Setting up my kids for success. Planning my system with future generations in mind

10-19 Concepts 14 Build your system
1

When Johnny said that we weren’t trained for this, it really resonated with me.

My first thought was that I wished I had started with this system in the 90’s when I was a teenager and learning how to use computers. My second thought was that this is a great opportunity to set my kids up for success. Ideally by giving them a framework to move into as they grow into computing age but more importantly as philosophical guidance while they start to develop some organizational autonomy.

At 7 & 9 years old, they are already accumulating a collection of data and records to keep track of. Some of which are useful now such as school notices and applications for camps/schools/extra-curricular activities/etc. Other things will be nice for them to have as a reference or an archive of their childhood.

As it stands, I’ve come up with a framework that I’m not satisfied with. It has stretched my personal JD system to a place that seems a bit messy. I’d love some input as to how to adjust things for simplicity, clarity, & longevity. Specifically:

  • How should I develop different areas for each family member without having redundancy or putting things that relate to multiple people in one person’s area?

  • How can I keep from creating a hierarchy of users? In other words, how to keep my area becomes the default for things that relate to me and my spouse.

  • Can I design a structure that can easily be split as a kid becomes autonomous, or in the (fortunately in my case) very unlikely split between spouses?

Below is my basic structure. Please note that this was developed before the workshop & life admin starter, and I haven’t restructured since then, but I intend to after I get a handle on this.

General Areas:

00-09 Index-System-Notes & Strategy
10-19 Finance
20-29 Compliance-HR-Legal
30-39 Physical Assets & Pets
40-49 Media
50-54 Travel

Family Area:

55-59 Family Info
-> 55 Family General
-> 56 Children General
-> 57 Parents General

Family Member Category Template:

The “#” represents each family member’s area number.

#0-#9 Family Member Info
-> #0 Personal Identification & Certificates
   #0.00 Social Security Card
   #0.01 Birth Certificate
   #0.02 Drivers License
   #0.03 Passport
-> #1 Health & Wellness
   #1.00 Immunization Records
   #1.01 Medical Forms (outgoing)
   #1.02 Medical Records & Notes
   #1.03 Dental Records & Notes
   #1.04 Vision Records & Notes
   #1.05 Mental Health Records & Notes
   #1.06 Insurance & Medical ID Cards (ambiguity with x0 category)
-> #2 Personal History
   #2.00 Old Contacts
   #2.01 Old Calendars
   #2.02 Life Notes
   #2.03 Financial Notes
   #2.04 Residence Notes
-> #3 Education
   #3.00 Pre-K & Kindergarten
   #3.01 1st Grade
   #3.02 2nd Grade
   #3.03 3rd Grade
   #3.04 4th Grade
   #3.05 5th Grade
   #3.06 6th Grade
   #3.07 7th Grade
   #3.08 8th Grade
   #3.09 9th Grade
   #3.10 10th Grade
   #3.11 11th Grade
   #3.12 12th Grade
   #3.13 Undergraduate College
   #3.14-49 Additional Traditional Eductaion
   #3.50-99 Other Educational Endeavours
-> #4 Hobbies & Projects
   #4.000-999 Projects recorded incrementally
-> #5 Employment
   #5.00-10 Resumes, CV's, Applicaitons
   #5.11-99 Job Name
-> #6 Digital Estate
   #6.01 Data Recovery Plan
   #6.02 Email Accounts
   #6.03 Social Media Accounts
   #6.04 Backups
   #6.05 Bookmarks
-> #7 Extended Family & Friends
   #7.Lastname.Firstname [#7.##](unique IDs that increment)
-> #8 blank
-> #9 blank

I would love some feedback on avoiding ambiguity between family members for things that apply to more than one of us.

Some of the things that come to mind are:

  • #0: Personal Identification:

    • Marriage Certificate

  • #1 Health & Wellness:

    • Family insurance plans / claims / receipts
    • Will/Life Insurance

  • #2 Personal History

    • How to differentiate between our shared histories as they converge and diverge.

  • #3 Education (no overlap here)

  • #4 Hobbies & Projects

    • This seems easy to keep discreet; however, a lifetime of small projects and hobbies fills up pretty quickly. I’m currently up to 74.255 in my area, but that seems like an issue for a different topic.

  • #5 Employment (no overlap here)

  • #6 Digital Estate (I can only think of odd edge cases here.)

  • #7 Extended Family & Friends

    • Where do In-Laws go?
    • Who gets to claim a mutual friend in their area?

I also see media storage becoming an issue. For now, “media” consists of the following:

  • Books
  • Collected Documents & Articles
  • Music
  • Family Photos, Video, & Audio
  • Software
  • Collected Video & Film

I think the family area (55-59) introduces some serious ambiguity and should be distributed into each family member’s template, but there are some things that are more general than one person, such as:

  • Family Memberships (Amusement parks, museums, gym, etc.)
  • School Calendars (Both kids are in the same school. )
  • Chore Charts
  • Toy / Game instructions or notes.
  • General education literature.

The examples of issues above, are not what I’m looking for help with. I’m most interested in identifying a methodology or philosophy that leaves a place for these kinds of things.

p.s. if this needs to be in a different category or would be better on the discord, please let me know.

1 Like
2

Hey, its really good to think about setting our children up for success, like you say, we were never taught this and what I would have done for a system like this through out senior education to my masters!!! I’ve been using JD since April, and I am using the life admin pack which can easily add children in. I have learnt to let this slip for the time being as I gather their data, my main focus is getting my system up together, solid and consistent, then I will work on my children’s. This looks like a great start

3

Thanks @Jayde20, I think that working with the system for a year is the best way to really start understanding where your needs are.

4

This question – of ‘how do I share [the standard life admin | any other system] with my family’ – has popped up a bunch of times.

It feels like it needs some proper thinkin’ and an approved solution documented. I’ll add that to the list; we need to get the business pack done first.

2 Likes
5

Sounds good.

7

Hello @Jeff-LovettSundries ,

your two initial observations also resonate with me: I wish someone had taught me this in high school, and I hope to help my daughter have a strong basis in this regard as she grows.

The following observation may just reflect how I think … I definitely agree with @Jayde20 that resisting the urge for premature optimisation is best. I have great trouble with it myself. But the following helps me: the whole point of Johnny Decimal is that you can find things easily later. So when the time comes that our dependants want to leave the nest, and we need to export their data, it should be less than an afternoon’s work to retrieve all the files related to them, and export just those files.

Think how many afternoons you’ll save in the meantime, of trying to find the perfect folder hierarchy that fulfills what are actually mutually contradictory requirements.

In fact, I’d bet that export will only take a few minutes, because by then the Johnny Decimal App will have this feature built in (Export selected files only, maintaining tree hierarchy..., wink wink nod nod @johnnydecimal). But even if it took a whole Saturday, I think personally I’d still have saved weeks of distraction and fiddling in the coming ten years. (My daughter is six now, and I suspect she’ll need ownership of her data at … fifteen or sixteen at the earliest?? and legally only at eighteen).

Just put lots of good information in filenames, and good notes-to-self in the index (e.g “all gov’t-issued personal identity docs are in this directory with the person’s name in the filename. Proofs of membership of a paid service are in the directory for the related service”), and I bet it will be easy to do that gathering and export.

Until then, we are responsible for all their paperwork, so the system should be efficient for us to use. I personally think that means not creating a sub-hierarchy for each person, but just one ID for each type of document (e.g. personal identification or medical records) with the relevant person’s name in the filename. People with a lot of paperwork (e.g. complicated healthcare trajectories) may have other needs, but I suspect even then it would be enough to expand the system only for that particular topic.

8

Thanks for the response. The amount of time needed to sort this out is not an issue as evidenced by the large amounts of time I’ve already spent working on my 3 separate systems. :upside_down_face:

I’m thinking a lot about the training part of this. Maybe, for now, all of the “important” documents are sorted in my main system and the kids can have areas that are sandbox-ish to start getting used to the idea that their lives are fundamentally digitally entangled.

It’s a bigger topic, but I’m very interested to know your thoughts on file naming strategies. I’ve been trying to come up with some kind of a standard that will make sense, but it just wanders over time and ends up a big mess.

9

We’ll be coming up with a few of these for the business pack that I’ll share publicly. The main site probably deserves a page dedicated to this.

We’re thinking more naming directories, but the principles are the same. We haven’t done this yet, so just off the top of my head:

  • If it’s at all date-relevant, start it with the date like yyyy-mm-dd.

    • Humans are really good at remembering when a thing happened, and near enough is good enough.
    • Because we remember when a thing happened relative to another thing really well.
    • So if all of, say, the kids’ school drawings are sorted by date, I think this will make them easy to find.

  • Make a decision on your inter-name context-divider, and stick with it.

    • So I often name files like 2024-12-21 Bart’s birthday card - original for print - v1.doc and what I’m talking about here is the space-dash-space part.
    • Obviously then I use space-dash-space. It’s easy to type and visually does what I want it to do.
    • Don’t forget and sometimes miss a space or use two dashes or an en-dash or whatever. Always the same! Because…

  • Be constantly aware of consistency. All the time. Front of mind.

    • I don’t know if there’s any silver bullet here, but just be consistent. For example, the monthly returns that I file with the tax office look like this.
    • They all start with yyyy-mm, then the name of the thing, then space-dash-space, then the company name.
    • This is based on how I download them from Xero. That’s why the company is in SHOUTY CAPS, I don’t care enough to rename it.
    • Because it doesn’t really matter how they’re named as long as they’re all the same.
    • You think this is obvious, but the times at work I’ve seen a folder full of versions of the same document – say, a survey returned by staff – and every file is named differently! Arrrghhhh!

z-CleanShot 2024-12-21 10-20-34@2x
z-CleanShot 2024-12-21 10-20-34@2x936×400 74.3 KB

  • Don’t be afraid of long filenames.

    • Unless you use Windows of course, in which case feel free to skip this section. :wink: No but seriously, Windows needs to fix that absurd total-file-path-limit.
    • For those of us using a sane OS, you can use almost any length filename you want. So type all the words!
    • The past has taught us to try to use short, abbreviated filenames. The past is over.
    • Hence ‘life admin’ has category names like 13 Money earned, saved, owed, & spent 💰 and IDs like 12.31 Motor vehicle purchase, leasing, & rental. Because that’s more descriptive and helps your brain.
    • Your filename should tell a story.

  • Make a decision on spaces vs. no spaces.

    • I say unless you have a specific reason not to use spaces – say, you spend the majority of your time at the CLI – then use spaces.
    • They’re natural, they read well, and it’s 2025. Computers know what spaces are.
    • So we’re talking A file like this.doc vs. A_file_like_this.doc.
    • Nerds will tell you to use underscores because reasons. Ignore them.

That’s a good start I reckon. What did I miss?

10

This is a great start, thanks for taking the time! I think there’s a place in Johnny Decimal for some strict file naming conventions. When it comes time to name a file, I miss the warm blanket of strict instructions that the Decimal System provides for structure.

I’ve recently changed my date format from yyyymmdd to yyyy-mm-dd. At your suggestion and it has certainly improved readability.

As an envious Windows user (my work equipment won’t cooperate with a Mac :man_facepalming:) I have managed to find a slight workaround for the long file names by making a change in the registry. Enable long paths in Windows 10 and later (it’s still stupid that I even have to think about this)

One thing I’ve been doing to try and help myself is to include naming conventions in my index, but I’m still not great at referencing that when it matters.

Here’s a look at my index template:

AC.ID Name

tags (related to):
location:

Description:

  • Includes:

  • Excludes:

  • Other Notes:

    • NAMING:
      • Ls##.## Name
    • SUBFOLDERS:
      • folder name
    • FORMAT:
      • file format type

Upon further reflection, maybe the naming convention should be higher on the template.

11

Great idea. Lovely use of the index.