Hi everyone. I was reading about knowledge management last night, (because that’s a perfectly normal way to spend your Friday evening, right?) and someone in a Reddit thread tossed out a reference to “Johnny Decimal”. I was intrigued enough to have a Google, found the website, did some reading, and here I am.
I’ve spent some time this morning writing down my thoughts about how I (fail to) manage information at work (because that’s a perfectly normal way to spend to your Saturday morning, right?). When I’ve hammered those into shape, I may share them here, but the short version is that PARA hasn’t worked for me, and from my initial look at Johnny.Decimal, I think it might do. I work in IT Solution Architecture, I’m neck-deep in an enormous transformation programme, and there’s constant firehose of new information, all the time.
Mindful of the advice in 14.01 I’m not going to rush into this - I’ll do the Discovery exercise throughout next week at work. I can’t stick Post-Its to the wall, but I’ll come up with something.
By the way, the next pre-built system I’d love to create is IT transformation project. That was my life for decades. It’s insane that we all make it up every time.
(The PMO should be helping you with the structure, but if yours is anything like every one I’ve ever seen, well … the less said the better, perhaps.)
Hey, welcome I am one of those who spends my Friday evenings and Saturday mornings thinking about and writing these things too, welcome to the club haha! I look forward to seeing how your journey using JD progresses! We love hearing ideas and helping each other out so do let us know if you have any break throughs or questions.
I’m toying with the idea of documenting my experiences as I go in this thread - as a new, hadn’t-even-heard-of-JD-before-last-weekend user with a real-world problem to solve, I figure it might be interesting to share how I get on, what worked well, what my challenges are etc.
Having read through the whole Workbook to see what I’m in for, I’ve been in the discovery phase this week. Every time I encounter a “thing” I add a virtual sticky note in Apple Freeform (which works excellently for this). Other than keeping them all visible, I’m resisting any temptation to organise them. It’s not the sweet, sweet numbers that are calling to me… it’s the solutioning. I find myself thinking about how I’ll build my JDex, and telling myself that will come. Focus on the discovery…
I’ve always had a problem organising my stuff, going back to childhood. In my current job, I learn new things literally every day. There are constant meetings (several hours per day) often with a barrage of information to capture. I started off using PARA with good intentions, but it went stale as I threw notes in there and they withered on the vine. Eventually, the structure broke down, and… we’re back to chaos.
What I really like about JD is the fact that it recognises in the modern world, stuff isn’t all in one place. I actually don’t store that many files in my filesystem at work, but I make a ton of notes in OneNote. My OneNote notebooks, sections and notes rarely align with related files. I actually experimented with a system built in PowerAutomate that would let me name a project and would create a OneNote section, a filesystem folder and a ToDo list automatically, all with the same name. It was too much overhead to keep up with though, and I gave up. I now recognise that what I was striving for was an index.
Ah, yeah. That’s one of things I was saving for a later post, once I get to the “build your system” step. We’re a big corporate, and quite locked-down in terms of the software we can install on or work laptops. Basically, it’s the Office365 suite. There are literally no Markdown-native tools on the approved list.
Interesting! This might be the first time in the history of corporate computing that anyone has said “I’m looking forward to the next version of Notepad”.
Now all it needs is robust search, and we’re there.
So, by way of an update… I’m three days into discovery. I haven’t counted, but I think I have between 75 and 100 sticky notes, albeit with some duplicates.
There’s plenty more to come - I haven’t delved into the depths of my paper notebook or the darker corners of old OneNote notebooks yet. I’m also planning a trawl through my calendar which will throw up more stuff.
I’m finding Apple Freeform well suited to the task, and I’d recommend it. I definitely prefer it to mind-mapping software for this, because it doesn’t impose any structure at all, and each note is its own thing, disconnected from anything else.
I’ve noticed that as I’ve gone on, the focus has shifted from simple nouns and verbs to expressions of how I’m feeling, and also questions that I’m asking of myself, in some cases quite fundamental and personal. This exercise is forcing me to engage with some quite deep stuff (in a good way).
I think that realistically the “Create your areas and categories“ work will have to be done at home in my own time. I won’t be able to do it this weekend due to fun stuff already planned, so I might as well keep discovering until I get time to start sorting it. I think this exercise is going to have to be arbitrarily declared as done rather than actually completed, because there’ll always be more to write down.
Oh, and one last thought - reading through the workbook, there are a lot of references to involving the team, being the librarian etc. I’m very clear on this - selfish as it may sound, my scope for this is purely my own working life. I’ll be delighted to explain what the numbers mean if people ask, but getting my own house in order is the priority.
recognizable! In my case it was suddenly seeing my (business) goals and dreams together on one wall with all the other things in my life that were stealing time from those. Quite a revelation!
So here I am, a week or so later… I’ve been gathering virtual Post-It notes in FreeForm for the last week and a bit. I ended up with nearly 200, and I feel I could have captured even more, but you have to stop somewhere.
Over the last couple of evenings I’ve started pulling them together into areas and categories. As advised, I’ve done it both ways - area-first and category-first.
I’m surprised at how differently the structure turned out each way. I was half-expecting that I’d end up with the same Area and Category groupings both times, but I didn’t.
I’ve got a bit more refinement to do, and then I’ll look at both outputs and see where I’ve landed.
I have one specific question about the “Building your System” step which I’ll ask in a dedicated thread.
I am one of those who spends my Friday evenings and Saturday mornings thinking about and writing these things too, welcome to the club haha! I look forward to seeing how your journey using JD progresses! We love hearing ideas and helping each other out so do let us know if you have any break throughs or questions.
