So we are embarking on a JD setup for our business and still have a ways to go.
However, does anyone have a good setup that has worked for general life, the universe, and everything NOT business related? Our family has files in three or four places and organized like spaghetti tossed at a wall. Finances, education, health, etc.
Thoughts appreciated!
There are some high-level categorisations that have really worked as areas for me. For example:
Where I would change things if I did it again, is I would put insurance in financial instead of its own area. Same with Instructions and Warranties - they would probably get grouped with other home stuff. Maybe a mega “Household” area is what I needed there. Same with Memberships and Subscriptions. That could have been a category in household.
I’d also not have created the Government area which was broken down into “Federal”, the states I’ve lived in, local, etc. Everything in this area could fit somewhere else.
For example Government → South Australia → Registration and Licensing could just have gone into the Automotive category that I already have. Same for government things that are health related (Centrelink) and financial related (Australian Tax Office).
So yeah. Keep those top level areas broad and few. If I was doing it again I’d go…
00-09 Meta and Management
10-19 Financial
20-29 Health
30-39 Education
40-49 Household
That’s about it. 40-49 is pretty much a catch-all for everything that’s not Financial, Health or Education.
Alex
My PARA-Setup
10-19 Projects*
11 Private
11.2301 [1st Project in 2023, 6 digit ID]
20-29 Areas of Responsibility
21 Personal
21.01 Documents
21.02 Health
21.03 Diplomas
21.04 Development
21.05 Keepass [Passwordsafe]
21.06 Memberships
22 Relationships
22.01 Spouse
22.02 Child 1
22.03 Child 2
22.04 Friend A
23 Work
23.01 Applications
23.02 References
23.03 Contract A
24 Administration
24.01 General Correspondence
24.02 Bills
24.03 Taxes
24.04 Insurances
24.05 Bank Account 1
24.06 Bank Account 2
24.07 Credit Card
25 Infrastructure
25.01 Apartment
25.02 Household
25.03 Electronic Equipment
25.04 Communication
25.05 Car
30-39 Resources
31 Library [in alphabetical order]
A Author [31.02]
B Topic [31.03]
C Theme [31.01]
32 Templates
32.01 Microsoft Office
32.02 Checklists
33 Media Center
33.01 Photos
33.02 Videos
34 [Hobby]
35 [Large Topic A]
40-49 Archive
41 41 Projects*
41.01 Private
11.2214 Project X [additional Folder-Layer]
42 Areas of Responsibility
42.01 Personal [with additional Folder-Layer]
42.02 Relationships [with additional Folder-Layer]
42.03 Work [with additional Folder-Layer]
42.04 Administration [with additional Folder-Layer]
42.05 Infrastructure [with additional Folder-Layer]
*Not in JD-sense. A project is an actionable item with an outcome and deadline.
Interesting examples and a huge difference between how Alex has approached it… and Roman. I perhaps have gone even deeper than Roman (and currently regret it) with over 40 Meta areas (needless to say, each Meta area has several categories below it.)
I am struggling to consolidate several into few. Not as few as Alex perhaps but certainly fewer than I currently have… as shown below.
I am anxious to see other folks examples.
00.XX Need to be sorted files
00.01 General Meta
00.01 ToDo Lists Meta
00.02 Business Cards Meta
10.01 Finances Meta
11.01 Banking Meta
12.01 Credit Cards Meta
13.01 Investments Meta
14.01 IBM Meta
15.01 Taxes Meta
16.01 Social Security Meta
17.01 Receipts Meta
18.01 Purchases Meta
19.01 Quicken Meta
20.01 Documents Meta
21.01 Home Meta
22.01 Insurance Meta
23.01 Photos Meta
24.01 Medical Meta
25.01 Vehicle Meta
26.01 Travel Meta
27.01 Loyalty Meta
28.01 Misc. Computer Docs Meta
29.01 Misc. Docs Meta
30.01 OPEN Meta
40.01 OPEN Meta
50.01 OPEN Meta
60.01 OPEN Meta
70.01 OPEN Meta
80.01 OPEN Meta
90.01 Projects Meta
91.01 PBG Project Meta
92.01 Juno Project Meta
93.01 Just Project Meta
94.01 Misc Project Meta
95.01 NASCPC Project Meta
96.01 Championship Project Meta
97.01 Irish Project Meta
98.01 PGA Project Meta
99.01 BizPacific Project Meta
As a retired person, it’s all personal. Here is a highlight of my categories.
NOTES:
I’m in a similar boat and I’m trying to incorporate by work/business and make portions shareable with the rest of the family. My philosophy of use for organizing is data is less taxonomy (I guess this is why I’ve gravitated to jd), I’d rather have everything in one pile but be confident it’s somewhere in there than have to trust/remember the category the data would be in. Ex. I put all medical records in one 2nd level folder and then use a good naming convention for files, than promote medical to 1st level and have 2nd level categories that have to make sense not just to me but the rest of the family and not just today but into the future.
This is very much a work in progress. One of the goals is to be able to share it with the family in a compartmentalized way without much effort. Will only need to share 2 folders, 20-29 family and 30-39 household.
00-09 admin
10-19 self - Will most likely fold 15 into 11 as technical info is just a sub category for second brain
20-29 family - largely a collection of PDFs right now as I’m upgrading from my current folders based record keeping.
30-39 household - pretty self-explanatory
40-49 business, 41 Client WIKI is the only place so far I’ve deviated from the strict jd system, I use 41.ABC 3 letter code to represent the client
+---00-09 admin
¦ +---00 Meta
¦ ¦ +---00.00 Index
¦ ¦ +---00.01 Inbox
¦ +---01 Assets
¦ +---01.01 Attachments
¦ +---01.02 Templates
+---10-19 self
¦ +---11 Second Brain
¦ ¦ +---11.01 Journal
¦ ¦ +---11.02 Books
¦ +---13 Woodworking
¦ +---14 3D Printing
¦ +---15 Technical
¦ ¦ +---15.01 Homelab
¦ ¦ +---15.02 Obsidian
+---20-29 family
¦ +---21 {me}
¦ ¦ +---21.01 Official Records
¦ ¦ +---21.02 Medical
¦ ¦ +---21.03 Work
¦ +---22 {wife}
¦ ¦ +---22.01 Official Records
¦ ¦ +---22.02 Medical
¦ ¦ +---23.03 Work
¦ +---23 {child1}
¦ ¦ +---23.01 Official Records
¦ ¦ +---23.02 Medical
¦ ¦ +---23.03 School
¦ ¦ +---23.04 Work
¦ +---24 {child2}
¦ +---24.01 Official Records
¦ +---24.02 Medical
¦ +---24.03 School
¦ +---24.04 Work
+---30-39 household
¦ +---51 Finances
¦ +---52 Property
¦ +---53 Appliance
¦ +---54 Projects
¦ +---55 Utilities and Services
¦ +---56 Trips
+---40-49 business
¦ +---40 Meta
¦ +---41 Client WIKI
¦ +---42 Bookkeeping
¦ +---43 Projects
¦ +---44 Resources
Care to elaborate on that structure? I would be very interested.
Interesting to see that it is mostly sorted by record and the photos are in a different folder. Mine is currently sorted by primary person or family group (1 marriage) the record is about.
Thank you for sharing!
Photos need further organizing. I need one group for photos to go in my Genealogy software (just 1-3 each, no more) and the rest will basically exist outside my software, probably just online where I share more narrative people-based stories.
I am trying to document eight different surname lines (4 each for me/wife) and I feel like organizing by person runs into a big problem when you have documents that mention multiple people. So you would need two copies of the marriage certificate, for example. Or the birth certificate, does it go in the parent’s family group folder or the individual child’s folder, or both?
The challenge with my system is naming individual files properly and clearing out duplicates. Eventually I would like most of the media files to be online and then simply link to them from whatever my genealogy software spits out.
I constantly feel like my genealogy work is unorganized…
I am still working on my own structure. The basics now stand, but 50-59 FamilyHistory will need another deep dive to work.
This exactly. A couple photo’s need to go in the software (I use GRAMPS), but not all of it. I played with the thought of using a meta-data manager like digiKam or something like Tropy. But I want to think it all out before implementing something halfway.
For now my photo’s are inside the person folders, but maybe splitting is the best way.
Same and I will come back to this topic.
