After a while of experimenting with other concepts I’m setting up a J.D index again. I started with just 10–19 Work and 20–29 Life and things seems to fit nicely all in all.
(Work) projects, though, I’m still struggling with, als 11 Projects with AC.ID would only give me 99 of those—and projects often are smaller affairs, but there might be at lest 10–15 or more over the course of a year, meaning 99 might not be a lot. I don’t have any kind of clients and all projects happen in my one job.
Today I had the idea to use YYYY.ID (as kind of a riff on using the YYYY-MM-DD date), where YYYY would be the year a project is started and resetting the first ID to 01 for each new year. That should basically work indefinitely.
Has anyone experimented with something like this already? (I could not find anythings, but maybe searched using the wrong terms.)
PARA was a good start for me, in improving my digital file organisation from nothing to something, and I love broad categories but they were way too broad and such a faff to organise really, not very structured and heavily overpriced, but it was an improvement to what I had before. JD is really sticking with me and consistency and trusting the process is key to making it work. I think people (myself included) overthink JD and see the numbers and run a mile (I think that’s one shortfall of JD - it looks scarier than it really is, and it is actually for everyday people and use). It’s taken a while to get used to, but very worth the process and sticking to the system rather than trying to reinvent the wheel all the time. Once you are able to just trust the process it all makes sense and becomes a lot easier.
I love the new extension mentioned by Johnny in the post above and highly recommend checking it out.
My recent personal meanderings led me more along the paths of the likes of digital gardening and evergreen notes (as I’m still more concerned with notes and tasks than files). But, yes, I dipped a toe in PARA, too, I guess. But why not—some things you have to try to get a feeling for whether they work you.
Yuppp absolutely! I am thankful for my time discovering and using PARA, it saved me my job/lifestyle I was thrown into the deep end with 5 years worth of business paperwork and a paper based system, nothing digital, nothing no organisation whatsoever, everything was so random, stacks and stacks of paperwork with no order, mixed up, no training, no systems in place just “figure it all out and get it done”. I was paid very good money to do so but it tested my mental health beyond limits and I nearly quit so many times, but kept pushing along, and so glad I pushed through, it has been worth it because it fits my lifestyle and is good pay.
For me, PARA was a great starting point for high-level organization. It’s organized by actionability and is simple enough for my wife and my work team to grasp. However, I found that it lacks guidance on how to structure content within those folders.
At work, my “Projects” primarily consist of building reports in Excel or Power BI. Once a report is completed, it doesn’t quite fit into “Areas” since these reports are recurring activities that need to be run frequently—unlike other areas of my work, such as professional development or managing direct reports, so I created a “Recurring” folder. Meanwhile, “Resources” holds my code libraries, employee manuals, and other reference materials. Additionally, I had Deferred/Delegated projects that didn’t fit neatly into any existing PARA category, including “Archives.”
To solve this, I adapted PARA into PRARDA: It doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely, but it works just as well for my needs.
• Projects
• Recurring (for recurring reports)
• Areas
• Resources
• Deferred/Delegated (someday-maybe or reassigned)
• Archives
Everything is stored on a Shared Drive that has accumulated Terabytes of content, with over 100 people contributing to the chaos daily. To navigate this, I use Aliases (Mac) or Shortcuts (PC) to link essential files from the server to my local drive and create my own simplified organizational system. I can get to anything in less than 4 clicks while my colleagues are struggling to navigate a confusing folder structure where the benefit of making folders decreases with the number of sub-folders you need to click through to get to what you are looking for.
J.D adds another level of organization beyond PARA, especially in cases where things aren’t alphabetically structured, like report or client names. I think PARA and J.D can work together nicely. I don’t think it needs to be either/or, but can be both/and. I like that my initials are also JD
My guiding principle in organizing is: be as general as possible and as specific as necessary.
