll find what I need, regardless what happens “below” that. Still, I want to be loose, but careful not to become too sloppy. Hope that makes sense.

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If Jessica has so many documents that you need to create subfolders, I’d either say:

  1. Just do that. My stance on this is softening slightly, which I’ll document. But briefly: I’d say no more than half a dozen, each with a few items. So this probably isn’t what you want here.
  2. It feels like she needs to be promoted up to a category? or an area? Or here’s a thought: why doesn’t she have her own project?

Because when we think about what you’re doing here, you’re managing Jessica’s life. Why would that fit in to an ID?

Your life needs its own project. Doesn’t hers?

FWIW in my 12 People category I only have a handful and they’re all friends. I use it to track when one of them loans me something, or if I store some piece of information for them. There’s not much in there so I get away with them just being an ID.

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Thanks for the thoughts. J.D is so simple yet can feel quite daunting once I’m down in the weeds :).

At first I thought I would just create a few subfolders in Jessica’s ID folder. It’s not that many. I don’t mind cheating when the situation benefits from it. But on second thought I think I will create a new area for “Family” or maybe “Friends and Family” and change the current “People” category to “Contacts” for everyone else.

Making Jess her own Project is an interesting idea. However, that slope looks a bit slippery and I’m already struggling with what areas might be better implemented as separate projects. I’d really like to minimize the number of projects.

I really appreciate your input here. I know we keep asking the same types of questions, but it’s hard to resist asking about my specific issue anyway :slight_smile:

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That just means that I haven’t explained it well enough. Or that I haven’t thought through the answer. Either way, it’s helpful to me so, no worries.

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Another idea is that if Jessica is part of the family, you keep all her stuff with your stuff, but just make sure everyone’s name is is the file name.

So you keep her training certificates with yours just with your names in the filename, such as “82.63 First Aid Certificate - Jess - 2023-09-14.pdf”

Would that work for you?

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Not a bad idea. My hesitation is that now I need to “enforce” a sort of naming convention for every file. I already do that for some things so perhaps it wouldn’t be too much of a burden. Food for thought, thanks!

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I’ve had a similar dilemma, so chipping in my two cents. I have a 12 People Category to hold information about other people. There won’t be many people I hold data on, a couple of dozen at most, and the only people for whom I will store a significant amount of information will be my wife & 2 children.

So one option I’ve considered is to have an ID for each person (e.g. 12.02 Daughter 1) with some subfolders (Health, School etc) as suggested above in this thread. This feels unbalanced as I’ll have 3 IDs with lots of subfolders while leaving many IDs unused.

My alternative idea would be to have a structure as in the attached photo. For each of my main “people” I reserve for them 10 IDs, for example 12.11-12.20 for Daughter 1. This allows an intermediate amount of space for what is, for me, an amount of information between a single ID and a whole category. There’s also room for expansion as new stuff comes along (e.g. 12.15 Daughter 2 University) For other people, I’ll just use a single ID as I won’t have much information to store.

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