Oh, I didn’t expect a reply right away; I just thought this thread was a place for people to post their issues with academic organization for whenever you have a chance to get to that problem.
Just curious, have you used a tagging system for anything else? And did it work well for you? I tried tagging in Zotero for references, and I found that it took so much time to tag everything I added that I started to not tag everything, and then I didn’t trust all of my tags to find what I wanted, and then the whole system failed. Folders can also fail, but it’s easier to maintain (for me).
I’ve never been very rigorous about tagging. Part of the issue is the longevity of tags when porting to new software.
Hello @johnnydecimal and everyone!
I’m so glad to find the Johnny.Decimal system. I’ve taught music for over 15 years in a small school and my lesson plans, sheet music, syllabi, etc. are super disorganized and scattered everywhere.
I teach kindergarten through 8th grade, so 9 different grades, plus I am in charge of the programs (Thanksgiving, Christmas, end of year). I start back to teacher in-service in two days, so I have a little bit of time to get things organized before the joyful chaos begins again. 
I’m pretty sure that my lesson plans will need to be organized similarly to “the creative pattern” since I have a document for each song that I teach and sometimes other files–Powerpoint, pdf, etc. They also need to be organized by grade level.
Previously, I saved everything by academic year as the highest level of organization and made a new folder every year. (This is what the school asked us to do.) But what this has done is cause me to remake so many lesson plans because I can’t find what I’m looking for!
Question for the group: In thinking through how to set my JD, I’ve already seen the need to separate my “curriculum” from my “songs for teaching by grade” (Kindergarten is 0, 1st grade is 1, etc.), but what about all the “resources” that I’ve collected? (clip art, pictures, coloring pages, visuals for activities that don’t have a specific song, etc) I don’t want to have a resources dumping ground anymore. It’s not helpful to me. Any ideas?
Thanks, everyone!
Mary
Hi Mary and welcome!
I guess ‘curriculum’ is the lesson plans, learning goals, etc, per grade, tied to ordered sequence of lessons over a term or year? So something which repeats yearly, and might be tweaked, but is tied to the school calendar? It sounds like each of those are pretty clearly identified. As are the songs for teaching by grade.
The ‘resources’ seem to be more nebulous, in that it doesn’t have an inherent ordering dictated by external factors in the way your songs and curriculum do. I’m reminded of the example in the Workbook which is used for the classification step: a bunch of random emoji. Which, in the example, end up sorted by colour as the top level, then lower down by type, like animals, people, things. I found that a rather surprising way of classifying, but it does make things very findable, since the decision at each step of the search is very straightforward.
My point is, what about spreading it all out and seeing what natural sorting order emerges, which might have nothing to do with your core subjects (teaching and music) but which might make it very easy to find any given thing? And think about: do you usually look for things knowing exactly what you’re looking for, but not knowing where it is, or are you browsing for something to go with a lesson, not knowing exactly what yet? Or both?
1 Like
@cobblepot my system is very similar to yours. I have one ID for every module that I teach. Within that I create different folders as necessary. For example, 31.02 is Module 2. I have 31.02.T101 as the first lecture in that module. 31.02.T201 is the first assessment.
My notes, ideas are contained in a single PKM ID. Within the PKM folder I don’t have any subfolders. It’s all flat files I rely on backlinks for that.
Could this be solved like this?
| Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Files |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-19 Education | |||
| 10 FIRST YEAR | |||
| 10.00 BUS 100 | |||
| 10.01 BUS 101 | |||
| 11 SECOND YEAR | |||
| 11.00 BUS 102 |
I’m reading this whole thread in detail now and consolidating in a mind map. Will go for a long walk later.
There’s some gold in here!
Working mind map here for the morbidly curious.
3 Likes
Hi all, new JD user here. Currently a professor, recently a grad student.
I thought a lot about this and my main point of concern was trying to decide if I wanted to organize on the level of Academic year/semester > course or Course > Academic year/semester.
The courses I teach are internally numbered by semester (i.e. Course A I, II, III, and IV = 709, 710, 759, 760) so I wouldn’t even necessarily need to break it up into semester. In addition, the sessions are internally labeled by week and instance (e.g. FW 01.02 for second session of the course within fall week 1).
After downloading the quick start life admin pack (and changing some of the category names), I decided (so far) on the following setup:
00 System Meta
//10–19 Home
10 Home Meta
11 Personal
12 Living
13 Finances
14 Digital
15 Fun
//20–59 [Institution]
20 [Institution] Meta
21 [Institution] Admin
22 [Institution] Service
23 [Institution] Research
24 [Institution] Academic Year 2024
24.709 Course A
01.01 [Topic Name] //Session 1, in Week 1
01.02 [Topic Name]
//No classes in week 2
03.01 [Topic Name]
...
24.713 Course B
25 [Institution] Academic Year 2025
24.709 Course A //Repeat of course, but new instance so new ID within new category
26 [Institution] Academic Year 2026
...
This basically uses AC to double as a year marker. I am reserving out until 2059 with my AC.XX, and still have 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, and 90-99 available if necessary.
I’m not sure if I should be labeling my session folders as 24.709.01.01 or just omitting the AC.ID as I have.
It’s my current iteration and a work in progress but I figured I’d contribute!
2 Likes
I get that less often than you might expect.
To @hans point, I have been playing around with my “decimalkasten” system and it seems to be working (so far, knock on wood). I have yet to organize my life in the JD way, but I don’t see the issue with having a JD Obsidian vault inside of a higher order JD system which includes the rest of my life.
The nice thing about Obsidian is that searching within the application only occurs within the vault and isn’t too slow. The wild thing is that the vault itself is technically a higher order JD system because I keep a copy of the workbook PDF there too 
This does mean two indexes, though I can use a different ID (typically YYYYMMDDHHMM), tags, and links to keep the individual notes organized. The higher order JD system would need a canonical index for my water bills but not my research into fluid dynamics.
What I have right now is messy, but once it’s presentable I’ll follow up here. It’s also late. I may take a look at this tomorrow and wonder where Mr. Hyde went.
Thanks for your posts!
EDIT:
This is what I have in my Obsidian vault so far. Plenty of room to expand!
00.99 homepage.md has all sorts of stats that I can use, like which tasks need to be completed, average grades, etc. It’s mostly just tracking homework and Obsidian tasks, but I’ll expand upon it as time goes on.
Obsidian Vault
├── 00-09 admin
│ ├── 00 useful documents
│ │ ├── 00.00 jd_index.md
│ │ ├── 00.01 johnny_dot_decimal.pdf
│ │ ├── 00.02 ams_style_guide.pdf
│ │ ├── 00.03 latex_symbols.pdf
│ │ ├── 00.04 sagemath_lectures.pdf
│ │ ├── 00.05 tasks_plugin_status_review.md
│ │ └── 00.99 homepage.md
│ ├── 01 financial aid
│ ├── 02 veterans readiness and employment
│ ├── 03 student groups
│ ├── 04 people
│ │ ├── 04.00 mentors
│ │ ├── 04.01 professors
│ │ ├── 04.02 research
│ │ └── 04.03 networking
│ ├── 05 textbooks
│ │ ├── 05.00 proof writing
│ │ │ ├── a_transition_to_adv_math_smith_eggen_andre.pdf
│ │ │ └── student_solutions_manual_gallian.pdf
│ │ ├── 05.01 abstract algebra
│ │ │ ├── abstract_algebra_thy&app_Judson.pdf
│ │ │ └── contemporary_abstract_algebra_gallian.pdf
│ │ ├── 05.02 real analysis
│ │ │ ├── advanced_calculus_fitzpatrick.pdf
│ │ │ ├── intro_to_real_analysis_bartle.pdf
│ │ │ └── real_analysis_and_applications_morgan.pdf
│ │ ├── 05.03 linear algebra
│ │ │ └── linear_insel_lawrence_spence_e5_-15.pdf
│ │ ├── 05.04 combinatorics
│ │ │ └── applied_combinatorics_w_graph_theory_mitina.pdf
│ │ ├── 05.05 number theory
│ │ └── 05.99 miscellaneous
│ │ └── the_zen_interpretation.pdf
│ ├── 06-08 reserved
│ └── 09 obsidian
│ ├── 09.00 scripts
│ │ └── newNote.md
│ ├── 09.01 subjects
│ │ ├── abstract algebra.md
│ │ ├── linear algebra.md
│ │ ├── number theory.md
│ │ └── real analysis.md
│ ├── 09.02 templates
│ │ └── assignment.md
│ └── 09.03 css snippets
├── 10-19 courses
│ ├── 10 pre-2023
│ │ ├── 10.00 truman
│ │ └── 10.01 uic
│ ├── 11 2023-2024
│ │ ├── 11.00 neiu 322 number theory wrinkle
│ │ │ └── 322 info.md
│ │ ├── 11.01 neiu abstract bird
│ │ ├── 11.02 neiu combinatorics mitina
│ │ └── 11.03 neiu linear programming mitina
│ ├── 12 2024-2025
│ │ ├── 12.00 ua 513 linear algebra hu
│ │ │ ├── 513.hw1.completed.pdf
│ │ │ └── 513 info.md
│ │ ├── 12.01 ua 515a abstract algebra haessig
│ │ │ ├── 515a.hw1.assigned.pdf
│ │ │ ├── 515a.hw1.completed.pdf
│ │ │ ├── 515a.hw2.assigned.pdf
│ │ │ ├── 515a.hw2.completed.pdf
│ │ │ ├── 515a.hw3.assigned.pdf
│ │ │ ├── 515a info.md
│ │ │ └── 515a syllabus.pdf
│ │ └── 12.02 ua 525a real analysis sanchezvizuet
│ │ ├── 525a.hw1.assigned.pdf
│ │ ├── 525a.hw1.completed.pdf
│ │ ├── 525a.hw1.graded.pdf
│ │ ├── 525a.hw2.assigned.pdf
│ │ ├── 525a info.md
│ │ └── 525a syllabus.pdf
│ ├── 13-19 reserved
│ └── todo.md
└── 20-29 zettelkasten
├── 20 atomica
├── 21 canvases
├── 22 decks
└── 23-29 reserved
I’ve got two ideas to add to the pile:
1
Would it make more sense to group things across classes/years rather than isolate classes? Example:
10-19 Classes
11 Class meta/syllabi
11.01 Class 1 Syllabus
11.02 Class 2 Syllabus
12 Class notes
12.01 Class 1 notes
12.02 Class 2 notes
13 Big projects
13.01 Class 1 Project 1
13.02 Class 1 Project 2
13.03 Class 2 Project 1
This would also reduce the overhead of tracking individual class numbers, and make it so that all your recent projects are right there in front of you. I could see this being a limit if you have more than 100 big projects, but if that happens you could create another category or keep going at AC.100. I’ve never needed more than 7 IDs in a class, and most of those are the syllabus and notes. Considering only the big projects, I could easily fit them into 20-30 IDs across the 2 years I’ve had.
2
Since IDs can and should be big (22.00.0069: What is an ID?), if it’s possible to fit a class into 10 IDs, what about:
AS.CI:
Area
Semester
Class
ID
ex.
12.11 == Area 10 (classes), Semester 2, Class 1, ID 1
Keeps things vanilla-like and compact while still containing the same information as SX.C.ID, and can fit 9 classes a semester and 9 semesters (leaving 0 for meta) into a single area.