The problem I'd have with that is that I'd never be able to commit to a fixed set of areas or categories since the type of work I do is constantly evolving. Plus I've always had trouble creating mutually exclusive categories.
What works well for me is to keep all things I'll need soon in the top level of my documents folder and when I'm done with it I move it into an archive folder.
This way my documents folder has few files and folders in an easily accessible flat heirarchy. While old files can be easily searched for in the archive folder.
That can certainly be an issue, yes. It's not one I personally have come across yet as I tend to have quite distinct 'domains' that don't change much.
At work, I'm a contractor and I typically spend 1-3 years on a project. Each gets its own system, nice and simple.
My home system has 10-19 capturing all of my 'personal, daily life' which leaves plenty of areas for my personal projects. For instance, 50-59 is Johnny.Decimal itself.
So far I've implemented JD:
- Managing a 2 year contemporary dance production, multiple locations, staff, ticketing, marketing, etc.
- Consolidating 200+ data centres in to 7; I did basically all of the hardware from procurement to having a green light on a NIC.
- Running an infrastructure upgrade project for a major bank.
- Running 2nd level desktop support for an international packaging company.
- My personal life, including managing the limited company that I contract through.
I plan on anonymising and documenting as many of these cases as I can on the site. I just need to find the time.
I need to write another page explaining this. You may have many non-overlapping ‘domains’, whose numbers don’t relate to each other at all. You just have to keep them separate: home computer, work computer. This job, the next job. Etc.
The system running my personal life has been going since 2012. Meanwhile, those other jobs have come and gone.
Maybe it’s just me – clearly I have a mind that loves numbers – but I haven’t found it confusing at all.
Weirdly I have found that I have developed my own internal standards. I generally need to travel with work, and that always ends up being ‘16 Travel’.
(10-19 is usually “Administration” at work.)
High on my list of stuff to write is a whole bunch of example pages. Drop me an email if you’d like me to let you know when they’re done.
I don't find the numbers confusing either. It's just my mind couldn't accept that you could fit everything in your life in 10 areas x 10 categories structure (well, 9x9 really, since 0s are for metadata). So thanks for clarifying (and this definitely needs to go on the page, IMO).
If I may ask here, how do you handle things that cut across two or more of your existing systems? Do you duplicate things? Or use references with target collection name, e.g. "Work Computer 12.34 Some shared stuff"?
This is why we need tags and other metadata in the filesystem. (Windows actually supports this via alternate data streams, but very few apps and tools use it) Used to have an overview of this here: (archive.org might have a copy) http://developeriq.in/articles/2013/aug/19/alternate-data-st...
What works well for me is to keep all things I'll need soon in the top level of my documents folder and when I'm done with it I move it into an archive folder.
This way my documents folder has few files and folders in an easily accessible flat heirarchy. While old files can be easily searched for in the archive folder.