I’m Dan, a nursing student and organisational freak (v proud).
I stumbled across J.D via Reddit and have of course seen that using sub-folders is not ideal, although sometimes a necessary evil?
Here’s an example of what I’m trying to solve:
00-09 System
10-19 Life Admin
20-29 Education
21 Bachelor of Nursing
21.01 [SUBJECT NAME]
As you see, I have 21.01 for my course name but have no way of neatly organising my seminars, simulations, assessments, outlines etc. inside it… Perhaps I’m just not thinking outside the box but I am really trying to keep this as minimal as possible.
I think you have two choices here. It depends on how many courses your degree will involve to some extent. If the number is only 4, then each would be substantially sized and it would make sense to have each course as a Category with separate IDs used for lectures, notes, project work etc.
Alternatively, if a new course came along every week or two, I would lean towards having each course contained within one ID with one layer of subfolders to organise. It would be neat to have the same subfolder structure in all of your course IDs for clarity.
An intermediate approach would be to use different Categories for different types of courses - for example, laboratory work, lectures, group work, placement etc - then having each course as an ID in its appropriate category.
See the adjacent thread for good discussion on this topic. Follow that one as I’ll post there when I set up a Zoom session to work this issue out. We just need to focus on producing the Workshop for a while, sorry…
Until then — don’t be afraid of subfolders. Be more afraid of being disorganised! Which is worse?
For years ‘no subfolders’ was the rule. And it’s still a loose goal: if you can manage with a very shallow structure, do so. But this is one of those cases where you really can’t.
I like to think of it like sitting down to work at a big old desk. You’d get your folder out and spread out your papers. That’s about as much as you can hold in your active mind: what you can see spread out in front of you.
So that’s about what you should have in a JD ID. Not much more than that.
But if it helps to put your papers in neat piles: seminars, simulations, assessments, etc., then you should do that. The trick, as I’m sure you know, is to make each of these collections of subfolders identical. Design a template and apply it everywhere. Because now it’s familiar, now you won’t go crazy creating dozens of other folders.
It’s more about what you’re preventing. Just prevent yourself going back to ‘the old way’ and you’ll be alright.
As I have 24 subjects, I think I need each course contained within one ID + subfolders. I’ll keep it neat and concise and will try avoid doing unnecessary subfolders.
I’m also a university student, and I created a separate system within my system. I found I naturally organized classes based on semester and where they were in my schedule, so I came up with this:
SX.C.ID
ex S5.4.07 is ID 7 of class #4 of semester 5.
The S separates it from the main structure I have to keep track of records, media, and the like. As a result I only have 3 areas, but it’s enough for what I need.
If you’re going for minimalism, maybe drop the first dot? I experimented with C21.07 - ID 7 of class 21 (or even semester 2 class 1), but personally found the visual separation between semester and class helpful.