Did you buy the mini-starter-pack of Post-its? You sound like a busy guy with more going on than me - and I ended up with 177. That’s far too many, I’m a bit of a detailed weirdo, but in the words of Salt-N-Pepa, I reckon you could try to push it. Have you looked in the bottom drawers, the pool room?
Edit: In the 30s, we sort our notes on the wall or mind map a few different ways into areas/categories. So at the very least, more notes means more to play with then. And hopefully more chances of revealing the right structure for you.
I tried to keep in mind that my notes were likely going to become IDs, they weren’t categories or areas. So having plenty of smaller things that would ‘clump’ together to become categories or areas was handy. e.g. I think one of your notes says “clean out shed and attic”? What’s in the shed and attic? Maybe there’s things you forgot about. Or just knowing the ‘themes’ of what’s there could help build unexpected categories later.
Hi everyone, I’m Paul, currently living in Sydney. I have already attempted a JD system after reading the book when it first released, but I’m going to see how it turns out from following the Workshop process.
I mind-mapped my Discovery, which resulted in groups forming when I searched through different things, but I didn’t consciously try to organise them.
Now working through (30-39) Creating Areas and Categories…
I think because I already have a pretty organised life/system, I’m not getting granular enough. Like I subconsciously know stuff is organised so I’m not bothering to go further. I need to push back against myself.
I’ve had another crack at notes and been able to generate a bunch more. This morning I’ve watched the videos on sorting, so that’s going to be my next task.
I hope everyone’s going okay? This should be an exciting week where things start to bubble to the surface after sorting. It’s hard though I think, all that decision making.
Side note: I made my index yesterday and also organised a chunk of my gmail according to my structure. I feel like an entry-level ninja. I’m starting to really get it for the first time. It’s weird, given that Johnny showed me this for the first time in 2015. But I’d never implemented it myself so I had no idea.
I’ve got my Areas and Categories pretty much sorted (and some IDs to be honest). I’ve been working on finding a way to organise my projects as I (with my GTD head on) tend to think of anything that’s more than one step as a project. Hence I create multiple projects per day quite often and one ID per would fill up things very fast. I think I’ve sorted it though.
I’ll sort a screenshot sometime if you like Johnny but I warn you now it’s on OneNote (not my choice! Obsidian at home) and I know that gives you a headache to look at
Here’s the mind map I made for my personal system. As I started building it out in Obsidian it changed a bit but most of the main areas and categories remain.
When I started I was getting myself quite stressed about having to absolutely get it dead right from the get-go, but I’m coming round to thinking of this as v1 of my system - I’ll give this a go for a while (like a year or something) and if need be I can rebuild. At least everything will be in relatively good order if I do decide to change things!
I have already started with the Index a bit (still on the fence about exactly how to do it in Obsidian but will point out to any fellow users that the Waypoint plug-in seems pretty handy) and have had one or two moments where I’ve started to see the real benefit of the system. No more “now where did I put that?” moments/minutes/hours!
You sound like a busy guy with more going on than me - and I ended up with 177. That’s far too many, I’m a bit of a detailed weirdo, but in the words of Salt-N-Pepa, I reckon you could try to push it. Have you looked in the bottom drawers, the pool room? 
