# Start from my structure? **URL:** \ **Category:** Workbook/Workshop\ **Created:** [January 12, 2025, 3:45am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037 "2025-01-12T03:45:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 3:45am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/1 "2025-01-12T03:45:02Z")
Hi ! I am reading the book Johnny Decimal Workbook, I have read a third of it. It is recommended to carefully note “from scratch” each thing that will enter the system (on a mindmap, because as a writer I hate working with paper and pen). However, I have been classifying my documents for years in a system that I have improved over the years, through reflection and practice. Why would I start from scratch when I already have a rather solid structure that has been refined over the years? I would rather start from my structure, to improve it even more thanks to your system, it makes sense, doesn’t it? So I am a little lost, I don’t know how to do it, “where to get on the train”! A priori, my highest folders would be “Administration”, “Resources & Documentation”, “Writings”, “Freelancer stuff”, “Training courses” (+ maybe “Projects” or “side projects”?). Does this make sense? Also, I don’t understand at all the boxes called “worksheet action / action ID”… I looked at the Quick Start Life Admin example. There are a lot of folders, and a lot of them don’t concern me. Its structure doesn’t really speak to me, as a lot of things are too scattered and detailed for my taste. In short, I don’t know at all what to do with all this information, and where to start! (I should point out that for the moment I haven’t tried to understand the implementation of numbers (I’m not a numbers person at all, they’ve always confused me!). I’m trying to think about the structuring of my elements). Thank you in advance for any advice! ---
**Author:** ![johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/johnnydecimal/32/1759_2.png) [@johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/johnnydecimal)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 6:33am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/2 "2025-01-12T06:33:10Z")
> [@gabriel](#): > > Why would I start from scratch when I already have a rather solid structure that has been refined over the years? > [@gabriel](#): > > I’m not a numbers person at all, they’ve always confused me! Please take this the right way: I’m not trying to be cheeky. But… …I’m not really sure what problem you’re trying to solve that you thought Johnny.Decimal would be a good fit for? 🤷‍♂️ [PARA](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/) might be more your cup of tea? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyChuck](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/f14d63/32.png) [@PhillyChuck](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/PhillyChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 2:25pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/3 "2025-01-12T14:25:46Z")
I will say that I had a solid structure as well, but the effort at re-cataloging into JD (which probably took a good six months off and on) was very productive in clarifying the organization, also re-finding a number of files that I had forgotten about, and being able to winnow down chaff that was no longer needed. So think of JD as not only the destination but the voyage. ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 4:35pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/4 "2025-01-12T16:35:13Z")
> [@johnnydecimal](#): > > …I’m not really sure what problem you’re trying to solve that you thought Johnny.Decimal would be a good fit for? 🤷‍♂️ I would like to solidify my system, quite simply! That it is as efficient and solid as possible. I thought that was JD’s goal. > [@johnnydecimal](#): > > [PARA](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/) might be more your cup of tea? I tried PARA and it doesn’t fit me at all. I can’t separate AREAS and PROJECTS! ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 4:40pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/5 "2025-01-12T16:40:37Z")
Thank you for your perspective. I’ll think about it, but starting from scratch to get as a starting point what I’ve already thought about and obtained over the years through practice seems to me a bit counterproductive for the moment! It seems to me that we should be able to jump on the bandwagon from the moment we already have a somewhat effective base. Especially since learning the workbook is quite difficult (English is not my mother tongue!). Understanding the process is not easy. ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 4:49pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/6 "2025-01-12T16:49:13Z")
I would really like to see a less detailed example of a structure than in Quick Start Life Admin; to understand “from above” the whole of a somewhat standard or canonical structure (although of course each system must be different). Can I find some of these somewhere? I thought I saw a thread here that mentioned examples, but I couldn’t find it anymore! ---
**Author:** ![johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/johnnydecimal/32/1759_2.png) [@johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/johnnydecimal)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 10:31pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/7 "2025-01-12T22:31:06Z")
It might help to look at life admin but _only_ at the ‘headers’, i.e. those things with a ■ symbol. And I’ve removed the ‘system management’ stuff. Here they are: ```plaintext 11 🙋 Me & other living things 11.10 ■ Personal records 🗂️ 11.20 ■ Physical health & wellbeing 🫀 11.30 ■ Mental health & wellbeing 🧠 11.40 ■ Family 💑 11.50 ■ Friends, clubs, & organisations 🏑 11.60 ■ Pets & other animals 🐓 11.70 ■ My brilliant career 🧑‍🍳 11.80 ■ Personal development & who I am 📚 12 🏡 Where I live & how I get around 12.10 ■ Home records 📄 12.20 ■ Home services & health 🛠️ 12.30 ■ Getting around 🚲 12.40 ■ My kitchen & garden 🪴 12.50 ■ Housemates, neighbours, & the neighbourhood ☕️ 13 💰 Money earned, saved, owed, & spent 13.10 ■ Earned 🤑 13.20 ■ Saved 📈 13.30 ■ Owed 💸 13.40 ■ Spent & sent 🛍️ 13.50 ■ Financial administration 📔 14 💻 My online life 14.10 ■ Computers & other devices 🖥️ 14.20 ■ Software & accounts 🔑 14.30 ■ My online presence 🌏 15 ✈️ Travel, events, & entertainment 15.10 ■ Inspiration & history 💭 15.20 ■ Administration & checklists ✅ 15.30 ■ Events 🍿 15.40 ■ Short or routine trips 🚉 15.50 ■ Longer trips 🛫 ``` And don’t forget, life admin is only designed to hold the stuff that we all have in common. So your hobbies aren’t included here. Just the boring day-to-day stuff. ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2025, 2:16am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/8 "2025-01-13T02:16:17Z")
Thank you very much. I will see what is missing from my organization and could be useful to me in this structure. In the few examples that I have (for now) been able to find in the forum, I have the impression that not everyone follows this organization. In any case, I will take the time to think about all my categories, inputs, etc. and continue to read the workbook. ---
**Author:** ![johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/johnnydecimal/32/1759_2.png) [@johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/johnnydecimal)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2025, 2:43am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/9 "2025-01-13T02:43:54Z")
> [@gabriel](#): > > I have the impression that not everyone follows this organization. For sure! Even some people like @_FJ who got the pack, they don’t actually use it as we published it. I’d say take from it examples and inspiration. See the sorts of patterns we designed – if you find yourself designing some wildly different pattern either a) it’s brilliant, and please tell us about it (really!) or b) maybe ask yourself if you’ve gone off the path. ---
**Author:** ![\_FJ](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/_fj/32/420_2.png) [@\_FJ](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/_FJ)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2025, 7:39am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/10 "2025-01-13T07:39:49Z")
Thanks but I would not call myself either brilliant or off the path 😉 But I have removed some things and tweaked (10-19) to my own liking indeed. ---
**Author:** ![julian](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/julian/32/1036_2.png) [@julian](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/julian)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2025, 9:11am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/11 "2025-01-13T09:11:43Z")
Hi @gabriel, i think you could maybe try taking your actual _legacy_ structure and try to adapt it to -more or less- follow the #10-19-concepts instead of redoing years of work to fix a template (in this case life admin), that maybe is not optimized for your particular workflow. As an example there is a screenshot of an JD structure i started 2/3 years ago on my former job, specifically purposed for technical documentation. At the time, the core JD concepts were a little bit different, and there was not a life admin template, so i started “numerating” my existing folder structure, and moving things from one area/category to another _on the fly_ finding what at the time **made sense to me**. ![immagine](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/uploads/default/original/2X/1/17b70300b4c0b81948dd57141f2827d0ba2461b0.jpeg) If you like more info you could see my original post from a couple months ago (from where i took the screenshot): > [@Joplin (notes app) for JDex+ filesystem](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/joplin-notes-app-for-jdex-filesystem/1800): > > Hi! I’m sorry if this post is grammatically incorrect. English is not my first language and I only use it on the internet globe_with_meridians. I refuse to use translate tools (or GPT) to do the writing. I’d rather sound unnatural than “artificial” (so i can even throw around some bad puns) Why? Joplin changed my life, before that i have a zillion of tabs on notepad++, and some folders here and there, very chaotic. Today i have all files and docs in one place (Joplin), and is all organiz… * * * ## Remember, the imporant thing here is to be organized, find stuff fast, and not have a zillion subfolders. > **[11.04 Philosophy](https://jdcm.al/10-19-concepts/11-core/11.04-philosophy/)** > > The philosophy behind Johnny.Decimal is simple. To help you find things, quickly, with more confidence, and less stress. ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2025, 7:18pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/12 "2025-01-13T19:18:30Z")
Lots of value in these resources. Thanks to you @johnnydecimal @_FJ and @julian ! I am reading and taking in all of this, posts, images, suggestions. It’s exciting, I love organizing things. 😉 I will indeed take some time to assimilate this and think about my own structure to implement JD (and how to do it!). I need to assimilate more! ---
**Author:** ![Phoebe](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/phoebe/32/495_2.png) [@Phoebe](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/Phoebe)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2025, 5:16pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/13 "2025-01-20T17:16:25Z")
@gabriel if you’re French, feel free to reach out to me : I can help you out dealing with the workbook. If not, well, I guess my radar is off 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 2:09pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/14 "2025-01-22T14:09:43Z")
Bonjour Phoebe, bien deviné 😉 Merci, j’aurai sûrement des questions, oui! Il faut que je prenne mon temps de lire le workbook… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Zan](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/zan/32/1097_2.png) [@Zan](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/Zan)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2025, 4:04pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/15 "2025-02-06T16:04:27Z")
Hi Gabriel, I am a beginner in this system as well. I will write a proper post one day about how I went about everything. One concept that worked for me, was to layout all the categories and area in Trello boards. No one else does it this way, I just used a free tool I had on hand. I have a 00-19, 20-29 and 30-39 boards (because of how trello is vertical). Then I decide what headers fit where, one header per card. Then I can move the cards around. I ended up moving a whole bunch of stuff from 14 My Online Life to 20-29 where my media is stored, which I reclassified Software and Games as Media. Then the first thing I did, was take my messiest stuff and started organising that first. That was my inbox, I destroyed all my old Gmail filters and labels and rules, and recreated them with the J.D. system. Targeting emails first was smart for me, because if you spend time creating the proper filters, then once you archive an email and remove it from the inbox, it is automatically going to go into the right label. I got to inbox zero (!) and next focus was my tasks, which were very disorganised, across Google Tasks, old Trello boards, in my calendar as appointments… I destroyed all that and created a new system in TickTick app. I’m now setting up a NAS unit and only now sorting the actual file system, especially media. After that, I need to re-organise my Bookmarks in [raindrop.io](http://raindrop.io) (just started this huge process) then go through 15 years of Microsoft Onenote Notebooks and organise what I want to keep, according my numbering system. As I use it more, I learn more about which folders are really important, and which I don’t use at all (because I copied from other users)… so I will keep pruning and tweaking - just get started somewhere and eventually it will make more and more sense. ![image](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/uploads/default/original/2X/5/590be5e4f54644f4fdfabab25212d97f95de0903.jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![\_FJ](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/_fj/32/420_2.png) [@\_FJ](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/_FJ)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2025, 4:21pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/16 "2025-02-06T16:21:10Z")
Dang, that screenshot is awesome. (@johnnydecimal). ---
**Author:** ![johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/johnnydecimal/32/1759_2.png) [@johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/johnnydecimal)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 5:31am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/17 "2025-02-07T05:31:16Z")
Trello! What a superb idea, and a great use of the tool. 💯 ---
**Author:** ![gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/gabriel/32/1218_2.png) [@gabriel](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/gabriel)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 11:07am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/18 "2025-02-07T11:07:33Z")
This is Amazing! Thank you for this example. You have got a lot of items! I’m making progress, but my main problem comes from these elements that could be found in two different places (when you look for them, especially!) Example: should an invoice for an online German course be stored in an “invoices” folder, or in (a subfolder in?) a “German Training” folder. That kind of case! In any case, over the years I have reduced the tools I use, and like you I have to group together information that has accumulated in different places (not finished but I have made good progress!). I now use Obsidian for almost everything (after Evernote, DayOne, and others…), Airtable still for some databases, and Apple Reminders (after Omnifocus and Things…), and Apple Notes for quick and ephemeral notes (to be filed in Obsidian or thrown away later). The idea is to trash as many services and apps as possible that have too proprietary formats. I had used Raindrop too, but I transmitted all my bookmarks to Airtable. Maybe they will also end up in Obsidian. Centralization! ---
**Author:** ![Zan](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/zan/32/1097_2.png) [@Zan](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/Zan)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/start-from-my-structure/2037/19 "2025-02-07T18:19:59Z")
> [@gabriel](#): > > my main problem comes from these elements that could be found in two different places (when you look for them, especially!) Example: should an invoice for an online German course be stored in an “invoices” folder, or in (a subfolder in?) a “German Training” folder. I liked [Profile - QuantumGardener - Johnny.Decimal forum](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/QuantumGardener) approach: ![image](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/uploads/default/original/2X/c/c8cea9def29aa6be812ab58f497d400b5a0d07c7.png) However, I keep all my invoices in a single folder and use various filename or text search tools that I need to play around with - Flow Launcher and Listary for windows, as well as Ultrasearch and “Everything” but Gmail search is usually all I need. No point created a sub-folder for a single file. If the file is renamed correctly it can live in invoices. But the idea that some things are “metadata” even though on first glance that should be the folder they are stored in, is a real breakthrough idea I want to adopt. It’s even harder for me to work things out because I’m stuck with Onenote (love/hate relationship) and it doesn’t do things nearly as well as Obsidian.