Johnny Decimal - Organization that Works (for Me)

Unstructured and Undefined

For many years, especially after I left school, I didn’t have a solution to organize files or notes or really anything.

In school, everything was clearly defined, with an obvious hierarchy: Year, Semester, Course, and within each course create folders as needed. I took physical notes, with a folder per class just like the digital systems. Simple, easy, and no need to make it “scalable” - I’m only going to juggle 5 courses at once. Emails were ephemeral - either a notification/update or a simple transaction. The midterm is next Wednesday. Correction for Problem 2 on the assignment. “Please find my assignment attached below”. Any important documents would always be available on the course homepage, no need to keep track of them myself.

When working on my graduate research I needed something a bit more substantial to store project notes, code, results, my thesis, etc. I made extensive use of Obsidian - partially because it was genuinely useful, and because of the classic fallacy “I’m technically being productive by researching new tools for being productive”. During my first job I used Logseq, which is the same concept but open source. The easy combination of linking, cross-referencing, and plugins made it very powerful and flexible, but ultimately relied heavily on searching and the “database” features to help me find things again.

These solutions were fine, and worked well for the single-subject needs, but what if I wanted to keep track of things that weren’t just text, or required a broader organizational scope. Emails, handwritten notes, printouts, important physical documents. My digital system was well defined but limited in scope, so inevitably I relied on hopeful email searches and my own brain to keep track of physical objects.

Pretty much everything lived in google drive, my downloads folder, or a generic “Code” or “Hobby” folder which was both too narrow and broad at the same time. Many one-off/simple endeavors lived and died in the downloads folder with no real permanence. For example, whenever I changed an online profile photo to something more “seasonal” and went to change it back, I’d have to hope that I could figure out which untitled(9).png was the original. Ultimately, I’d give up and download an old version from a different online profile, which leads to worse quality and inconsistency.

And then I read Analog Office’s post about Johnny Decimal and immediately fell in love.

Its Genius is its Simplicity

The concept is simple: look at the Dewey Decimal system, and apply the same idea to your own personal “library”.

Each “ID” is 4 digit decimal: AB.XY - A and B define the overall category, and XY is a 2-digit sequential number (generally starting at .11) Every topic is assigned a unique ID, and you use that ID on everything related to that topic. Physical documents/notes go in a physical folder, files go in a virtual folder, etc. Every note you take. Every important email you receive. Add the ID.

Since I’ve discovered the power of terminal text editors like helix, and love using markdown, almost every new topic starts in the terminal. Go to the category, create a new sequential ID if required, and start writing a markdown file. This folder is synced across all my devices, so I can pull it up wherever I am.

Once I have an ID, it goes on the top right of every physical page of notes, letting me quickly go from the paper to the rest of the files in my Library. I even wrote a bash script that turns jd 40.24 into cd 40-49 Career/40 Job Searching/40.24 Hershey so I can go straight from the 4 digit code to the associated folder.

I bought a bunch of cheap folders, which get labeled with the topic name and ID, and then go in my filing cabinet/drawer/storage area to keep related documents together. If there’s an important email that I’ll need to keep track of (tax documents, leases, travel itineraries, etc) I’ll create tags or folders in my email archive for the associated ID (or occasionally just the category). Often my notes/the email itself doesn’t matter, or the contents are trivial so I’ll type up the important parts as a markdown file or download the attachment and save it to a folder.

The most important part is ensuring that you have an up-to-date index to avoid duplicate IDs. Thankfully since I do most of my library management from a linux server, I can scroll through tree -L 3 to figure out at a glance what the new ID should be.

A Snapshot of My Library

Below are some of the Areas and Categories (A and B) I’m using in my system, with some annotated notes.

├── 00-09 Systems Management
│   ├── 03 System To-dos & checklists
│   ├── 05 System Templates
├── 10-19 Myself and Others
│   ├── 10 Me # medical stuff, profile photos, etc
│   ├── 11 Family
│   └── 12 Friends
├── 20-29 Hobbies and Fun
│   ├── 21 Projects # Most personal projects/code goes here
│   ├── 22 Tech # PC builds and radio stuff
│   ├── 23 Stationery
│   ├── 24 Media Reading Watching Listening
│   ├── 25 Gaming
│   ├── 28 Experiences and Trips
├── 30-39 Finance and Legal
│   ├── 31 Financial
│   └── 32 Housing
├── 40-49 Career
│   ├── 40 Job Searching
│   ├── 41 First Job
│   ├── 42 Second Job
│   └── 43 Continuing Education
├── 50-69 Organizations
│   ├── 51 Philly Radio

Obviously some areas aren’t going to have 9 categories. For example, take a look at 10-19 Myself and Others. If someone isn’t myself, family, nor friend, I’m unlikely to care about them. (14 Enemies might be worthwhile at least.)

This system includes documents and notes, but not media. Photos and music files don’t belong in here, since those are best managed as their own thing. But for a general “catch-all” system that can hold everything from my physical passport to the website you’re reading now, it works pretty well.

And the best part? There’s nobody trying to sell you “plugins” or “extensions” or “subscriptions”. There’s nothing proprietary - it’s folders in your drawer or on your hard drive. No database, no apps. Just make sure you do backups!