I’ve recently purchased the JD Life Admin package and workbook. I don’t want to overthink getting my numbering system up and running. My goal in buying this system was to get a premade numbering package that could be adapted to my personal lifestyle.
However, I’ve noticed that some people are obsessed with creating the perfect number system. This is not my goal.
I assumed that using and expanding my system to track my home business and writing life would be intuitive. That now seems like it was an incorrect assumption.
I don’t want this to become my life’s work. That’s Johnny’s job. But, I don’t want to give up too quickly because I can see potential in this system.
Hey Bill,
I get your feeling that some people are obsessed (maybe myself included sometimes). But I do not think it has to be this way.
If you have some general areas and categories of interest, your ID’s will create themself overtime. So don’t overthink and just start with a (tiny) structure that suits you! And don’t create ID’s you don’t need
Hey Bill. For what it’s worth, after designing Life Admin, I use it exclusively to manage my own personal life. 100% of my stuff is in there. No new IDs. No extra areas. No more thought.
If you want to expand it – maybe you have a hobby that takes up a large part of your life – then, over time, do that. But if your goal is just to have a neater (digital) house, stick with LA for now.
I said this the other day and I think I’ll adopt it as one of my little sayings: Johnny.Decimal is not art, it’s a tool. Use it to get the job done in the most minimal way that works for you.
Of course, some of us find this sort of thing fascinating in and of itself. For us it becomes art. But if that’s not you, that’s more than fine.
I’m an unorganized perfectionist and it drives me crazy. Then, I came across Johnny.Decimal in NotePlan, I gave it a lot of thought. I watched his YouTube videos and his system seemed like the way to go.
But as I began to layout my home based business and writing in MindNode, lots of questions began to surface. So, I studied how the Life Plan system was built and began looking for answers here in the forum.
Instead of finding answers, I found confusion among my JD mates.
So, I think I’ll take your advice and just do as much planning as I can in MindNode and then jump in. I definitely can’t afford the Business System unless we stop making our house payment or forget about eating.
The Life Admin tool looks like it will be a great fit for my personal life. And I’ve already began implementing it for my digital file storage on iCloud and Google Drive.
But I spend most of my day working on my on-line business and writing. So, obviously they are still in a state of disarray. I’ve been dumping everything into a “Bill.Decimal” folder intending to move them to their proper home once I figure out where they should live.
At the same time, I’m learning how to use Bear. I’ve been a subscriber for over a decade but only used it for capturing notes for my writing. I’ve never taken advantage of its full capabilities and am a beginning markdown user.
I’m 72 years old and retired. But my life feels busier than it did when I owned my business. Too many balls in the air and I’m ready to drop them all. So, I take things one task at a time and prioritize my days. Johnny.Decimal is one of those priorities and I know that I’ll see amazing results if I don’t give up.
There are definitely some organisation geeks hanging out here, me being one of the main culprits. But I do think Johnny Decimal is worth the time and effort just as-is. I had designed my Life Admin system before the pre-designed system came out, and find mine still fits my situation better, but the Small Business system is a huge time-saver for me.
Remember, the Life Admin system came out quite recently, and a lot of the forum talk is from before that when it was all DIY based on the Website, Workbook, and Workshop. In that era it obviously attracted a certain type of people. I except we’ll see a shift in content as more users come in who just want to use the existing system and have questions about where to put things in it.
I thought at first that my notekeeping-for-writing could fit inside my Johnny Decimal system, but I’ve discovered – and I think the consensus seems to be – that this isn’t really what JD is meant for. Well, maybe the principles and the general mindful approach to organising stuff, but not the rigid structure. This should probably be one or several IDs in your JD system, but the content organised more organically. Maybe concrete writing projects get IDs, like if notes and ideas start coalescing into a clearly defined article or book project. But I definitely don’t try to coerce the firehose notes and references into the JD system, they all live in one big directory sorted by date created, with good, semi-structured filenames so I can find things again. I suspect that’s where Bear would be of help in its own right with tags and hyperlinks.
Much of the frustrations among fellow decimalists makes sense now. It’s the same overwhelm I felt when designing my business and writing areas.
Now that I have the Business JD system, things are much clearer.
As far as organizing my writing, it does seem like a hybrid system could be the best approach. I do my actual writing and research using Scrivener. It’s a complete solution for me.
But I’ve been using Bear for ‘Fleeting Notes’ while on my walks. Using tags and the date numbering system will better organize these notes.
Here’s the thing…
Organizing should be a means to an end. A system that gives you the ability to easily find your stuff.
There are two extremes. An intuitive system that is painstakingly built with weeks or months of thinking and implementation. It’s unlikely to be perfect.
The other extreme is no system at all. Like my messy garage, finding things is time consuming and frustrating.
By the time I implement Johnny’s method, I want to be closer to the first option. That’s my goal.
great way of putting it – both extremes not being ideal, but being somewhere closer to the organised end is probably what we want.
as a bit of an aside, there are some situations, I think, where being closer to the unorganised end actually works better – ‘just enough’ organisation. The Noguchi Filing System embodies that. But with Johnny Decimal, ‘not too much’ organisation is indeed where we’re aming for I think …
The way that worked for me, was to use Trello to create a skeleton of my areas and categories. That way, I can move the cards around and easily add new cards and visualise the whole thing, kind of like a wall of paper post-its:
The second thing I did, was go for quick wins. I knew my gmail inbox was messy with thousands of unread emails. I used my new J.D. system to delete lots of old filters and create new ones, and create some proper structure to the labels. Now I mostly have inbox zero, just need to clean it once a month. Once I did my inbox, it gave me more ideas of what was unnecessary areas that I just copied from other users, and what actually worked for me.
Next I did my file system, now I’m doing photos. Next is migrating from Onenote to Heptabase.
(maybe myself included sometimes). But I do not think it has to be this way.