Stress-free travel with an 'active trip' note

I recently found myself in an airport immigration queue, passport in hand, metres from the counter. At this moment my brain reminded me of something very important:

Yesterday, I filled in an immigration form and saved a QR code.
I need this QR code now, right now, this instant.
I've no idea where it is.

So I created a really simple process that makes my travel less stressful. Read – and watch – how to make travel stress-free with an 'active trip' note. Use the same technique to put any type of information literally at your finger-tip.

Now with video 🧑🏼‍🦲📹

Our weekly feature posts now come with video. I can explain a lot more by talking for 10 minutes than I can in a blog post. I can show you my screen, step-by-step. You can think of these videos as a 'deep dive' into the week's topic.

The broad theme will always be helping you use your computer to make life as easy and stress-free as possible. Because nobody gave us any training for these devices that are now so central to our lives. We're just expected to understand how to use the computer in our pocket to recall a QR code in the most demanding of situations.

I see the role of Johnny.Decimal as being far more than helping you to organise your files. It's about helping you to use this technology in a calm, effective way. These videos are another way that we can help you do that.

They're for members – this week relates to the Life Admin System, so you need a Personal account. Most will require a Pro account. We've set ourselves a posting schedule of one a week, with about a 1:4 Personal:Pro ratio.

Making memberships better

That's right, the videos are members-only. Honestly – why pretend otherwise? – I'm looking for ways to make our memberships more valuable, to entice you to sign up.

We're two people who make everything by hand. All content comes from our brains. All words are typed by our fingers. All video is edited by Lucy. We don't use AI for any of that. I do use it to help me with the technical stuff, but we're proud that our ideas are all human and they always will be.

We can only survive – literally, as in this is how we eat – with your support. So, we keep adding to the memberships. They're all pay once, get new stuff forever. We're proud of how straight and fair they are. No upsells. No fake deals. If you want to upgrade, we automatically discount anything you've already paid.

There's never been a better time to become a Lifetime member. ;-) And for every Lifetime signup, I can provide discounts to people who can't afford it. If that's you, get in touch and I'll see what I can do.

Coming next

Next week's post will take a look at the modern trend that's doing away with the very idea of 'a file'. My recommended mind-mapping software MindNode did this with their latest release. Now your documents are managed directly in the app.

This makes discoverability a nightmare. How do you manage a document you can no longer see? I'll show you my techniques for coping with this very fundamental shift in file management.

After that a look at how I manage my email, and I think I've solved the problem of document version management. (Hint: it's not 'v1 FINAL'.)

Taking requests! 🙋🏾

I say this every time: tell us what you need! You ask, we build. What are your problems? Frustrations? I don't just mean with these Johnny.Decimal numbers – I mean with your entire digital life.

Reply to this email and let me know.

Elsewhere in the system

I'm changing the forum login system to use your Johnny.Decimal account. It's been confusing that you've had one account for the site, and another for the forum.

For most people, there's nothing to do. If you have an existing forum account and a Johnny.Decimal account with a different email address, you can connect them. See this post for more details.

You can already Log In > With your Johnny.Decimal account. The ability to log in with an existing username/password will be turned off on 15th November.

Lucy's system updates

Bit by bit, Lucy continues to improve our Life Admin and Small Business systems. LAS got some examples at 11.22 Health insurance & claims and a new link at 12.31 Motor vehicle purchase, leasing, & rental. SBS got a couple of asset-related links sprinkled across category 13 Money earned, spent, saved, & owed.

These changes are tracked at Support > Updates which appears in the RSS feed.

Small Business support

I'm offering limited first-come-first-served Zoom sessions to all small business owners – you don't need to be a member. If you're struggling to get organised; if managing it all is too much; if you don't know what to do next or where all your stuff is; let's chat and I'll see how I can help.

Request a session here. Slots are only bookable up to 14 days ahead so if there aren't any free, check back later.

Our Business members can book a spot with me any time, with priority.

Small Business of the week

We love our Small Business System customers and want to do all we can to support fellow owners. If we all help each other we can make the world a bit nicer. (Cheesy but true!)

So I'd like to call out our good friend Jeff Lovett of Lovett Sundries, Pittsburg, PA. We've spoken to Jeff a bunch over the years. He runs a family business making natural personal care and home products. Made in the USA, with machines that have a Johnny.Decimal number stuck to the side. :-)

If you're looking for a holiday gift, I'd love it if you'd check them out. Why give your money to Amazon when you could give it to a much nicer Jeff instead?

Scams are really good now; please be careful

This isn't Johnny.Decimal-related but it happened to me just yesterday. Briefly, I got a call purporting to be from the Australian Cyber Security Centre. The caller knew my name, email address, and phone number. She was very convincing.

The details aren't important. Just remember this: if you get a call from anyone and they want any details from you, the only safe procedure is:

Ask for their name or a reference number. Tell them you'll call them back.
Go to their website and get their phone number directly. The number that Google's AI summary or your AI gives you might be a scam.
Hang up, and call them back on their published number.

AI corner

This will always be the last segment, so those of you who aren't into it can skip it.

On the forum at Give LLMs access to life admin, Chris shared an amazing story:

Having Claude make a note of a recent vaccination I had and having it comment: well, when is your second dose? Me: what second dose? Claude: this requires two doses. Me: call the travel nurse, who indeed made a grievous error and scheduled my second dose immediately.

This gets to how I think about Johnny.Decimal as a whole, and its role in your life. On other forums, people seem to want to record their whole lives in their PKMs and then have their LLM somehow pull … what, inspiration? spiritual guidance? therapy? I really don't know … from it.

My goals are far more prosaic. Tell me what I missed. Imagine if mine had been able to tell me to expect a letter from the state of NSW about an upcoming eye test requirement. This is a very predictable event given the fact that I'm a resident of NSW who just turned 50.

As it stands my licence is suspended. Annoying! I'd love this sort of 'heads-up' advice from Claude: real, actionable guidance. What I don't need is for it to tell me how I should feel.

This is exactly the sort of thing that's possible when you think of Johnny.Decimal as a system for personal records management. Store life's important events in your JDex, and Claude becomes truly useful.

I just tested this by connecting it to Bear and asking it to review the first block of my Life Admin. Claude reports:

Your International Driving Permit has probably expired. 11.14+ records the application on 2025-09-15. An Australian IDP is valid for 12 months from the date of issue, or until your licence expires if that is sooner, so it expired in about September 2026. You need one to drive in Japan or Korea. A new IDP requires a valid NSW licence, so it depends on the previous item.

It also understood my age from the date on my birth certificate and recommended that I get a tetanus booster and a shingles vaccine. Now that is useful.

I'll be building this into the MCP server. It'll scan your system and look for gaps, then give you a timetable of life events. More on this later.

I just updated the JD CLI and the configuration file so they can use Bear as your JDex. See blog/0263 for details.

Thanks everyone, see you next week.