What about 00-09?
You may be wondering why we started our areas at 10-19
and not 00-09
, and our categories at 11
rather than 10
.
Why don’t we use these numbers?
Reserve them for the system
Sometimes you want to keep information about the system, in the system.
I use area 00-09
for this and call it System
.1
I also store common items in this area that don’t fit elsewhere. Here’s the structure I often use. Feel free to copy or adapt it.
00-09System
00 Index
01 Inbox
02 Notes
03 To do & checklists
04 Bookmarks
05 Templates
06 [unused]
07 [unused]
08 Someday
09 Archive
00 Index
- If I’m using the ‘single file as my index’ method, that file is always called
00.00 Index
. - In a future post I’ll expand on the idea of having this ID be the ‘front door’ for your project.
01 Inbox
- A place to put stuff that you know you’ll sort in the future.
- I tend to use this when I’m starting out: it’s better to put unorganised stuff here temporarily than on your Desktop.
- Be careful! You know you need to organise this stuff at some point. Don’t be lazy.
- This is an idea taken from Getting Things Done®.
02 Notes
- While you should usually store your notes under their own Johnny.Decimal ID — the note relates to something — it can be handy to have a project-wide notes category.
- Use sparingly.
03 To do & checklists
- A place to keep your to do lists and checklists.
04 Bookmarks
- I find it easier to have bookmarks in one place versus throughout my system: that is, if I’m saving them in a text file.
- If you can link them to an ID (or even a category), you should prepend the proper Johnny.Decimal number to your browser bookmark.
05 Templates
- Sometimes I’ll store things I use as templates here.
- Some systems lend themselves to repeatability. I’ll explain this further in a future post.
08 Someday
- ‘Someday’ is another idea borrowed from GTD®.
- This is for things that you want to do ‘someday’ but not now.
- It’s a little like
01 Inbox
, but you know that you’re not going to deal with it in the immediate future. - You should review this periodically.
09 Archive
- Somewhere to throw stuff you no longer need.
- Although I generally do not recommend archiving entire sections of your system. I’ll expand on this in a future post.
Similarly for categories 10, 20 … 90
In our small company example, 20-29
was Administration
but our first category was 21 Company registration
. What happened to 20
?
We reserve these numbers for ‘system’ information about the category. Although I hardly ever use them, it’s rare that I have more than nine categories in an area. I don’t miss the wasted number, but I always appreciate it when I need it.
Confused? Don’t worry
If you want to use the zeros, use them. It doesn’t matter.
-
I used to call it ‘Management & Meta’ but ‘System’ is simpler. ↩︎