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Beginner concepts<br>Introduction<br>Areas and categories<br>IDs<br>Headers<br>Philosophy<br>The JDex<br>Saving files<br>Keeping notes<br>The Librarian<br>Don't be afraid of the numbers
Community<br>Forum<br>Discord
Systems & courses<br>We spent hundreds of hours designing them so you don't have to.<br>Life Admin System<br>Small Business System<br>Johnny.Decimal University
Introduction
A system to organise your information
Johnny.Decimal is designed to help you find things quickly, with more confidence, and less stress.
You assign a unique ID to everything in your life.
These IDs help you stay organised. They impose constraints that make it harder to get lost. And you create an index to link everything together.
The system is free to use and the concepts are the same at home, work, or that club you manage.
Figure 62.11A. The anatomy of a Johnny.Decimal ID.<br>The problem
In real life, if you stored your stuff in piles of badly-labelled boxes you'd never find anything again.
If you put those boxes in boxes, in boxes, you'd never know which box to open to find the next box. It would be chaos. But this is how you save computer files.
Important client deliverables<br>└── Final<br>└── Final draft<br>├──── First version<br>│ └──── New folder<br>│ ├── Final (copy) (002).docx<br>│ ├── FINAL FINAL.docx<br>│ └── FINAL v2.docx<br>└──── New<br>└──── New folder (1)<br>└── FINAL v2 (002).docx Figure 62.11B. A chaotic filesystem with many levels of folders.<br>The solution
Here's one way to think about how Johnny.Decimal works. In this analogy, a computer is a room, an area is a filing cabinet, a category is a drawer, and an ID is a manila folder.
Step 1: Buy 10 filing cabinets
We can't store our stuff on the floor, so we buy 10 filing cabinets. Then we dedicate three of them to areas of our life – life admin, home business, and tennis club.1
┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐<br>│ Life Admin │ │ Home Business │ │ Tennis Club │<br>├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │ │ ═════ │ │ ═════ │<br>│ │ │ │ │ │<br>├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │ │ ═════ │ │ ═════ │<br>│ │ │ │ │ │<br>├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │ │ ═════ │ │ ═════ │<br>│ │ │ │ │ │<br>├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │ │ ═════ │ │ ═════ │<br>│ │ │ │ │ │<br>├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤ ├───────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │ │ ═════ │ │ ═════ │<br>│ │ │ │ │ │<br>└───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ Figure 62.11C. A filing cabinet for each major area of our life (diagram not to scale).<br>Step 2: Assign some drawers
Each cabinet has space for 10 drawers, so we categorise what we want to store. In life admin we decide on five drawers and label them: me, house, money, online, and travel. There's space for a number, so we add that too.2
┌─────────────────────┐<br>│ 10–19 Life admin │<br>├─────────────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │<br>│ ┌───────────┐ │<br>│ │ 11 Me │ │<br>│ └───────────┘ │<br>├─────────────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │<br>│ ┌───────────┐ │<br>│ │ 12 House │ │<br>│ └───────────┘ │<br>├─────────────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │<br>│ ┌───────────┐ │<br>│ │ 13 Money │ │<br>│ └───────────┘ │<br>├─────────────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │<br>│ ┌───────────┐ │<br>│ │ 14 Online │ │<br>│ └───────────┘ │<br>├─────────────────────┤<br>│ ═════ │<br>│ ┌───────────┐ │<br>│ │ 15 Travel │ │<br>│ └───────────┘ │<br>└─────────────────────┘ Figure 62.11D. Our life admin filing cabinet has five drawers.<br>Step 3: File your stuff in folders
We put our documents in folders. Each folder gets a number starting at .11 so we can track them. In this case, there's some insurance documents in 15.22 Travel insurance. This folder goes in a drawer.
┌──────────────────────┐<br>┌──┤15.22 Travel insurance├─┐<br>│ └──────────────────────┘ │<br>│ - Claim form │<br>│ - Payment receipt │<br>│ - Policy document │<br>└───────────────────────────┘<br>│ ┌──────────────────┐<br>│ │ 15.24 Checklists │<br>│ ┌──┴──────────────────┴┐<br>│ │15.23 Loyalty programs│<br>│ ┌──┴──────────────────────┴┐<br>└─────▶ /│ 15.22 Travel insurance │-/<br>/─┴──────────────────────────┴/│<br>│ ═════════ ││<br>│ ┌───────────────┐ ││<br>│ │ 15 Travel │ ││<br>│ └───────────────┘ │/<br>└─────────────────────────────┘ Figure 62.11E. Our documents are stored in numbered folders in the relevant drawer.<br>This is how we structure our filesystem
Let's return to our computer. The filing cabinets have become our area folders. The drawers are category folders. And the manila folders are the IDs where we save our files.
10-19 Life admin ──────────────────▶ Cabinet<br>├─ 11 Me<br>├─ 12 Home<br>├─ 13 Money<br>├─ 14 Online<br>└─ 15 Travel ──────────────────────▶ Drawer<br>├─ 15.22 Travel insurance ──────▶ Folder<br>│ ├──── Claim form<br>│ ├──── Payment receipt<br>│ └──── Policy document<br>├─ 15.23 Loyalty programs<br>└─ 15.24 Checklists Figure 62.11F. A neat file structure with areas, categories, and IDs.
Benefits of the ID
Each of our storage folders now has a number, the Johnny.Decimal ID. It always has two digits, a decimal, and two digits. For example, 15.22 22.11 31.17. This number is really useful.
Provides structure
The ID tells us...