Just a general observation as someone nearing 50. I'm honestly very curious to see if someone has had a different experience than me. I'm am, to put it mildly, not an "organized person". I have tried a million different systems throughout my life - GTD, Inbox Zero, spreadsheets, etc. etc.
To be honest, I don't believe that any of these "organization systems" really help people that have problems being organized in the first place. I think it's just a fundamentally different way of how I'm wired. My general conclusion is that trying to "fight" my natural way of doing things is always going to be a losing battle, and that instead I just need to figure out ways to handle my general messiness and get it to work for me. I mean, I can certainly be organized for sizable stretches of time, but whenever I start getting pressed for time, or stressed, or lose my motivation for some other reason, it always reverts to the mean.
I'd honestly be really interested to hear if anyone has ever changed from being a "unorganized person" to an "organized person", because it my few decades of life I've never seen it be successfully accomplished.
I tried many organization systems, including Johnny Decimal like PARA. And none of them worked for me.
As an ADHD person, I've found the best way for me is not put effort in organizing at all.
For that reason I've found tools like Logseq/Tana/Reflect does a great job. I just write in the journal and tag items accordingly if required, then if I need to write some long form document, I create specific pages for it.
Then search and backlinks are everything I need. My brain works better searching than browsing.
I use Johnny.Decimal in my Obsidian vault, but its purpose is less about being able to find things in the future and more like "this is a simple well-trodden system so you may as well use it for some semblance of organization of your folder hierarchy." But I only label the folders. I don't label files with numerical values – folders are just dumping grounds for a certain type of notes. Like I have a folder for journal entries, unique notes, blog posts, book notes, recipes, and individual side-projects. A few tags (most auto-generated in templates) help me search past notes if I need to, but that's a very infrequent need.
My point is that switching just the folder hierarchy to Johnny.Decimal was very easy and I don't have to think about how I organize my work ever. Contrast that with some of the other PKM organization schemes you'll find (such as using Johnny.Decimal in its entirety), and you'll see that they both take a ton of time to set up and a ton of effort to maintain. Those are massive wastes of time. There are far more meaningful things you could be doing outside of marginal gains to productivity, if you can even call PKM optimization a "marginal gain."
Its a beautiful system but where my head explodes (and has been exploding for 4 decades) is over the following scenario.
So in Johnny's system, I assign 21 to automobiles. My VW van gets 21.1, my Citron is 21.2, etc. and the insurance for each car gets a .8 so 21.1.8, 21.2.8, etc.
And I assign 13 to Money. Insurance belongs under money so 13.5 is insurance and life insurance gets 13.5.1, E&O insurance gets 13.5.2, etc.
I also need a top folder for Medical for doc visits, vaxes, ER visits, Surgeries, the kids' allergies and stuff.
So where all this is going is two months later, where is the health insurance policy? Is it under medical or under money? Is the car insurance under Automobiles or Insurance under Money?
Back to my head exploding - this is my issue - I can never remember which branch of the tree to find a specific leaf? Does my annual car tax belong with the Money or with the Auto branch? If I want to see the tax for all the cars at the same time, I put it under Money - Taxes - Auto but when I need to know the last time I paid the tax on the VW, I will assume its filed under Auto-VW-Car Tax.
This is why I can never find anything. All due respect to Johnny but I'm too retarded to use it properly.
hn_throwaway_99 ·23 hours ago
To be honest, I don't believe that any of these "organization systems" really help people that have problems being organized in the first place. I think it's just a fundamentally different way of how I'm wired. My general conclusion is that trying to "fight" my natural way of doing things is always going to be a losing battle, and that instead I just need to figure out ways to handle my general messiness and get it to work for me. I mean, I can certainly be organized for sizable stretches of time, but whenever I start getting pressed for time, or stressed, or lose my motivation for some other reason, it always reverts to the mean.
I'd honestly be really interested to hear if anyone has ever changed from being a "unorganized person" to an "organized person", because it my few decades of life I've never seen it be successfully accomplished.
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lardissone ·23 hours ago
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pkilgore ·23 minutes ago
Flat system of tags + Search + Fuzzy Find + Scanner + OCR + Giant Pile has been the route to happiness for me.
My brain just isn't wired for hierarchy at all.
spmcl ·1 hours ago
My point is that switching just the folder hierarchy to Johnny.Decimal was very easy and I don't have to think about how I organize my work ever. Contrast that with some of the other PKM organization schemes you'll find (such as using Johnny.Decimal in its entirety), and you'll see that they both take a ton of time to set up and a ton of effort to maintain. Those are massive wastes of time. There are far more meaningful things you could be doing outside of marginal gains to productivity, if you can even call PKM optimization a "marginal gain."
Beestie ·22 hours ago
So in Johnny's system, I assign 21 to automobiles. My VW van gets 21.1, my Citron is 21.2, etc. and the insurance for each car gets a .8 so 21.1.8, 21.2.8, etc.
And I assign 13 to Money. Insurance belongs under money so 13.5 is insurance and life insurance gets 13.5.1, E&O insurance gets 13.5.2, etc.
I also need a top folder for Medical for doc visits, vaxes, ER visits, Surgeries, the kids' allergies and stuff.
So where all this is going is two months later, where is the health insurance policy? Is it under medical or under money? Is the car insurance under Automobiles or Insurance under Money?
Back to my head exploding - this is my issue - I can never remember which branch of the tree to find a specific leaf? Does my annual car tax belong with the Money or with the Auto branch? If I want to see the tax for all the cars at the same time, I put it under Money - Taxes - Auto but when I need to know the last time I paid the tax on the VW, I will assume its filed under Auto-VW-Car Tax.
This is why I can never find anything. All due respect to Johnny but I'm too retarded to use it properly.
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