The Johnny Decimal System

February 2, 2024

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The Johnny Decimal System is a way to organize your digital life. It’s a system that I’ve been using for a while now and I’ve found it to be very effective. It’s a simple system that is easy to understand and easy to use. It’s a great way to keep your digital life organized and to make sure that you can find what you need when you need it.

For reference (and more in-depth information), you can visit the Johnny Decimal website.

My Summary

Areas (group of categories) = Real-life Shelves

• Should be really, really broad. Might line up with areas of life.
• Only includes max of 10 categories.
• Formatted ex. “10-19 Life administration”

Categories = Real-life Boxes

• Collection of similar things; a type of “work”.
• Prefer fewer, broader categories.
• Is named incrementally starting with 10.
• Formatted ex. “16 Travel”

Directories = Real-life Manilla Folders

• Uses IDs as the start of the naming..
• Is named incrementally starting with 01.
• Formatted ex. “16.01 Singapore, June 2022”
• Avoid sub-folders below this point if you can.
• ID - A unique thing; a job, a task, a reference, a meeting, an artifact.

Files/Documents = Real-life Papers

• These are the actual files/documents.
• Saved within Directories with IDs.
• Never save these within areas, or categories.
• Nothing is saved more than 2 levels deep (not past Directories); in-fact, EVERYTHING is EXACTLY 2 levels deep.

Example

📂 10-19 Project management
    📁 11 Scope
    📂 12 Schedule
        📂 12.01 Schedule management plan
            📄 12.01 Schedule management plan
            📄 12.02 Schedule baseline
            📄 12.03 Schedule data