Two random questions - misc and meta

10-19 Concepts 11 Core Concepts
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  1. Aside from info on the johnny decimal system, what types of categories would go in the 00-09 meta folder? I know there’s a placeholder for an article on this, but I’m trying to imagine what the other 9 categories in the meta area might be.
  2. Any opinion on using a miscellaneous folder, either as an area, as a category folder in every area, or within category folders?
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  1. has been addressed already https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/what-about-00-09/
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I’ll get that post up asap, sorry. Could’ve sworn I’d pasted the draft here somewhere but search gives me nothing. I’m going crazy.

So the 00 categories I see as being potentially useful like this. This is optional, if you want to use these numbers for your own thing please do.

The key is that Management & Meta is stuff about the system/project, or about the area. So:

  • 00-09 M&M is an entire area and its purpose is to store things about the system itself.
  • A0 M&M — e.g. 10 Management & Meta — is where you can keep things about the area 10-19.
  • AC.00 — e.g. 23.00 — is where you can keep things about the category 23.

You can think about it as ‘what’s in my system?’, or ‘about my system’, or as a system map or guide.

What things might you keep? Here are some standards that might be useful.

  • 00 Index
  • 01 Inbox
  • 02 Notes
  • 03 To-dos & checklists
  • 04 Bookmarks
  • 05 Someday
  • 06, 07, 08 - free for use
  • 09 Archive
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Thanks! It would have been easier for me to get your meaning if, rather than saying that 00-09 is about “the system itself” (which I read as being about JD and JD only), you had said that 00-09 is about “organizing your life and projects” or “your organization system” or something more general like that.

What about the misc question? I’m reorganizing my current folders, which include lots of ‘misc’ subfolders, and I can’t decide whether it’s fine because I’m used to using them or whether this type of catch-all category is going on enable me to avoid making decisions about content that will eventually lead to undermining the potential benefits of the JD system.

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Ah yes, sorry. Good question about misc, I’m basically the same. I use it sometimes but it always feels a bit dirty.

I’m toying with the idea of turning ’Management & Meta’ in to ’Management, Meta, Misc’…

Sometimes you really do just have miscellaneous stuff. In an old project I had 19 One-off jobs for those things that just didn’t fit anywhere else. That’s what miscellaneous is, really. Just use with caution.

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just for kicks, I counted. I have 8 folders and 10-15 files with either misc or miscellaneous as part of the title. I have an entire AREA set up for misc (40-49 Miscellaneous). Here are some samples of subfolders inside that Area:
41 Research > 41.01 Comparisons (quick tables to compare feature/price for a potential purchase)

  • another file here is just me saving info about the Nazca Lines, because … reasons?
    42 Career - I have two files here. sigh
    43 Important Documents > titles, deeds, Florida domicile, Mexico residency, voting, Misc, Identification - I used to have a lot of these under “Finance and Legal” but found that too broad
    44 Quotes - quotes as individual text files, sort of a Zettelkasten approach. This could change.
    45 Reference - bookmarks backup, contacts, old files from work (I retired 4 years ago)

Any and all of that could, at any given point, be moved inside some other folder. It’s just a convenient place to stick things while my system gets sorted.

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Can you expand on what you actually use these areas for? I don’t think they are clear and obvious at least for me.

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Not much is the answer. They’re there as a backstop.

02 Notes is a last-resort bucket for a note that doesn’t have a home yet. Perhaps it’s a brand new thing that I haven’t designed a category for yet.

Stuff shouldn’t live in there for long. Move it somewhere proper asap.

03 To-dos & checklists I use more for the checklists: the sort of thing I might copy out elsewhere to execute. But, again, rarely.

These two — everything up in 00-09, really — are there as a last resort. Is it better to have an unlabelled note on your Desktop, or a note somewhere here? Well it’s better to have that note in its proper home, but if all else fails, you’ve got 00-09.