My foray into the JD system is going well. It’s been quite easy to reorganise information that was already pretty organised in the first place. Good news is there is more “rightness” about it now.
(5 minutes of thinking and I’m still not sure what question I’m asking for help with!)
I have a well established digital garden in Obsidian, which bleeds into my website. There is a mix of source material (articles, books etc), plus my written comments on those. I’ve organised the website around 4-5 major landscape areas (fits the digital garden theme).
They are:
- Expand My Way of Being — My Way of Being is more than the behaviour I show. It’s the total sum of how I engage with the world, make meaning from my environment and take action. Expanding my Way of Being by being a learner in the world creates new possibilities for me to move forward in life.
- Hobby Together — Here’s where I share my progress on whatever project currently takes my fancy, plus any relevant discussion on supporting technologies.
- Productive Laziness — There is art in doing as much as possible, as easily as possible and that’s what I call being productive lazy. It’s the term I use to describe my approach of doing as much as possible with as little effort as possible and applies particularly to repetitive tasks where I want them done quickly and without having to think too much. There is too much going on in my world to allow thinking where I don’t need to.
- The Garden Shed — Every garden needs a good shed, full of the right tools to make it flourish.
- Quantum OS — my operating system which in no way suggests I am a computer. Rather, it is a set of notes that describe the rules and standards I have determined are best to manage my digital information as I see fit.
While they are suitable for organising a website, they don’t fit as well into a JD system because this is only what I’m chosing to publish. The background articles, literature notes etc aren’t covered.
Somewhere in my garden I have this library structure:
Section | Description |
---|---|
000 | Knowledge Management |
100 | Personal Management |
150 | Hobbies and Pastimes |
200 | Philosophy & Psychology; Spirituality & Religion |
300 | Social Sciences |
400 | Communications & Rhetoric; Language & Linguistics |
500 | Natural Sciences |
600 | Applied Sciences |
700 | Art & Recreation |
800 | Literature |
900 | History & Biography & Geography |
Too many Areas there as I will chew a couple up for personal use and I don’t want to have multiple project-equivalent systems.
(yes, still not sure of the question - thinking out loud)
Obsidian, my website and Zotero all let me tag and item multiple ways so I do have some flexibility. Tagging is metadata, not what something is about.
I have to get this organisation right before I start. I know from experience it’s too costly to change.
The level 3/4 items are what I’m concerned about. Does going broad at the top level constrain me later on. Does going specific at the top level mean I exceed the (nominal) bounds of the system?
In the end, it may be a question of finding the right taxonomy. What do you think?
Thanks, David