We wondered whether she was going to be a CGP Grey-like invisible persona. If she could have got away with it I think she would have liked that.
Don’t worry about that for now. We’ll make those decisions later.
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How are we all doing? Who’s finished? Happy with what you’ve got? Can you share it? Are you stuck?
Who’s skipped ahead already? Admit it, some of you must have…
Did you find it useful? Like I say in the videos this exercise is the most ‘worky’ one of the lot. But I really do find the framing to be helpful.
I’ve finished the 10-19 section, all except for the supplemental videos.
I’ve started work on my scope, and have it pinned up on the wall.
I’m focusing on my home life structure to begin with. I will deal with work later. For now my work stuff is “good enough” to get me by.
I haven’t skipped ahead. I’m enjoying the different approaches in the video - classroom, outside conversation, etc.
I found the shelf/archive box/folder analogy very helpful.
I’m still not sure if my mind has grokked the need to be super broad at the top level. When I tried this system before, I filled up nine of my areas and was obviously not broad enough in that thinking. I don’t want to fall into that trap again.
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Finished 10-19. I am an advanced student, having pretty much finalized two systems in my collection, and starting file migration. I like Lucy’s idea of a portal between systems (sort of like an alias or a symlink) and I can see some uses for that.
I’ve skipped ahead, but that’s because I started trying to work it out way before the course dropped. Inside the course itself, I’ve stayed within 10-19 so far.
I made my scope statement a mind map instead of using the worksheet.
As I mentioned above, I’ve got two main systems going: one for “Life, the Universe and Everything”, and one for my “projects”.
I’ve also been thinking about the concept of “Working with the garage door open” and thought that perhaps I could split the work system into two: One for public projects, the other for private (i.e. client work, etc). Perhaps then I could publish the public index somewhere.
Here’s what I have so far:
I like that it’s living in a mindmap, because it encourages changing things around. Also, when it comes time to capture and organise stuff I can theoretically use the same mind map — I could create a node for pure “capture” and then easily sort them into systems, areas, categories, etc… But there I go again getting ahead of myself.
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L42, I see you. 
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Most importantly, is anyone stuck? Does anyone need help?
I’m not stuck but in the interests of sharing with the group, here’s my worksheet as it stands at the moment.
I’m maybe a little behind some people (which I’m fine with btw). Currently watching the video for section 12 and it’s covering the bit I think has been a bit of a sticking point for me before.
I’ve not previously quite pictured how much I can ‘fit’ into a single ID - I think I had the idea it’d only be a few files and a note. Getting my head round what can be done within one ID will hopefully settle my nerves and allow me to do what you’ve advised and think broadly when it comes to the higher levels.
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Hi all. Travis here, based in Japan. I work for a data center developer doing program management, which equates to repetitive tasks across multiple years-long projects where everyone’s data is a mess. I’ve read through the JD workbook before and am eager to finally create my own little “corner of sanity.” Catching up to the class as quick as I can.
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This feels a lot like my old life! I lived a few years of data centre deployments.
Holy moly have I seen some bad spreadsheets…
I realised I forgot to say hello earlier this week 
. I got caught up reading people’s posts.
Hello! I’m Lucy, the disorganised person without the beard in the videos. I’m still very much ‘in class’, but I’ve made it to the end of 40-49 and I’m starting to feel calmer. When I was working on scope I couldn’t imagine getting to this stage, but I have. So hang in there.
It’s humbling reading everyone’s introductions and what they hope to achieve. And also interesting seeing other scope examples from @ps1816, @death.au, and @canion (printed in colour no less, fancy pants 
).
I struggled with out of scope initially. I thought I would just write “everything in my life” as being in scope and be done with it.
I found it handy when Johnny said that I should just acknowledge the existence of some things that I first thought I’d keep out of scope (like photos and files on old hard drives), but that I didn’t have to organise them. So they became in scope, but without any additional workload. I’ll just be able point to them in my index eventually.
I also wouldn’t beat yourself up if you don’t have much out of scope … as long as you’ve given it proper thought. Who knows, when you’re doing the next area (Discovery), you might change your mind (remember scope can be changed) and omit some stuff if it ends up feeling irrelevant. Or vice versa.
If you didn’t see our character Susan’s scope (from the supplemental video), she only has a couple of things out of scope. Her job, her dad’s files, and her email.
Also, even if you don’t have much for out of scope, I found that all my in scope scribbles became pretty important in Discovery. Like a map. Which sounds obvious, but it gave me the thought starters I needed to go out and look for things, especially when I hit a brick wall and needed new ideas.
I also admit that like @death.au, I couldn’t help but start ‘discovering’ things during the scope process. Which made me feel naughty, so I didn’t tell the teacher. But I think that’s probably a natural side effect of beginning to think about all the parts of your life. I just kept a secret list that I ended up evolving into the ‘places I looked’ mind map that you’ll see in 22.
Good luck. My scope was pretty sketchy, but it felt good to get something down/made the process feel more real, and it got my head in the zone for the next part. 
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Thanks for your insight, Lucy. It does make me feel a little better about where I’m sitting with it.
I’ve attempted to organise with Johnny.Decimal before (but it didn’t stick; I just don’t think I took it too seriously at first) and in those previous attempts I just kinda skipped the scope step entirely because my scope is just all the things.
This time around, following the course and trying to do things properly, the scope step still feels a bit nebulous — almost pointless — but you’re right that it is at least helping to get my mind in the right place for the next steps.
Side note: the origin of the all the things meme feels pretty relevant right about now: https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
Hehehe. I totally forgot about that site, thank you for reminding me. It’s going to have a place in my new system, with all the other websites I’m cataloguing.
ps.
@ps1816 I like that you realised you may have been getting too granular too soon and pulled yourself back. Plenty of time for that in Discovery. That looks like a good start to me, a simple map to guide you through the next bit.
Side note: I can hear Johnny in my head saying “don’t think about structure yet”, which he said to me a lot. So as long as you don’t get too attached to the way this scope mind map looks, and stay flexible about how all the pieces might end up fitting together later. I was surprised by some of the groupings I’ve ended up with, but I like them. 
@death.au I just noticed that you specifically called out that you want your partner to be able to understand your system, a great point. Later on when we’re designing the structure, Johnny says to “aim for a system that a stranger could use”. Your partner may not be a stranger, but I found this helpful when I had to make harder decisions about where stuff should go. Where would anyone else logically look?
I’m also copying the note you’ve made to remember subscriptions, I want to log those.
G’day Andrew, what sport to you commentate? What’s your podcast about?
Hello death, it’s Reggie from our Obsidian Mod days; fancy meeting you here 
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I commentate basketball for the NBL1 in Australia, which is the League below the National one.
I have two podcasts - NBL Pocket Podcast, about the Australian basketball league, and Hemispheric Views, a tech-adjacent podcast.
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Hi there,
I’m Robert, a community college student and a part-time administrative assistant, and I’m interested in Johnny.Decimal because I generate and handle a lot of documents (invoices, contracts, deposits, fellow employees’ work-related course certificates, my college syllabus and college assignments) and I have been feeling stressed.
My scope is anything related to my college courses, personal documents and language learning. Like Lucy I did not know what to do with old photos and videos, but I will do as Johnny said and put them in an ID without ordering them. Once I have finished this workshop and feel more used to this system, I will repeat this process with my work documents. I have a working system at my job, but I am not particularly proud of it and it is not the fastest when I have to recover documents. It will suffice for now, but I will improve it later and streamline it.
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Hi all, I just completed 10-19 in the course and after almost 1 week, I’ve got a scope statement for my system that feels like its in the right direction, although I’m sure it will change.
I found it helpful to list what domains (for lack of a better term) my system would exist within, or in other words what tangible things need to be organized, irrespective of what area of my life they belong to. As a result, I realized that some areas of my life that are important to me may not have anything tangible that could be organized, at least within those domains, and thus would not be included in the system. I also included areas of my life that I have yet devote much time to or accumulate much “stuff” for, but I hope that by having this system in place I will be able to do so in the foreseeable future in an organized way.
Admittedly, I too found it very hard not to start designing right away because as I identified areas of my life that are in scope, there were natural categories that emerged. While I could’ve listed the items within these areas of my life in a bullet point list, organizing it in the way that I did helped me recall certain things that I did want to include in my system. Hopefully, I didn’t go too far and think about the structure too much… Any feedback would be appreciated!
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