Johnny.Decimal

22.00.0192 March's YouTube roundup

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 02:34:08 GMT

March's YouTube roundup

Here's your monthly round-up.

Make your LLM more efficient with Johnny.Decimal

2026-03-04

https://youtu.be/h5TUFFQEJgw

Attention to detail gets you hired

2026-03-07

https://youtu.be/J2Sm9oIfj9A

Johnny.Decimal wasn't designed to organise everything

2026-03-11

https://youtu.be/DaK99lMlHH4

Meetings – at least they're not email

2026-03-14

https://youtu.be/EybKGE_TM_k

I use the structure like a big checklist

2026-03-18

https://youtu.be/2jSjo-94cCU

Fly around your system with these terminal tricks

2026-03-21

https://youtu.be/SM2TlZMOIYo

An easy way to save 20 minutes a day

2026-03-30

https://youtu.be/dEv7EYeX1Po

Decimal ozhoom from the forum sent me this AppleScript that you can hack to automate this process. Change the paths at the top.

# enter the folder location in quotes:
set path1 to "Users:john:xxxxxxxxxxxx" as alias
set path2 to "Users:john:P68 Personal Life" as alias
set path3 to "Users:john:xxxxxxxxxxxxx" as alias
set path4 to "Users:john:Downloads" as alias

tell application "Finder"
	open path1
end tell

tell application "System Events" to perform action "AXPress" of menu item "New Tab" of menu "File" of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1 of application process "Finder"
tell application "Finder"
	activate
	set target of front window to path2
end tell

tell application "System Events" to perform action "AXPress" of menu item "New Tab" of menu "File" of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1 of application process "Finder"
tell application "Finder"
	activate
	set target of front window to path3
end tell

tell application "System Events" to perform action "AXPress" of menu item "New Tab" of menu "File" of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1 of application process "Finder"
tell application "Finder"
	activate
	set target of front window to path4
end tell

22.00.0191 Monodraw: create lovely ASCII diagrams

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 05:32:54 GMT

Monodraw: create lovely ASCII diagrams

We're refreshing the website and replacing as many of the images as we can with line art diagrams. This fits the vibe better, they're easier to maintain, and they're hundreds of bytes instead of tens of thousands.

Lucy is using the delightful Monodraw for this and I thought I'd give it a shout-out. If you have any need to draw ASCII diagrams and you're on a Mac, you'd be mad not to use it.

There's a free trial, and it's ten measly dollars to buy.

Figure 22.00.0191A. Monodraw (image from their website).

22.00.0190 Decimal Diary: Happy 1st birthday to the SBS

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:01:22 GMT

Happy 1st birthday to the SBS

Today's blog is a guest post by Lucy.

I've been thinking a lot about 'this time last year'. It was a period of upheaval for us, but also of huge productivity.

We were madly selling everything we owned on Gumtree and getting ready to move out of our home of 5 years. And we'd set a hard deadline that the Small Business System (SBS) had to be released by the end of March.

A year ago, I was buried in a looong document. For reasons, this was also a very sad time. And while it sounds cliched (and I'm no workaholic), I was grateful to have work to bury myself in. Johnny was nearby figuring out the code to make a website with a login.¹ I'm pretty sure I saw steam coming out of his laptop from time to time.

Break to stand at the whiteboard and discuss something. Write more words. Break to pack a moving box. Write more code. Break to run outside and help the buyer of our pot plants load them into a trailer. Back to the whiteboard. And so it continued.

In a nutshell, here's how we made it.

The process

We followed our own advice and stuck to the process in the Workbook/Workshop.

Scope

Our scope statement was basically "try to think of everything a small business has to do". We drew on our combined 40+ years of experience and also tested our ideas on a list of about 20 different business types. We defined a small business as fewer than 10 people, roughly.

Discovery

I opened the first of many blank mind maps and started reading different business and tax websites from the Australian Government. I pulled out keywords on anything to do with starting a small business.

Then I reviewed:

Everything in my archived filesystems from when I was a freelancer (Johnny did the same).
Everything in the Johnny.Decimal business filesystem and JDex.
Some filesystems and feedback from real small businesses in the US and New Zealand.²

I wrote down as many things as possible. I sat and thought. I walked and thought. I went down many research rabbit holes. I printed out a 20-page business plan template, stuck it to a wall, and stared at it many times a day. This went on for a few weeks.

Figure 22.00.0190A. An inspirational government business plan template on our wall.

Creating areas and categories

Then it was time to start grouping the 'discoveries' into areas and categories. And having Big Discussions with Johnny at the whiteboard. During this time, we also got up at 5am every day for Big Discussion Walks around our neighbourhood with mugs of coffee.

The mind map began to take shape and grow.

Figure 22.00.0190B. The SBS areas and categories in progress.

Building the system

This was a very collaborative process and Johnny spent a lot of time riding the whiteboard:

I took notes, photos, and audio recordings of our conversations.
We named the IDs and wrote the descriptions.
We numbered the IDs only after much consideration.
Then I wrote the supporting words for each ID.

Figure 22.00.0190C. Figuring out the finance category.

ID by ID, we began at the beginning and kept going until we reached the end. There were several rounds of review and feedback on mind maps and my master document.

When the content was 'approved', I pasted it into hundreds of text files to become the website. More rounds of review of the website followed. By the end, we were both quite batty and delirious.

Figure 22.00.0190D. Putting Johnny's feedback and other edits into the master document with a Friday-evening martini.

Figure 22.00.0190E. Proofreading the master document at the kitchen table before turning it into the website.

Final stats

A quick review of our archived files shows:

Our new system had 5 areas, 21 categories, and 344 IDs.³
There were 13 research and planning mind maps.
The master document had 342 pages and 46,309 words (written in Markdown).
Johnny had written 13,000 lines of code.
The project lasted 6 months, from September 2024 to March 2025.

We also did a sticker mailout to the first 100 people around the world who bought the system before it was released. Thank you for trusting us!

Figure 22.00.0190F. The pre-release sticker (Johnny loves planes) – we're still repping ours.

Everything related to this project was made with sweat, tears, and love by two humans.

What now

We're really happy that we made this system. We'd talked about making something for small business for ages, we just weren't sure where to begin. We spend all day in ours and we hope it's helped other businesses feel more organised.

We have ideas for improvements and welcome feedback. In the meantime, there's a new YouTube playlist for videos on how Johnny uses the SBS.

And, finally, a special shoutout to Genesis and the inventor of the martini, without whom this project would not have been possible.

Versus a one-off download and PDF from Shopify as per the Life Admin System v1.0. ↩
Thank you Dan from Paparonis, Des from Datum Machines, and Jeff from Lovett Sundries. And any other Decimals who were in touch on the forum, Discord, or email. 😊 ↩
Not including all the standard zeros throughout. ↩

22.00.0189 Documenting my security practices

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 04:33:38 GMT

Documenting my security practices

Soon enough I'll be releasing JDHQ v26 which will allow you – if you so choose – to store your own data. Think textual data: notes, the titles of IDs and categories, that sort of thing.¹ (I have no plans to build a file storage service.)

But data is data. Even the title of an ID you create is potentially sensitive: it might relate to a medical procedure, for example.

It would be disastrous to leak or otherwise allow this data to be exposed. There's the obvious moral motivation, but also an economic one: nobody's going to pay to use an insecure platform!

I'm particularly sensitive to security issues given last month's leak of email addresses. So here's an in-depth look at my security practices. In the hope of making it readable by the layperson, I'll give background where necessary. I welcome feedback.

Background: secret keys

My site uses a number of third-party services. Of particular interest are Clerk, which handles authentication, and Supabase, where your data is stored.

Use of third parties like this is not only normal, it's encouraged. Authentication in particular is notoriously difficult: it's the sort of thing I really shouldn't do myself. It's very likely that I'd do it wrong and introduce a security hole. Far better to use a company whose entire focus is authentication. So you should see this use of third parties as 'a feature, not a bug'.²

My site runs on Netlify and for Netlify to talk to Clerk or Supabase, it needs my 'secret key' from those services. This is just a very long password that servers use to talk to each other. But there's a clue in its name: secret. If you have my Clerk or Supabase secret key, you can do anything that I can do.

We'll come back to these secret keys.

My logins to these sites

If you could sign in to these sites as me, that'd be bad. You could generate new secret keys, for example.

All of my logins use unique email addresses at a never-published domain (i.e. not …@johnnydecimal.com), unique strong passwords generated by 1Password, and 2-factor authentication.³

Background: encryption

If I didn't encrypt your data, I'd be able to trivially – and accidentally – read it. Here's what the Supabase console looks like.

Figure 22.00.0189A. Supabase table view.

I've highlighted the 'notes' field. If that wasn't encrypted, any notes you entered would just appear there. Similarly for the title of your custom ID in the column to the left.⁴

Encryption is a balancing act. Broadly, there are two options.

I encrypt it with a key that I hold. I can decrypt it.
I encrypt it with a key that you hold. I can't decrypt it.

You might think option 2. is the obvious choice, but it comes with a serious drawback: if you lose the key, there's nothing I can do to help you decrypt your data. It's irretrievably lost. And overall it's just a more complex solution with more moving parts; more to go wrong.

For this reason, the vast majority of services that you use hold a key to your data. Apple has a key that will unlock your iCloud account: otherwise when you drop your phone in the ocean and realise you've also forgotten your iCloud password, all your family photos are gone. (This happens all the time.)⁵

The data encryption key

This encryption key is basically another secret key: a very long 'password'. I'll explain below how I ensure the safety of these keys.

The data encryption algorithm

I use AES-256-GCM. AES-256 is the gold standard for symmetric encryption. The 'GCM' part adds authentication: not only is your data unreadable without the key, but any tampering with the 'ciphertext' (the encrypted end result) is detected. If someone were to modify your encrypted data in the database, the system would reject it rather than silently returning garbage.

Each time a piece of data is encrypted, a random value is mixed in. This means that even if two users enter identical notes, the encrypted result is completely different each time – an attacker looking at the database can't even tell which entries contain the same text.

Your name isn't stored alongside your data

Note the user_id field in that screenshot. This id, which is a very long random string like user_39FY886j223z4M3jAib2ZRwcM3H, is how your data, in Supabase, is linked to your user, at Clerk.

So in order to steal your data and link it to your identity, an attacker would need to:

Steal the Supabase database.
Steal the encryption key, to decrypt the data.
Access my Clerk account, to link the stolen data to an individual.

This assumes that I even have your name. You can save it in your JDHQ profile, but it's optional. I encourage the use of email aliasing for further anonymity.⁶

You need to trust me

This whole thing implies a level of trust. Just like you trust Apple not to go rummaging about in your iCloud account, you need to trust me to not decrypt your data just because I'm curious. To make it explicit: I won't do that. That'd be creepy and, again, business-ruining if discovered. What would I possibly stand to gain?

I am subject to the laws of Australia

Like every other service you use, I am subject to the law. Holding a key to your data means that, if legally compelled to reveal it, I am able to do so. This is just something to be aware of.⁷

'Advanced data protection' in the future

I would like to add an ADP-like feature – where you supply your own encryption key – in the future. Given the nature of my site and the data stored on it, it's honestly not high on my list of priorities.

Implementation details

The TL;DR of the background story so far is that:

I hold a number of keys that are vital for the running of the service.
These keys are critically sensitive. If leaked, stolen, or lost: game over.

Here's how I protect those keys.

Loading them into consoles

There is a one-time action which is to:

Retrieve the secret key from its service, e.g. Clerk, or
Generate a secret key, e.g. for data encryption, then
Load that secret key into the consuming service, e.g. Netlify.⁸

It is in my interests to make these keys as difficult to access as possible. Fortunately, after this one-time load, I never need to access them. I'd only need them if, say, I moved from Netlify to another host.

I also need to not lose them

This is another trade-off. While keeping these keys very secure, I need to ensure that I don't lose them. While I can regenerate Clerk's secret key, this isn't an option for the key that encrypts your data. If I lose that key, I lose the ability to decrypt your data: also disastrous.

1Password

It is standard practice to store keys in a password manager. 1Password is one such tool. I've used it for my own passwords – which are all unique – since 2009. It provides dedicated features for developers.

Production keys

Production keys – those that are used to secure your data – are stored in a dedicated 1Password vault. Given that I do not routinely use these keys, I have removed my user account's 'read' access from this vault.

This causes the vault to un-synchronise from the desktop application. As a result, these keys are no longer available on this laptop.

This prevents even the most nefarious process from accessing them. Even if I were tricked into unlocking my vault: the keys simply aren't there to read.

To re-synchronise the vault to this laptop I need to sign in to the 1Password web console and add 'read' access back to my account. This would be a very deliberate action and certainly not one that a nefarious script could perform.

Development keys

This gets a bit technical.

My development keys – which I need to have available to me on this laptop, but which are not used to secure your data – are stored in a vault that is synchronised to this laptop. I have created a service account that only has access to this vault.

These keys are made available to my development environment using secret references in my .env file.⁹ For example:

CLERK_SECRET_KEY="op://<vault-name>/<item-name>/CLERK_SECRET_KEY"

Because my 1Password service account token is available to my environment, development key requests do not trigger a fingerprint authentication request.

This prevents 'fingerprint fatigue'. Previously, every key request triggered 1Password's authentication pop-up. It was natural to instinctively respond to these requests and would have been easy, therefore, to over-respond and accidentally approve a nefarious request.

Now, if a nefarious actor somehow triggers an op read request, 1Password will prompt me. This prompt will be unexpected and unusual; I will not instinctively reach for the fingerprint sensor. Not that it matters: because, as noted above, production keys aren't even here. There's nothing to steal.

This layered approach protects against supply-chain attacks like this one from 2025.

Key rotation

'Rotation' is the practice of proactively getting new secret keys and re-loading them into consoles. It's standard at large companies where many people might have access to a key: it limits the exposure if you forget to remove someone's access after they leave, for example.

I have no plans to routinely rotate my keys. For an individual with the controls described above it adds operational risk without any meaningful benefit. When am I most likely to accidentally leak a key? When I'm handling keys. So the less I do that, the less the risk.

Trufflehog

I have installed Trufflehog as a GitHub action. This software 'sniffs out' any secrets that are accidentally committed and pushed to GitHub (i.e. a worse version of what I did with those email addresses).

Every push to JDHQ is scanned by Trufflehog.

Package updates

Modern websites use any number of third-party software packages, and those packages are a source of security vulnerabilities. It is important to keep them up-to-date.

I have a monthly checklist to update all packages. I protect against malicious updates using pnpm's minimum-release-age and blocking of post-install scripts. This means that a package can't be installed until at least one week after its release, giving the community time to discover and flag compromised versions.

Phishing

You can have the best key security in the world, but if an attacker tricks you into handing them over – by setting up a fake site, and luring you into entering them there – it's game over.

That's what a phishing attack is. They can be extraordinarily sophisticated, and even the best security researchers in the world are susceptible. Here's how I guard against them.

1Password, again

Using a password manager, and only ever using it to fill your passwords – never entering them manually – is the simplest way to avoid having your credentials phished.

Because 1Password knows that my Clerk password only belongs at https://clerk.com. When a phisher tries to get me to sign in at https://сlerk.com – look carefully, see if you can spot the scam – 1Password will refuse to enter my password.

Passkeys are an even stronger defence against this, and I use them for all of my sensitive services.

Browser behaviour

Behaviourally, I have another line of defence. In this video I show how I have my common sites permanently set up in Safari tab groups.

So if someone mailed me a link to sign in to Clerk, I wouldn't click that link. That would open a new tab in a new window, which would break my neat system. Instead, I already have an open tab for Clerk, in my ⚙️ Services group. I'd head over there and look for a notification.

Disclosure and feedback

If I ever discover a security issue I will disclose it within 24 hours on the blog. Posts appear in my RSS feed, and I cross-post to the forum, Discord, and Mastodon.

Security.txt

I welcome security feedback and publish a security.txt.¹⁰

Summary

I'm very, very comfortable with my security posture. I've written it up here for a few reasons. It forced me to consider the end-to-end approach. I hope it gives you confidence. I hope you learned something. And I hope that other solo developers might find these patterns useful.

As always, I am happy to answer questions directly by email or on the forum or Discord.

Thanks

Versions of this post were kindly reviewed by two 'friends of Johnny.Decimal' who work in the field of IT security. Thank you. Any errors or omissions are, of course, my responsibility.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

This will be a very early beta-style release. I expect almost nobody will use it. But the only way for me to get this thing from no-product to useful-product is to build it, and start using it. So that's what I'm gonna do. ↩
A phrase that nerds use to mean something that's working as designed. ↩
I implement Passkeys where available, otherwise using one-time codes managed by 1Password. I don't use SMS authentication.

I own a YubiKey but given my physical situation – travelling the world, always on the move – the risk of losing it outweighs any benefit I feel it would give. ↩
This ID is one of the base set from Life Admin and as such its title doesn't need to be encrypted. ↩
Apple offers Advanced Data Protection for those who want to opt-out of this key recovery. Most people shouldn't use it. ↩
I'll be recording a free course with Lucy later in the year to explain how this works, and how to set it up yourself. ↩
I'll implement a warrant canary before the new site goes live. ↩
Netlify recognises these keys as secrets and provides dedicated features to ensure their safety. ↩
.env is .gitignored, preventing exposure of even the 1Password secret reference string. ↩
See security.txt at Wikipedia. ↩

22.00.0188 A Productive Conversation with Mike Vardy

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:04:52 GMT

A Productive Conversation with Mike Vardy

Last week it was my pleasure to have A Productive Conversation with Mike Vardy. We talked about the origin story of Johnny.Decimal, and why there's room for plenty more systems in the productivity world; about the links between my system, task management, and Mike's concept of TimeCrafting; and about content vs. context, and how we're often better off starting with the latter, even though our instincts start us with the former.

Listen using the link below, or in any podcast player.

share.transistor.fm/s/99794f34

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0187 Post-incident review

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:56:32 GMT

Post-incident review

Yesterday I discovered that I had leaked 3,638 email addresses by uploading them to a public GitHub repository.

Here's what happened, how it happened, what I did about it, and what I'm doing to make sure it can't happen again.

TL;DR

This post will be long, so here's the essential stuff if that's all you care about.

Yesterday morning (2026-03-03 06:00 -- all times in this post are UTC) I was alerted by email and private message that someone's unique email address, that they had only ever used on my services, had received a phishing email purporting to be from PayPal.

There's only one way for this to be possible: it meant that I had allowed the address to be stolen. I acknowledged this with a blog post at 06:46, requesting that people let me know if they were affected.

Through the day I received, or could infer from my own data, 17 addresses that either did, or did not, receive the phishing email.

Analysis of these 17 data points led me to the realisation that I had uploaded a folder full of text files containing email addresses to a public GitHub repository. This made them visible to anyone who cared to go looking. I confirmed this theory at 18:00 and immediately made the repository private. I acknowledged this with a blog post at 18:18.

The first upload of 1,650 addresses occurred on 2024-10-08. Further updates were uploaded through 2025. The final number of addresses in the repository was 3,638. Because I don't know when the data was scraped from GitHub, I can't be sure which of those addresses was harvested. My assumption must be that they all were.

I am deeply sorry. I strive every day to be an exemplar of 'the good Internet'. In this instance, I have failed you quite miserably.

How to determine if your address was leaked

Immediately after this post has been published I will email the 3,638 addresses that were leaked.

From: Johnny 'Decimal' Noble <hello@johnnydecimal.com>
At: around 2026-03-04 18:00 UTC
Subject: Important: your email address was exposed [D25.14.44]

If you receive this email then your address was leaked.

You can also check if you received the phishing email:

From: PayPal Security <no.con**star@ca**a.cl>
At: around 2026-03-03 05:30 UTC
Subject: Please confirm your identity

If you receive this email then your address was leaked. (Check your spam folder: many providers correctly identified it as a phishing attempt.)

If you do not receive either of these emails then your address was not leaked.

Was any other data leaked?

Like names, addresses, dates of birth, passwords, or access to accounts?

No. The only data leaked was a list of email addresses in a text file.

What's the impact of the leak?

The email address that was leaked will receive spam and phishing attempts.

To be clear, your account has not been compromised. Only your email address has been made public. You do not need to change your password (assuming it is already unique -- see What can you do? at the end of this post).

Full timeline

06:00
- Leak notification received.
- Incident D25.14.44.2026-03-03 created.
06:46
- Public informed of breach.
08:16, 08:32, 08:47, 09:40, 10:43, 11:51, 12:55, 14:02, 14:43, 15:31
- Data received from affected users helped me to build the picture.
- I'll explain below why this took so long.
18:00
- I realised what it was and used local data to confirm.
- The repository was made private.
18:18
- Public informed of cause.

How it happened

Here's why I had a folder full of your email addresses, and how they ended up on GitHub.

Over the years I've used a variety of 3rd party platforms to deliver websites and services, as well as hosting a public email list.

Buttondown
- Used to host the mailing list from 2019–2024.
- Allowed users to opt-in to email marketing.
- Users hold an account of sorts; while you don't have a password, the platform records your email address.
Netlify
- Used to host johnnydecimal.com and jdhq.johnnydecimal.com from 2019–current.
- Users do not hold an account at Netlify: it's an infrastructure service only.
Gumroad
- Used to sell the Workbook from 2023–2024.
- Allowed users to opt-in to email marketing.
- Users held an account at Gumroad.
Thinkific
- Used to sell various products from 2023–2025.
- Users held an account at Thinkific.
Shopify
- Used to sell various products from 2024–2025.
- Allowed users to opt-in to email marketing.
- Users held an account at Shopify.
Stripe
- Used to process payments from 2024–current.
- Users hold an account of sorts at Stripe: you can't log in, but they hold a record of transactions linked to your email address.
PayPal
- Used to process payments from 2024–current.
- Users may hold an account at PayPal.
- It's also possible to check-out as a guest, but in any case your email address is recorded.
Listmonk
- Used to host the mailing list from 2025–current.
- Allows users to opt-in to email marketing.
- Users hold an account of sorts; while you don't have a password, the platform records your email address.
- The link at the bottom of every email allows you to unsubscribe (in which case your email address is retained) or delete your data entirely.
PikaPods
- Used to host Listmonk from 2025–current.
- Users do not hold an account at PikaPods: it's an infrastructure service only.
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
- Used to send emails from 2025–current.
- Users do not hold an account at Amazon: it's an infrastructure service only.
Clerk
- Used to host JDHQ user accounts from 2025–current.
- Users hold an account at Clerk.

If this sounds like a nightmare, it's because it is. But this is the reality of running a small online business: you stitch together that business based on the services available to you at the time. This is a factor of features, cost, and experience. As your business grows, you move between platforms.

To be explicit: none of this is the fault of any of these platforms. I list them all merely to demonstrate the range of stuff one has to deal with.

The reality of running this type of business is that you spend a lot of time consolidating user data from these services. Why is this person in this data set and are they the same person as this person in that data set? You do this so you can mail the right people the right information; send subsets of people offers that are only relevant to them; migrate user accounts from old platforms to new platforms.

As a small business with limited resources there's only one practical way to do this analysis: Excel. In a bad month I might spend 50% of my time 'mashing' data like this. I hated having to do it, and eliminating it was a very strong driver in my building JDHQ: because now you have a single account, forever. No more mashing of CSV files exported from half a dozen platforms.

(Ironically, this leak is partially a result of my very, very strong desire to never send anyone an email that they don't want. I've spent dozens of hours over the last few years meticulously poring over and cross-referencing this data, taking pains to ensure that someone who opted out on this platform didn't get opted back in on that platform. Had I not bothered, some of this data might not have been on my laptop. C'est la vie.)

So we have a folder full of CSV files

That's where we are in the story: I have a folder full of CSV files from these various platforms that I've been using to consolidate and migrate accounts, and to send email directly from my laptop via Amazon SES.

So how did they end up on GitHub? Sheer stupidity.

This repository started on 2024-01-10 as an intentionally-public archive of emails sent to the mailing list. It contained 3× text files.

The problem started on 2024-10-08 when I started to use the same folder to store the output from these CSV files.¹ Forgetting that the linked repository was public, I committed these files and 'pushed' them to GitHub. At this point they were available publicly.

Why this git/GitHub thing?

It's natural to use git -- which is software independent of GitHub, the website -- to manage a dataset like this. It gives you version control, which is really useful. If you mess up, you can just 'roll back' to a previous state.

Using git locally isn't the problem. Not realising that the linked GitHub repository is public and pushing to it was the fatal mistake. I'll address this below.

From 2024-10-08, this folder, which lives at ~/dev/amazon-ses on my laptop, continued to be used as a place where I stored lists of email addresses so that I could send email via Amazon SES. Every time I did that, I committed the changes and pushed them to GitHub. And so by yesterday, the repository held 3,638 unique email addresses.

My own password hygiene

So that I don't need to make the point below with regards to each specific service, I'll make it here.

I have exclusively used 1Password for password management since 2009. All of my passwords are unique and they exceed all modern standards for entropy. Where 2FA is an option I always enable it.

It was, at least, nice to know from the start that this leak wasn't the result of bad password management.

My 'secret key' hygiene

Separate from passwords, developers of sites like mine have 'secret keys' that are used by servers and services to talk to each other. From JDHQ, for example, you can opt-in to product notification emails. This is possible because the service that serves JDHQ, Netlify, has the secret key for Listmonk and can talk to it directly via the software I've written. If you have the secret key for a service, you can read all of the data contained therein.

I was already planning an article detailing the steps I take to secure these keys, so I'll just note here that they're also all stored in 1Password, and that I had already taken what I believe to be extraordinary lengths to secure them against attack. More to follow.

Listmonk and PikaPods

I 'self-host' my mailing list using Listmonk hosted on a PikaPod.² At 06:31 I identified that the Postgres instance used by Listmonk was open for login using a public console. This isn't enabled by default: I had turned it on a few months earlier so that I could connect directly to the database using client software on my Mac.

Forgetting to disable that access was definitely a mistake -- see action 4, below -- but the risk seemed low. The username and password are set by PikaPods and both were secure: the username not being admin or similar, and the password being a 24-character string. Checks of the console software, Adminer 5.4.2, showed no vulnerabilities.

For these reasons, I dismissed the possibility of a leak via this route. Because I was so sure that this wasn't the cause, I didn't email PikaPods until 15:36. Finally doing so, I asked them if there were any logs for this console endpoint that might be useful.

Their reply just 45 minutes later was stunningly helpful, clearly written by a caring human. I could not have recommended them more before this happened, and yet here we are, my endorsement stronger than ever. A superb service, utterly without fault.

At this point (16:13) I hadn't positively eliminated this as the cause, but it seemed vanishingly unlikely.

Buttondown

Early data supported a theory that Buttondown's service had been compromised. As a reminder, they hosted my mailing list from 2019–2024. So it's not unusual that there was a 1:1 match between leaked email addresses. I mailed their support at 08:57 emphasising:

"This is NOT an accusation -- I'm trying to figure this out myself. It's purely FYI, and I genuinely hope for you that I'm wrong."

– thinking that, if a leak had occurred, their support might appreciate the data.

Through the day I continued to receive data points, none of which disproved this idea. This analysis was basic science at work: build a hypothesis, collect data, see if data supports hypothesis.

Of course good science is about a falsifiable hypothesis, and at 15:31 I was made aware of 3× addresses that had received the phishing email that were not in my Buttondown exports. It was a relief to rule them out as a cause and I notified them immediately.

Again, I can't sing the praises of a company enough. Anita from Buttondown support felt like a friend yesterday, keeping in touch even after I informed them of this finding. If you need an email newsletter, use Buttondown. They're truly good people.

How I came to the answer

Around 16:30 we went for our usual end-of-the-day walk. Still not knowing the cause, I replayed all of this to Lucy. Thoughtful questions followed and, via this conversation, the thought occurred to me. Back to science, this is Occam's Razor in a nutshell: given all possibilities, the simplest should be considered the most likely.³

The simplest possibility being that I, as a holder of all of this data on my laptop, committed it to a public repository. Getting home, this was confirmed at 18:00.

A note on the data sources involved

You might be on this list despite having never signed up for my mailing list. For example, hundreds of email addresses from JDHQ members are impacted. Those addresses aren't on the public list, because I never sign you up without your explicit opt-in.

These addresses are in the data because I used the leaked scripts and Amazon SES to send transactional emails as well as marketing emails to the public list. Similarly, addresses from previous platforms may be present.

Lessons learned

Looking out of the window earlier this week I saw a fire engine, sirens blaring, scream up behind a learner driver. Should be part of your driving test, I thought. Because you can't truly be prepared for the panic induced by sirens a metre behind you until it happens.

In a way, I'm glad this happened. Without trying to minimise the event, it's fair to say that on the spectrum of security and data leaks, this is about as benign as it gets. Better that this happens now when I can learn from it, than a much worse event happens later.

Because if this hadn't happened, I would have spent the day developing JDHQ, where you'll soon have the ability to store your own notes, and create your own IDs.⁴ It is impossible to convey the depth of responsibility I feel for this data. I lie awake at night thinking about how to keep it secure. (An enjoyable problem to solve, to be clear.)

Like I said above, I've already been planning a post addressing this data and the measures I'll take to protect it. So here let's just talk about what I learned yesterday.

If you don't have it you can't lose it

I can't stress enough that I do not want your personal data. Having it means having responsibility for it: and then look what happens.

You may notice that I don't ask for your name when you sign up for JDHQ. Requiring a name is an option at Clerk, where your user account is held. I turned it off. You may notice that I don't ask for your address when you make a purchase. This is an option at Stripe, who processes your payment. I turned it off.

Still, in diagnosing this issue yesterday I realised how much data I have on this laptop. Again -- see above -- this is largely unavoidable. I run a business, I need to manage the business' data. For example, every quarter I need to download my transactions for tax reporting.

But I can definitely change my behaviour.

Action 1: make customer data more difficult to access

You might think I'd be safer just deleting it, but this data proved very useful in troubleshooting yesterday's issue. Without it I'd have been blind. So I'd rather not delete it; I don't think there's a problem that this would solve.

The problem to solve is that having this stuff sitting in folders on my laptop is too loose.⁵ It's too easy for something to leak; too easy for me to think of these files in the same way that I think of all my other files. Instead, I need to be acutely aware that when I'm interacting with them that I'm in some special place. I need to be on high alert.

I have created an APFS encrypted disk image and moved all existing customer data to it. It is mounted on-demand. The password is in 1Password and requires a manual copy/paste: I won't store it in my Keychain, so the disk can't ever mount without my explicit action.

Mounting it will forever recall this incident, and I'll be vigilant. I'll do what I need to do and unmount it. There's no chance that I'll make the mistake of pushing something in there up to the cloud.

Action 2: only download what I need

When I download data from these platforms -- say that quarterly tax analysis from Stripe -- my tendency has been to be lazy, and grab everything. As in, choose all the columns, download everything offered.

Because if you're not exactly sure what you need, it's more convenient to have everything to hand than to have to go back and get what you missed.

From today, I'll only download the specific data that I need to do the job. For Stripe's tax analysis, that might be as minimal as the transaction ID, amounts, and the country of purchase. Your name and email address isn't a factor in my reporting a quarterly sales tax total to the Australian Tax Office -- so why even request that in the export?

Action 3: Proactively delete accounts

I still had a Buttondown account that I wasn't using. It still contained thousands of email addresses.

It, and its associated data, has been deleted. If I think of any other similar accounts, I'll delete them.

Action 4: reminders to disable open services

While it proved not to be relevant, I was disappointed to find that I'd left the Listmonk Postgres database console access enabled. This was an unnecessary risk and happened because I simply forgot to disable it when I was finished.

In the future, if I open up anything like this -- which, again, is going to be necessary to run a business -- I'll set a timed reminder for myself to close it when finished.

Action 5: GitHub is not a backup service

I have a tendency to think of GitHub as a useful backup service. Do a quick git push and now the precious data that I just spent all day massaging into shape is copied to the cloud.

This isn't what GitHub is for! Never again, for any data.

Action 6: Compliance/reporting

Thanks to my Discord for flagging the possibility that I might need to register this breach with various national authorities.

I've investigated a few, and this event is below the reporting threshold. GDPR says that I need to keep internal breach logs and learn from the event, which I was already doing. If you're aware of a more strict requirement from your local authority, let me know and I'll gladly comply. Obviously I can't check them all.

What can you do?

You, as in the reader. What can you do to make yourself more safe online?

Lucy and I have been talking for at least a year about producing a (free) video series addressing the basics of online hygiene. We've moved that idea to the top of the list and will start working on it immediately.

I need to get this post published so I won't go into details here, but the two things you can do to put yourself above 99% of everyone else are:

Use a password manager. Allow it to generate random passwords for you, different for every site. This isn't optional in 2026.⁶
Use unique email addresses for each service that you sign up for. This is more difficult, and introduces complexity.

We'll cover both of these in the course.

Questions?

If you have any questions please post them at the dedicated forum thread for this incident.

If you run a small business and need help: we are here. This stuff is difficult: I messed up and I'm supposed to be an expert. Please ask and we will help you.

End of incident review.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

More accurately, the leaked data took the form of lists of email addresses in a .sh script, which called the aws sesv2 command to send an email. For the sake of simplicity I'll continue to refer to 'CSV files' in the main story; the data is identical, the only difference being a file extension. ↩
Acknowledging that this is a stretch of the definition of 'self-hosting'; the point being that PikaPods provides me the raw instance, and that configuration and management of this instance is my responsibility. They sit between PaaS and SaaS. ↩
I know that's a common mis-reading of Occam's Razor, which actually states that the theorem that introduces the fewest new elements should be considered the most likely. Close enough. ↩
One person has already written me asking why I think storing user data in JDHQ is a good idea. This isn't the post to prosecute that question but briefly: I'm building features that I want. I think you'll find them useful too. If you never want to use them … just don't. ↩
Noting that I don't consider the laptop itself to be an attack vector. It requires my password immediately after being locked, has FileVault full-disk encryption, and has no open Internet ports. ↩
Coincidentally, a friend of Lucy's was hacked last week. They got her Microsoft OneDrive account and everything in it. She's in the process of getting new passports and drivers licences. A true nightmare. Why? Shared passwords. Your password must be unique. ↩

22.00.0186 I uploaded your email address to GitHub

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:18:13 GMT

I uploaded your email address to GitHub

Further to my discovery of the data leak earlier today, I spent most of the day trying to figure out what had happened. Finally, on a walk with Lucy after we knocked off, the lightbulb went off.

I didn't, did I? Surely not.

I did.

I uploaded a .csv containing your email address to a public GitHub repository. (For the non-technical of you: that's just a web page. I published your email address on a web page.)

Good news: not a 'hack' in the traditional sense. Just a dumb mistake.

Bad news: oof. Johnny. So bad.

To you, whose address is now public, I can only offer my humblest and sincerest apology. Unless you know me personally you won't know what this means to me.

Full report to follow

I'll write this up in detail tomorrow. There's a lot to learn.

I haven't mailed everyone affected yet because there hasn't been much to say. I'll send a link to tomorrow's post once it's up.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0185 A security incident

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 06:46:07 GMT

A security incident

This morning I received an email from someone whose unique johnnydecimal@example.com address has received a PayPal phishing email. My personal address received the same email.

The email is from no.con**star@ca**a.cl. Its subject is Please confirm your identity.

I am investigating. If you received this email, please forward it to me.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0184 February's YouTube roundup

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 08:39:45 GMT

February's YouTube roundup

We're going to try to post much more regularly on YouTube this year. At the end of each month I'll post a link to each of our videos.

(It does help us if you 'subscribe' to the channel, in YouTube, even if you never actually go there. I promise I'll never become a like and subscribe! bro.)

There's a lot of beginner-introductory stuff this month, and the start of a Small Business series that we'll continue through the year.

YouTube is a hot mess, unfortunately

On testing this page, I notice that YouTube -- the largest video player on the Internet owned by one of the richest companies -- doesn't actually work. As in, if you're unlucky 👋🏼 you'll be asked to 'sign in to prove you're not a bot' despite being signed in, and there being no button to enable you to sign in.

I've put a link below each of the videos, and longer-term we'll get these loaded up to JDHQ where you can watch ad-free without any of this nonsense.

My apologies. Not my platform.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0183 The 'work log'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 07:08:23 GMT

The 'work log'

I continue to try to be more deliberate in how I work.

I continue to fail.

Why bother?

This desire has a few roots. I'd like to be as close to the canonical ideal of Johnny.Decimal -- the persona, not the man -- as possible. Every time I do something in my business and I'm not doing it JDex-first, a ~~fairy loses its wings~~ decimal loses some precision.

This isn't some idealistic dream. Things are worse when I forget to update my JDex. I run a business with a whole bunch of complexity and I do it from a 13" laptop from a hotel room desk. So when I forget to update some detail about how my mailing list is configured, say, then that bites me later. It's lost time, more work, and a frustration because I have the tools. I have no excuse. I invented the tools!

I am also prone to jumping between tasks during the day. This isn't good for an ADHD-ish brain, it isn't good for productivity, and it's exhausting.

So that's the goal. Picture my work habits as a colony of ants, each holding some morsel of goodness, dashing around seemingly at random, every tempting scent an invitation to turn off the current path.

I'd like to work more like an old dog heading towards its bowl. Plod towards the bowl. Eat what's in the bowl. Maybe lie down a moment. Good dog.

How?

I've already got a task manager, and I already know how to use it -- see my tiny-window-at-the-top-left technique from this video at around 03:00 (requires access to JDU/Task & Project Management).

Figure 22.00.0183A. Things, as small as a window can be made.

And I've already got a JDex with an entry for everything I do. I've been playing with this idea of a 'work log' for a while, so I'm going to combine these two techniques along with timers and some checkpoints through the day.

None of this is rocket science. I just need to do it and form some good habits.

Work log

I still haven't found a good tool for this, so it's something I'm going to build into JDHQ. But for now here's what I'm doing in Obsidian, which runs my JDex for the business.

The goal is to 'check-in' and 'check-out' of IDs as I work on them. This keeps me on track; allows me to log a quick line or two about what I did; and provides visibility of everything I touched at the end of the day/week/month.

I'll outline it here but don't worry about the details. I'm still tweaking this and will do another post later.

I have a note up in my system standard zero, 00.15 Work logs, by the day. It serves purely as a target for backlinks, because in each entry that I touch through the day, I have a header Work logs and under there I create entries that look like this:

- [[00.15 Work logs, by the day#2026-02-26|2026-02-26 09:04]]
  - Checked in.

There's a bit of Markdown magic going on there.¹ Again, details for a future post. How this looks in note 00.15 is what matters.

Figure 22.00.0183B. Backlinks at 00.15.

I've filtered the backlinks on today's date, and there's what I'm doing now, and what I've done so far. Nice.

Statement of intent

I'm telling you all that I'm doing this so that I keep doing it. I'll report my findings each week, and summarise what I've been working on.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Also I don't type this out every time. A Raycast snippet bound to ;;worklog expands it for me: [[00.15 Work logs, by the day#{date format="yyyy-MM-dd"}|{date format="yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm"}]]. ↩

22.00.0182 JDex deep-dive: data and storage options

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:59:56 GMT

JDex deep-dive: data and storage options

This post is a deep-dive into two aspects of your JDex: whether or not you use it to store data, and the different ways you can store the JDex itself. This article is long, and isn't a tutorial; this is reference material that I can now link to when common questions arise.

Our analogy: the library

This analogy courtesy of Moriarty on Discord, who said:

…the revelation was realising that my filesystem, (long-form) notes folder, physical filing cabinet etc were the bookshelves in a library, and my JDex was the index card drawer. One (the card index) describes the shelves and what's on them, the other (the shelves) have the content.

That's brilliant. Let's make it really explicit. Put yourself in your local city library, some time in the 1960s. 🕺🏼

Index cards

Before computers, libraries kept records of books on index cards.

Figure 22.00.0182A. The good old days.

Crucially, you can think of the index card as a representation of the book itself. If a card doesn't exist, the book might as well not exist. To find a book in a library you don't start at a bookshelf. You start with the index of books. Here's the process.

Go to the index.
Using the structure of the index (Dewey, in the case of your library) find the book in question.
The index card will tell you where the book is physically located.
Assuming the book is in the building -- it might be out on loan -- walk to the location indicated on the card and get the book.¹

Your JDex

Your Johnny.Decimal index (JDex) was designed to work exactly the same way. Your Johnny.Decimal IDs are the index cards. Each ID belongs to a category, which is analogous to the drawer. And -- not shown here because the diagrams are busy enough already -- we understand that each category belongs to an area just like each drawer is housed in a cabinet.

Figure 22.00.0182B. Categories hold IDs.

This is why I say the JDex is the most important thing in your system. A library without a catalogue is no longer a library: it's just a room full of books. Your life without a JDex is no longer a Johnny.Decimal system: it's just a bunch of files (even if they are neatly organised).

Metadata

Metadata is 'data that defines and describes the characteristics of other data' (Wikipedia). So if data is a book's contents, metadata is its publication date, ISBN number, current location, and so on.

We use this all the time without being conscious of it: the last modified time of a file is metadata. The fact that some piece of knowledge is in your email is metadata. (The knowledge itself being data.)

The thing about metadata is that it's typically tiny in comparison to the thing that it represents. As a result, we don't have to find some new place to store it. We already have one: the index entry.

For the library, this means writing this stuff directly on the index card. For your JDex, it means that your IDs' metadata is always stored directly with the JDex entry. Metadata is a fundamental component of the entry: it's not some separate thing to manage.

Here's how that might look with a handful of entries from the Life Admin System. Remember: purple box = category. Blue note = ID.

Figure 22.00.0182C. IDs from the Life Admin System with metadata.

Metadata should be standardised

You should decide on a common set of metadata 'keys' and use them consistently. This allows you to query it later: for example, finding all entries where Last updated: is after '2026-01-29', or all entries where Location: is 'fireproof lock box'.

This is only possible if you always call it Location. If you sometimes call it Where is it?, that's now a different thing.

Nerd note: we call these key/value pairs. Keys are standard. Their values change. As keys are special, I'll show them like this in this post.

This is an important distinction as we consider what's metadata vs. data, below.

In the near future, the Johnny.Decimal system will recommend a standard set of metadata keys. If I use it in this post, you may assume it will be in that standard.

'Above the line'

Note the horizontal line in these diagrams. That's deliberate: in my JDex, I use a line to separate metadata from data. Metadata is always 'above the line'. We'll see data 'below the line' shortly.

Above the line: the book's metadata.
Below the line: the book's contents.

Storing data in your JDex

In contrast to metadata, your library's index cards weren't designed to store the data that they represent. They aren't the book's contents.

But nor are computers 5×7" pieces of cardboard stored in a little metal box. So in this new world, you might choose to extend the usefulness of your index entries by using them to store data.

Figure 22.00.0182D. An ID entry with data 'below the line'.

Here, we're still recording the location of your passport as metadata 'above the line'. But we're also storing a bunch of other data 'below the line'.

Nerd note: we call this 'structured' vs. 'unstructured' data. Here metadata is structured, with standard keys. Our below-the-line data is unstructured: it's different for each entry.

This is what I do and recommend. It's simple. Everything's in one place. It's very hard to lose information, and very quick to retrieve it.

To address the alternative scenario, we need to expand this model.

Storing data outside your JDex

Back to the physical library. There, index cards point at books, and books contain data.

Figure 22.00.0182E. A book's index card points to the book's contents.

In exactly the same way, we can move the data out of our JDex note and into its own file.

Figure 22.00.0182F. A JDex entry points to its data.

Here, 11.12 Passports, residency, &… is an ID folder in our filesystem (orange). We've created 2 files there (yellow): one for our partner's passport, and one for our own. And we've moved the data out of the index entry into these text files.

To be sure we don't forget about this data, we've reminded ourselves about it using a Data property. (This is optional. But if in doubt, it's worth doing. It takes no time.)

A note on `Location`

Remember that this metadata relates to our passports. As in, the little book you show at immigration: not the Johnny.Decimal ID that is the concept of your passport.

That's why Data is split from Location. We have data about the passports, which is in some place. And, separately, the (physical) location of the passports.

But let's not get distracted. I'll have more to say about Location in a future post.

Recap

To recap, we've introduced two scenarios.

You store data in your JDex entry, below-the-line.
You store data externally, and (optionally) reference it above-the-line.

It might be interesting to note that here at JDHQ we use both of these methods. Johnny tends to prefer the first. Lucy, perhaps because of her career as a copywriter and editor, leans towards the second. They happily co-exist.

Quadrant chart

Let's introduce the beginnings of what will become a quadrant chart. This will help us to orient these concepts relative to each other.

The left/right split represents the scenarios just discussed.

Figure 22.00.0182G. All quadrant charts are born as two rectangles. True fact.

This is a continuum

There's a hard line down the middle of this diagram, but life isn't like that. The reality is that this is a continuum, with most cases somewhere in the middle.

To the far left of this diagram is the situation where you exclusively store data in your JDex. This is unrealistic: will you never save a file? Files are data. So when I say that you 'store data below-the-line', I mean some data: usually textual data, as it's natural to add that to the existing JDex entry. As soon as you also save a file, or keep any artefact related to this ID outside the JDex entry, you've moved away from that left edge.

The right edge of this diagram is somewhere you might actually exist. In this situation, you never store any data in your JDex. For example, your JDex might be an Excel spreadsheet, with one row for each ID.² Excel is a terrible place to try to write any sort of long-form text, so it would make sense for no data to be stored there.

This diagram is just useful for us to map out all the ways we can do it. But none of them is more correct than the others. It's all preference.

Where is your JDex stored?

There's another fundamental question to be addressed, and it relates to the storage of your JDex. We've established that you have a JDex. Where is it?

This is another continuum, the opposing sides being:

Store your JDex as individual files in your filesystem.
Store your JDex as some other artefact, not in your filesystem.

Let's explore these options.

JDex as individual files in your filesystem

What we mean here is simply that each JDex entry is an individual file, usually a text file, often formatted with Markdown.

You could manage these manually, but it's far more common to use an application, and the most common of those is Obsidian. For those who don't know it, you point it at a folder and it'll show you the structure of that folder and all of the Markdown files in it. Select a file from the left, edit it on the right. JDHQ provides downloads for the Life Admin and Small Business Systems that are designed to work with Obsidian.

Figure 22.00.0182H. Obsidian.

People enjoy Obsidian because it sits over your files: it's a convenient utility. But if you get sick of Obsidian, or if they decide to charge $500/year for a licence, or if you want to give some other app a try, you can just stop using it. All of your files are still Markdown files in a folder that you control.

The vertical axis of our chart now represents where your files are stored. Obsidian sits in the top half, where your JDex is 'files in your filesystem'. It spans both top-left and top-right quadrants as you still have the choice of where to store data: in your JDex, or externally.

Figure 22.00.0182J. Quadrant chart with Obsidian represented.

JDex stored elsewhere

There are a lot of options in this bottom half, so let's explore the simplest.

The other app that I love and support (with specifically-formatted downloads from JDHQ) is Bear. Superficially, Bear is identical to Obsidian: list on the left, editor on the right.

Figure 22.00.0182K. Bear.

But there is a crucial difference: Bear manages these JDex entries entirely for you. There's no concept of 'text files on your disk' to manage. There's no option in Bear to change the location of these files. You can't, outside of Bear, go and look at them. Another app can't edit them. You can't put them in a shared folder and collaborate with your partner.

(Technically, in fact, they aren't even a collection of text files. Rather, Bear manages them using a database which they 'highly recommend' that you do not touch.)

This sounds limiting, and in many ways it is. Why would you want this? Well, it's a lot simpler. You load your JDex files into Bear once, and then never have to think about where they are. Want them on your iPhone? Just install Bear and they'll appear. They're harder to lose because Bear stores them in your iCloud Drive so if you drop your laptop in a lake, no worries.³

Many apps work like this: Apple Notes, Craft, Evernote, Google Keep, Notion, and OneNote to name a few.⁴

Let's keep it simple and add Bear to our quadrant chart.

Figure 22.00.0182L. Quadrant chart with Bear represented.

The point of this distinction is that when you're using a method in the bottom half of this chart -- more of which we'll see shortly -- the decision of where to store your JDex is made for you. This is one less thing for you to have to manage.

Where are your JDex files?

A question naturally arises: if we're talking about you storing your JDex as 'files in your filesystem', where are those files? As usual, there are a few options.

Ignoring your JDex for a moment, here's a simple representation of your filesystem. As in, the Johnny.Decimal structure, probably in your Documents folder or on a cloud drive, where you save all your stuff.

▓ 10-19 Life administration/

▓ └── 11 Me & other living things/

▓     ├── 11.11 Birth certificate & proof of name

▓     ├── 11.12 Passports, residency, & citizenship

▓     └── …and so on

__________________

Figure 22.00.0182M.

The dark blocks on the left will make sense shortly. These tree diagrams don't work well on mobile, sorry. I've made sure that they are clear and flow properly at larger sizes.

It's pretty obvious that if you had a PDF that you needed to save -- say your latest passport renewal -- you'd put it in 11.12. Because it's a file, that you're saving in your filesystem. No new concepts there.

So if we're storing our JDex as files in our filesystem, it must be in here somewhere. Where else would it be?

This is one of the IDs that are reserved by the Johnny.Decimal system, and I hope the ID is obvious. It's the very first thing you should encounter in your system, the top of the tree: 00.00. It lives inside the system-reserved category 00.

▓ 00-09 System-management area/

▓ └── 00 System-management category/

▓     └── 00.00 JDex for the system

▓ 10-19 Life administration/

▓ └── …and so on

__________________

Figure 22.00.0182N.

Happy with that? There's a lot going on, and it's about to get deep. Get comfortable with that before we move on.

What goes in 00.00?

Above, we noted how Obsidian just watches a folder full of files and lets you edit them. The screenshot (figure 22.00.0182K) shows those folders in the left pane, full of text files. Those folders look like your Johnny.Decimal system. As this is your JDex, they define your system. So they look something like this.

░ 00-09 System-management area/

░ └── 00 System-management category/

░     └── 00.00 JDex for the system.md

░ 10-19 Life administration/

░ └── 11 Me & other living things/

░     ├── 11.11 Birth certificate & proof of name.md

░     ├── 11.12 Passports, residency, & citizenship.md

░     └── …and so on

__________________

Figure 22.00.0182P.

No, I didn't duplicate the previous figure by accident. Note the subtle difference from figure 22.00.0182M: now the IDs are Markdown (.md) files, which is what Obsidian will display in the right pane.

So if we stitch these two diagrams together, this is what your filesystem looks like.⁵

▓ 00-09 System-management area/

▓ └── 00 System-management category/

▓     └── 00.00 JDex for the system/

░         ├── 00-09 System-management area/

░         │   └── 00 System-management category/

░         │       └── 00.00 JDex for the system.md

░         └── 10-19 Life administration/

░             └── 11 Me & other living things/

░                 ├── 11.11 Birth certificate

░                 │         & proof of name.md

░                 └── 11.12 Passports, residency,

░                           & citizenship.md

▓ 10-19 Life administration/

▓ └── 11 Me & other living things/

▓     ├── 11.11 Birth certificate & proof of name

▓     ├── 11.12 Passports, residency, & citizenship

▓     └── …and so on

__________________

Figure 22.00.0182R.

Be really comfortable with that before we continue. At first glance this looks bonkers. But when you understand that 00.00 is a Johnny.Decimal ID that just happens to contain a folder structure that mirrors the overall structure … it's fine. And you're never spending any time in there yourself: let Obsidian manage it.

This is the 'partially nested' pattern

When you download your JDex files from JDHQ, there are a handful of options for Obsidian. This is the 'partially nested' pattern, in that the ID files are nested within an area/category structure. Obsidian shows this structure in the left pane.

There's an alternative 'flat' structure, in which those Markdown files aren't nested within an area/category structure. Some people just prefer that. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to imagine how this looks in your filesystem. (You can download these files from JDHQ as many times as you like: try it out. Note that you'll need to select Obsidian as your JDex app first. Both links require a JDHQ account.)

Let's place a dot on the diagram that represents these patterns. We're not concerned with whether we're storing data in our JDex or not, so we'll stick it in the middle.

Figure 22.00.0182S. Obsidian on the quadrant chart.

The 'fully nested' pattern

In the scenario just described, your JDex files were separate from the rest of your files: they're all saved at 00.00 while the rest of your stuff is below.

What if you didn't want to do this? What if you wanted to merge these two structures -- JDex and filesystem -- so that there was only one? This is possible, of course, and we call it the 'fully nested' pattern.

In this pattern, folder 00.00 goes unused.⁶ Instead, each of the Markdown files that are your JDex entries are scattered through your filesystem. Again, I've used the dark and light blocks to represent which components come from the original diagrams.

▓ 00-09 System-management area/

▓ └── 00 System-management category/

▓     └── 00.00 JDex for this system/

░         └── 00.00 JDex for this system.md

▓ 10-19 Life administration/

▓ └── 11 Me & other living things/

▓     ├── 11.11 Birth certificate & proof of name/

░     │   ├── 11.11 Birth certificate

░     │   │         & proof of name.md

▓     │   └── Photograph of birth certificate.jpg

▓     ├── 11.12 Passports, residency, & citizenship/

░     │   ├── 11.12 Passports, residency,

░     │   │         & citizenship.md

▓     │   └── Passport application.pdf

▓     └── …and so on

__________________

Figure 22.00.0182T.

On the surface, this feels like a good idea. Why wouldn't you want it all integrated? But me and many others have tried this and the universal consensus is that this doesn't work.

The point of this article is to explain these methods, not to tell you why one of them is worse than the others. So, just briefly:

The clean separation of JDex from filesystem is a nice mental separation. It reinforces your JDex as being the more important thing. Merging them breaks that.
Previously, you were pointing Obsidian at a folder full of tiny text files. Now, you're pointing it at your entire filesystem. There might be terabytes of data in there. This can slow it down significantly.
You're no longer able to selectively synchronise folders because the folder is the JDex entry. This was the killer blow for me.

So you probably shouldn't do this. For completion, let's add it to the diagram.

Figure 22.00.0182U. Two Obsidian options.

I've placed this item nearer the top of the chart as your JDex files are more 'in your filesystem' using this method than they were with the previous method.

Core concepts finished

That's it for core concepts. In the next section, let's fill out the diagram with some examples.

Examples

There are a handful of scenarios that we already understand. The diagram's getting busy so I'll extract some meaning to a table.

Figure 22.00.0182V. I honestly thought I was going to run out of letters for the captions on this one. Close call.

	Data stored	JDex stored
Obsidian 1	in JDex	'fully nested'
Obsidian 2	in JDex	'partially nested'
Obsidian 3	externally	'fully nested'
Obsidian 4	externally	'partially nested'
Bear 1	in JDex	managed by Bear
Bear 2	externally	managed by Bear
Excel	externally	as an .xlsx in your filesystem
Google Sheets	externally	in your Google Drive
Notion	within Notion	by Notion in their cloud
SQLite database	within the database	as a .db file in your filesystem
Airtable	externally	by Airtable in their cloud

Nit-picky points

We're getting in the weeds here, but I positioned those dots carefully so we might as well explain why.

The left/right split isn't so interesting: you either store data in your JDex, or you don't. Your choice here might be limited by the method you use to store your JDex. As we've already said, a spreadsheet is a terrible place to keep long-form notes; spreadsheets tend towards the right edge.

If you use a database like Notion, it's up to you. In this diagram I've designed a Notion where you do keep data there. Given Notion's power, this feels like a realistic scenario. But you could just have well designed a pure JDex-only database and stored all data externally.

Where the files are, on the vertical axis, is a touch more interesting. Google Sheets is in the lower half while Excel is in the upper because the Excel sheet is a file that you need to manage, and the Google Sheet exclusively lives in your Google Drive.

That said, you do still need to specify where in your Google Drive the file exists. You still need to file it somewhere, even if that somewhere happens to be in the cloud. Which is why Google Drive is above Airtable, an online database. With Airtable there is no consideration at all 'where' your database is stored. You don't get a folder structure that you have to 'file your database' in. (Other than a rudimentary dashboard that you can rearrange.) Your database is just at Airtable.

Similarly, Notion is at the bottom, because all of your stuff is in the Notion cloud. Conversely you might prefer to build yourself a SQLite database which is now a file that you need to manage. As we now know, that database should be stored at 00.00.

That'll do

I wrote this article to set up a framework that I can use in the future; a diagram into which I can slot more scenarios. This isn't meant to be comprehensive. There are a thousand scenarios that aren't included here.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

You might be thinking, 'that's not how I use my library'. But when you go to the library you're likely browsing the shelves. You don't know what you're looking for. That's a different behaviour from going to a reference library and recalling a specific book, which is the analogy here. ↩
A spreadsheet provides a nice way to think about your metadata. If each row is an ID, your columns store metadata. It's easy to see how you'd have one standard column for Location, and that adding another column for Where is it? is obviously silly. Columns define the keys of our key/value pairs. ↩
With the caveat that cloud storage is not a backup. See my mini-series on data, storage, and backups. ↩
If you use these apps, an important consideration becomes 'lock-in'. How easy is it to export your data, if you choose? Bear makes this easy. Others might make it harder, or it might not be practical. Craft and Notion, for example, are database apps. You can't just export a database to a bunch of text files and expect it to make sense. ↩
Actually, I add another folder below 00.00 that contains both of the folders 00-09 and 10-19. This is because Obsidian doesn't allow you to 'rename' a vault: the vault name is just the name of the folder of files that you have opened. In the situation shown, the vault name would be '00.00 JDex for the system'.

I manage multiple vaults and want a more descriptive name. My business system's folder is named 'D25 JDex': D25 is the system identifier. This then appears as the vault name. In the screenshot above (figure 22.00.0182H) you can see the vault name is 'JDex - Life Admin System'. This is how it's downloaded from JDHQ. I left this detail out of the diagram as it's not important to the fundamental concept. ↩
Other than to store its own JDex entry, as shown. ↩

22.00.0181 'Powered by Johnny.Decimal' badge

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:27:06 GMT

'Powered by Johnny.Decimal' badge

Thanks to Karsten.Decimal on Discord for suggesting this idea, along with a proof-of-concept.

If you've ever wanted to show people how organised you are, now you can -- with an official 'Powered by Johnny.Decimal' badge!

Full-res versions are available to download here. Don't save the image from above, it's super low-res.

FAQ

Q: Can I use these freely?
- A: As you please.
Q: Would you like me to link back to your site when I use them?
- A: I'd like that, but you don't have to.
Q: Do you expect me to use these?
- A: This is just a bit of fun. I expect nothing.
Q: Can I tweak them for my needs by resizing them or changing their format?
- A: As long as it still looks mostly like this, yes.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0180 Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 07:03:05 GMT

Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

I almost lost a bunch of data this week. Here's how my backups saved me (just), and what I've changed.

Warning: thinking about backups can make you sleepy. But if you care about your data, you need to pay attention. There's a lot here: ask for help on the forum and Discord. This is important.

Note: now that I've finished this post, yeah, it's long, and complex. I might turn this into a short YouTube series. Let me know if that'd be helpful.

What happened

Actually this started months ago. I accidentally deleted my entire Documents folder! I was being too quick on the keyboard and I literally just Cmd+A then Cmd+Deleted everything. Turns out that's surprisingly easy to do.

I undid by pressing Cmd+Z a second later. But the damage was done. I store my Documents folder in iCloud Drive and I knew as soon as it happened that I'd likely triggered a cascade of network activity. My command to delete would have still been half-way to the cloud when I issued the command to undo (i.e. move those files out of my Trash back to Documents), and it would have been a more robust service than iCloud that handled that without issue.

What I should have done at that point was stop everything and spend a few hours making sure everything was okay. I didn't do that.

Lesson 1. If something like this happens you MUST drop everything and fix it, completely and properly, before doing anything else.

Discovering the issue

This week I finally found time to upgrade myself to Life Admin v2.¹ I thought I'd take the opportunity to really clean up some old stuff, and in doing so I realised that a bunch of really old archive stuff was missing.² The folders were there, but there was nothing in them.

Lesson 2. If it doesn't have a proper Johnny.Decimal ID, it might as well not exist. In my case, files buried in an 'archive' folder were, in fact, important to me. I was just too lazy to organise them properly. I've since given them their own IDs in a new area, 29 The Omnium.

Even if these files had their own ID, I might not have picked this up. Everything looked okay, in the moment.

These missing files were buried pretty deep -- this thing that I'm archiving is itself an old Johnny.Decimal structure.³ How would I have known to go looking for this file, way down at 41.14?

Lesson 3. I'm going to keep a short list of 'canary files'. They're files that I care about, but rarely look at. I will manually check them in case of a 'restore event'.

So now I need to restore from backup

Obviously I have backups. I wrote a whole series about it. But backups are complex, mine especially so. This is of my own making, but also hard to avoid given my situation. (I won't recap here: read that series.)

Here are a few of the problems I encountered.

As soon as you actually need to restore from a backup because you lost some data, shit gets real if you'll excuse my language.
- Stress levels rise. Everything becomes difficult.
- This is not a time to be confused.

Lesson 4. Good records are essential. This is what your JDex is for. See below for a template that you can download.

Not knowing which backup, as in from which date, to restore.
- Because I can't remember exactly when this data-loss event occurred. I think it was around August? That's 4 months ago.
- I use Arq and it allows you to search, really quickly, for a specific file across all of your backups. This made things much easier.
- Its restore is also really fast, and this backup was local, i.e. a hard drive attached to the server, not cloud. So I could quickly do test restores to identify which was the right one.

Lesson 5. Know your backup software. Use good software: if yours isn't good, find another. I recommend Arq for Mac.

Lesson 6. Local backups are better than cloud backups when it comes to restoring data because they're much faster. (But you still need an offsite copy, in case your house burns down.)

Not knowing which backup, as in literally which one, to restore.
- Because the way I'd configured them -- which I think is the way most people configure them -- didn't make it really obvious where things were.
- So when I came to use them, there was confusion. Not what you want in a time of crisis.
- More on this below.

Lesson 7. Change the way you structure backups. Previously, I backed up a hard drive or a computer. But what's actually important to me is the unit of data which is a Johnny.Decimal system.

My backups are encrypted.
- Which they should be. And I use 1Password, and my vault is reasonably neat.
- But when I tried the password I thought it should be, it failed. Shit. I tried another. Failed! Oh, shit. This is bad.
- I must have mis-copy/pasted the first password. When I tried again, that worked.
- But to have any possibility of doubt at all here is a total failure.

Ref: Lesson 4. Good records are essential.

'Set and forget'

This whole thing got me wondering if we're doing it all wrong. Backup services advertise themselves as 'set and forget': just install, then never think about it again!

That's what got me into this problem.

If you know about backups you're shouting at the computer: but Johnny, you should test your backups regularly and then you wouldn't be in this situation!

That's true. But you know what I think most people do when forced, begrudingly, to test their backups? They think of a file that they deleted from their Desktop yesterday and they restore that. This is not a realistic test. It doesn't stress you, or your system.

Lesson 8. Daily 'set and forget' backups are great and you should not stop doing them. But you should also have a subset of backups that are a lot more deliberate, and are manually activated. You must see these backups as an opportunity to be neat and tidy. You must cherish them. They are not a chore. They are your happy place.

Conscious backups aka 'restore points'

Let's address that last lesson 8 first. I think there's room in life for two types of backups. The first is the one I've already got: the 'set and forget'. 90% of the time this is going to do the job. Don't stop doing those.

But the other type is what I'm calling a 'restore point'. In the IT world, a restore point is a backup at a specific point in time. You're saying that you can restore to this point in time.

They are much more deliberate, which means that they take more work. But they give you the sort of 'comfortable awareness' of your system that only comes from giving it your clear attention.⁴

Today is a restore point

I finished my migration to LAS v2 today, and with it a bunch of tidying up and moving around of data.

Today -- now -- my system is in a really nice state. I've just looked at everything and I'm deeply familiar with it. I'm sure it's good. Today is a restore point.

So I'm configuring a new backup. Here's what makes it different from my daily backups.

'Restore point' rules

They are manually triggered.

When I decide the time is right, I'll run this backup. I'll be adding something to my task system to prompt me to do this, perhaps quarterly.

They have no retention rules.

Normal backups are smart about the data they retain. Your computer might perform a backup every hour, but you don't need to keep every one of those backups. That would be a waste of space.

A typical 'retention cycle' might be to keep:

Every hour for the last 72 hours.
Every day for the last 30 days.
Every week for the last 52 weeks.
Every month forever.

My 'restore points' have no retention cycle. Every one is saved forever.

They have no exclusion rules.

My daily backup excludes a bunch of files and folders. Anything that looks temporary, or like a cached version, or like something I've downloaded, or like something that I know I could get from the cloud, is excluded.

For my daily rules, this keeps them lean and fast. This is particularly important for me as I live on the road. But that isn't relevant for 'restore point' backups. It is more important that they are complete, so they have no exclusions.

The structure of a 'restore point'

Per lesson 7, these backups don't just back up an entire drive, say, or my user folder. (That's what your daily backups probably do, which is appropriate in that context.)

Instead, they back up the specific folders and only those folders that make up the Johnny.Decimal system that they target. I have 2 restore point backups: one for my P76 Personal system, and another for D25 Johnny.Decimal, the business system.

The personal system has files split across 2 locations:

My ~/Documents folder. This is stored in iCloud.
An external hard drive. This contains ~500GB of media files that don't need to use cloud storage space.

So it only backs up these folders. Not my whole laptop. No other cruft. Nothing is excluded: if something is in one of those folders, it's because I put it there, and I want it backed up.

The business system is simpler as everything is in a single folder. So that folder is the only one in the restore point backup.⁵

Local backups using Arq

These backups all take place on an always-on Mac mini which is connected via Ethernet to a Synology. We learn from lessons 5 and 6: use good software that you know well to make local backups because they're fast.

Records-keeping

Lesson 4 taught us that good records-keeping is vital. You must have total confidence in these backups, and have good records that you can depend on in a crisis.

Of course, this is what your JDex is for. LAS and SBS both have a place for backups. At LAS that's 14.14 My data storage & backups, so in that note I have left myself copious notes. I've recorded:

The name of the restore point backup (in Arq).
Its data sources (the folders it backs up).
Its target (where it backs up to).
Its frequency (manual).
Any exclusion and retention rules (none).
Where its encryption keys are held (1Password: be explicit and name the entry).

Then, every time I manually trigger a backup, I'm noting:

The date & time of the backup.
How large each of the folders was at the time (right-click in Finder and Get Info).
That I checked my canary files.

You want this to be a story that you can return to. A place of total comfort.

Use my template

I've knocked up a template that I'm using myself. It's way far from perfect, but it does the job. Get them here.

Using the 3-2-1 method of data storage -- see the notes on pages 3 & 4 in the PDF, or search online -- it has a space for you to record:

Where the primary copy of your data is.
- This is the folder that you back up.
Where the secondary copy of your data is.
Where the backup of your data is.
Which of the secondary or backup is your offsite copy.

Fill that in, and save it in your system.

LAS: 14.14 My data storage & backups
SBS: 14.23 Backups & recovery

Ask for help

I've created a dedicated forum post for this topic as it's a big one. Ask for help there, or in the thread on Discord.

In this series

This post is part of a series on storage, data, & backups.

22.00.0101 My data storage & backup strategy
22.00.0115 Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]
22.00.0116 Data [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0119 Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0120 Backups [SBS.14.23]
22.00.0180 Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

We added a handful of IDs to v1 and moved things around in the finance area to align it with the Small Business System. ↩
Specifically, the file that started Johnny.Decimal: a carefully-designed PDF of ticket prices that was stuck to our office wall in 2010. I wanted a way to reference this file that wasn't an ugly file path, so I came up with the idea of the numbers.

That was 15 years ago, and I have no use for this file today. I think about it perhaps once a year. But I'd be devastated if I lost it.
↩
To make this clearer, here's a screenshot. You can right-click and Open in new tab to make bigger.
↩
A concept taken from my task and project management methodology, where it works really well. ↩
This folder is on our server, an always-on Mac mini. I synchronise partial copies to our laptops using Syncthing. ↩

22.00.0179 The two-tea-towel method

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 09:06:57 GMT

The two-tea-towel method

It's a little slow around here at this time of year. I'm spending time with my family in the UK; my first Christmas here since 2002! The year after, I went to Australia as a backpacker and just never came home. I like to say that I moved to Australia by accident.

So here's something for the holidays. I have access to a kitchen again, and the first thing I did was go and buy fresh tea towels. If you care about cooking, this is how you need to tea towel. This is the two-tea-towel method.

Theory

When you're in the kitchen, you have two requirements in the cloth department.

First, you need one permanently slung over your shoulder that you can use to wipe your hands, the bench, to handle a pan, or mop a spill. This is your 'bench towel'.

Second, you need to dry things that you'll eat with, or off. You'll need to polish a glass or a spoon. This is your 'clean towel'.

Implementation

You need two (2) types of towel to meet these two needs.

Let's start with your clean towel. This needs to be a decent towel that can actually dry a thing. It needs a bit of fuzz to it, y'know? Your clean towel can't be one of those that feels like an old pair of underpants even when it's brand new.

Spend a tiny bit of money on your clean towels. For me. If you're on a budget, your bench towel doesn't need to be as fancy.

As a rule, simple cotton does the job. Avoid linen. And of course wash them before use to fluff them up a touch.

They must be visually distinct

It is vital that these two towels are different so that you can see, at a glance, which is which. If possible, don't choose a dark coloured 'clean towel': you want to be able to quickly intuit when it's no longer clean.

So find yourself two types of towels.

Clean: light (in colour), heavy (in weight and drying power).
Bench: dark (in colour), and can be cheaper.

We used these stalwarts from IKEA for many years. I used 'stripes' as clean and 'checks' as bench; while I wish they were more visually distinct, it worked. Importantly, the fabric suited both jobs perfectly and the price is right. Because...

Buy a dozen of each

That's twelve (12), six plus six. Two more than ten. Of each, not total. Eight more than you thought you needed before you read this article.

No, that is not too many. You must be able to use these towels freely. This is core to the method: you will never, ever use a dirty towel. You will use them with reckless abandon. You will be utterly free in your towel usage. This will change your life.

When we lived in a house and I prepared three meals a day I used at least one set of towels a day. On a normal day, one set is enough. It depends what you cook. But the instant you look at a towel and wonder as to its cleanliness: get a fresh one. Chuck yours in the wash.

You need hooks

This tip courtesy of my mam, who currently doesn't have hooks. Your tea towels must be on a hook, attached to an open wall. This removes all friction, literally.

Don't go hanging them over the oven handle or some other hack. Get a 3M hook and stick it on the wall. No excuses.

The weekly towel wash

We were lucky in having a house with a washing line (and generally sunny weather, in Canberra). As I sit and type this in a basement flat in the UK with my thermal top drying on a radiator I realise this situation is not universal. But do what you can.

At the end of the week, you've got 14 towels to wash. Chuck in some bathroom towels and that's a full load. Now you can hang them all out together and fold them together and that'll speed things right up.

Merry Christmas

Have a lovely Christmas. It's not too late to pop down the shops to get yourself a last minute gift. I'm sure IKEA is delightful today.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0178 Lazy shortcuts lead to mistakes

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 17:26:31 GMT

Lazy shortcuts lead to mistakes

I just un-published post 22.00.0177 as it shouldn't have appeared. It's not finished and was published by mistake. Here's how.

Without getting too technical, I add things to this site using the ubiquitous software git. Normally this is a conscious action, and it takes two steps.

First:

git add 22.00.0177

– to say please add this file to the list of things I'd like to commit.¹

And then:

git commit [some message to say what you did]

– to commit those changes to the site.

Well, why do in two steps what can be done in one? Long ago I created an alias -- a shortcut -- that merges these two steps. So now I just:

git addcommit [some message to say what I did]

The problem is that this git addcommit alias adds every new file to the commit. Which is very often what you want: but clearly not always. In this case, it added this unfinished post.

There's a reason this isn't a built-in command. It's a bad idea. I was being lazy.

I've deleted the shortcut. The post will be finished and re-published tomorrow. Apologies for the error.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

These git commands are what we call pseudocode. They're not the exact commands, but they vaguely resemble them. The idea is to give the layperson an idea of what's going on while not getting caught up in the details. ↩

22.00.0176 Standard zero 'AC.00 JDex for …' – what's it for?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 06:55:35 GMT

Standard zero 'AC.00 JDex for …' – what's it for?

There's a reason the standard zeros live in the site's 12 Advanced section. Including them all in our standard systems was a difficult decision.¹

Let's look at one of these specifically, the AC.00 JDex for … entry.

00.00 JDex for the system

This one is the clearest. As the 'first' ID in any system, 00.00 serves as its introductory document.

If there's anything that you need to know about the system, it should go here. I think of it like, if I got amnesia, what's the one thing I'd need to know? It's the location of this note. From here, you should be able to find everything else.

Here's what I've written at 00.00 in my personal system:

00.00 JDex for P76 Johnny's personal system

JDex for this system is right here in Bear. You're reading it.
Filesystem for this system is primarily at iCloud Drive/Documents/P76 Johnny's personal system.
- When folders live elsewhere, that location is specifically noted in the JDex entry.

Area-level entry

Let's go down to the area level, 10.00, 20.00 and so on. In exactly the same way, the JDex entries for the area serve as the documentation for that area.

What's in it? Why did you decide to put these things in it? What isn't in it?

I just did a bit of a tidy-up and I created myself a new area. (I use the Life Admin system but it's specifically not designed to handle all the other stuff we do: our hobbies and jobs and whatnot.)

I don't have a single hobby because I'm the sort of person who creates a bunch of stupid little 'projects'. These have accumulated over the years and I have an archive I'd like to save. And I'll need IDs for new projects from now on.

I also need a place to store stuff that I've downloaded. So I created a new area, 20-29 Create & collect.

An area is little more than the categories it contains, so the JDex entry 20.00 is very simple. I've just told myself:

This area is for all the crazy ideas. See the category JDex for more details.

– and then linked to 21.00, 22.00, and 29.00.

Category-level entry

Here are my categories:

21 🧠 Imaginarium²
22 😍 Humans are brilliant
29 🏛️ The Omnium³

And here are their JDex entries:

21.00 JDex for Imaginarium

This is a place for all the crazy projects. But not for learning about, and documenting, technology and code. That's more useful in a work context, and is going to be way more useful for linking in Obsidian, so code learning and notes are at D25.⁴

22.00 JDex for Humans are brilliant

A place for 'collected works' but only things that are made by other humans.

29.00 JDex for The Omnium

This is a place for your historical collected works. You shouldn't be working in here day-to-day. Things here shouldn't ever change.

And don't move completed things from 21.00 JDex for Imaginarium here. They just stay there and age out per the Johnny.Decimal system design.
Only add entries here if, in the process of tidying up old hard drives/folders, you find more old things.

Summary

So in summary, these JDex notes are your documentation of your own system's structure and purpose, at each level.

00.00 is your description of the entire system.
A0.00 is your description of this area.
AC.00 is your description of this category.

And if you don't need them, or that's confusing, you can just ignore or delete them.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

In the end, we included them. It's easier to delete what you don't want than it is to create what you do. ↩
A name gratefully borrowed from Lucy, who came up with it when she built her own system. ↩
Yes, I pushed this out to 29, further reinforcing its archive-ness. ↩
D25 is my Small Business System and it lives in Obsidian. ↩

22.00.0175 Commercial licence

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:08:44 GMT

Commercial licence

The Johnny.Decimal system will always be free for everyone, including for commercial use. The licence places no restrictions on use of the system.

But you might work for an enlightened company who recognises that ideas like this need to be sustained. So we just created a commercial licence with 3 tiers.

The employee numbers are total at your company, and the currency is USD:

10-100 employees: $1,000/year
100-1000 employees: $5,000/year
1000+ employees: $10,000/year

Full details are at 01.02/Commercial licence.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0174 Finder folders to Markdown links in Bear

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:44:35 GMT

Finder folders to Markdown links in Bear

I was just trying to get a list of Finder folders as a bullet list in a Bear note. (I'm finally upgrading my own LAS to v2 and am making it super neat as I go.)

I've known for a while that you can do this:

Select some folders in the Finder. Typically I find myself shift-selecting a whole range, e.g. 20 dated subfolders within another folder.
Cmd+C to copy.
Now if you Cmd+V to paste, and you paste into a text field, you'll get the titles of the folders.

What you get depends where you're pasting. If I do that into this Visual Studio Code window, I get a long file path. If I do it in to a TextEdit window in the default rich text view, it tries to paste the contents of the folders!

I have TextEdit set to open a plain text window by default vs. RTF. That's Settings > New Document (tab) > Format > Plain text. And now when I paste there, I get a really simple list of the folder names.

Paste to Bear gets you a Markdown link

If you paste into Bear (or, I presume, other Markdown-compatible apps), you get a Markdown link that, when clicked, opens the folder in Finder!

That's brilliant. Just what I want for my JDex: now it tells me what's in my filesystem folders, and I can just click to go there.

Note: only with 2+ folders

Robert points out on Mastodon that this only works if you have 2 or more folders selected. If you 'copy' a single folder, that will paste as a massive blue folder icon!

There's a lot more going on when you press 'copy' than you thought...

A video

Here this is a quick video.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0173 Obsidian links (redux)

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 09:50:54 GMT

Obsidian links (redux)

Previously:
– Things: cross-link to Obsidian and back
– Obsidian tip: link directly to a header

I'm going to start creating 'permalinks' for each of my Obsidian notes using the ^block syntax.

I link to my notes prolifically from outside Obsidian. My primary use-case is Things, where every project has this block at the top (mirrored in the Obsidian note).¹

If that Obsidian URL is the traditional format, where you link to the title of the note, it's very fragile. My note titles are fluid; I shouldn't be afraid to change them.

So I use the Advanced URI plugin which allows you to link to a ^block, and at the top of every note I create a permalink using the ID of the note.

Note that right-clicking on the block and selecting Copy URI for current block gives you a longer URI which contains the note's title. If you're strict about making your block identifiers unique – easy when they mirror the ID of the note they're in – you can remove that part of the URI, leaving it much neater.

obsidian://adv-uri?vault=D25%20JDex&block=50105

– because now I can leave that URI string in the templates for both Obsidian notes and Things projects, and all I need to do each time is change the last couple of digits of that block ID. So this only takes a few seconds and is low-friction.

A note on the experimental `50105~14.54` syntax

That's the note: it's experimental. There's a healthy debate over on Discord and there'll be a blog post shortly.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Yes, Things links to itself, as does Obsidian when I copy it over. But now this block of links is copy/pastable anywhere as it's complete.

This is why I use Markdown bullets and not Obsidian's properties: I prefer that my frontmatter be human-readable, and copy/pastable to other Markdown-compatible apps. I don't need to query it or use Bases. ↩

22.00.0172 Terminal tricks

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:55:54 GMT

Terminal tricks

Since writing this page years ago, I've become a bit better at using the Terminal.¹ I just realised how simple it is to move to a Johnny.Decimal folder. Here's how.

I'll explain why this works, as you'll need to tweak it for your own setup. So the first thing you need to know is where my system lives on my filesystem. My personal system, folder name P76 Johnny's personal system, is in my ~/Documents folder.

To make the examples here simpler I'll assume we've already cd ~/Documents.

Wildcards

Two quick things to know.

A wildcard * means 'any text'. So instead of P76 Johnny's personal system I can just write P76*. This works uniquely well in Johnny.Decimal because the majority of your folders start with a unique number.

You can expand this by using the amazingly-named globstar pattern. Within a path, ** will match any folder. It's like a really-wildcard.

Globs

Seriously, this pattern is called a glob. You weren't allowed to have those when I was at school.

If I want to navigate to my ID 15.53, this is what I do.

cd P76*/**/15.53*

That's it! We're saying please change directory to the folder that starts P76, of which there is only one. Then, search all of its subfolders **, until you find one that starts 15.53. There's only one of those.

Open the folder in Finder

If you want to actually open a Finder window, vs. staying in the Terminal:

open P76*/**/15.53*

Amaaaaazing.

Advanced script

How's this update to the cdj script, from Murrax on Discord.

setopt extended_glob
setopt dot_glob

cdj() {
  # Update with your document root folder
  if [ -z "$2" ]; then
  pushd ~/Documents/JD/*/*/${1}*/
  else
  pushd ~/Documents/JD/*/*/${1}*/*(#i)($2)**([1])
  fi
}

export cdj

I'll quote Murrax for the details:

it lets you go into subfolders too, searching by substring, e.g. cdj 31.14 COMSM0067 puts me in ~/Documents/31 Formal Education/31.14 University of Bristol/+COMSM0067 Advanced Topics in Programming Languages, or if I forget the unit code I can do cdj 31.14 languages

A-maaaa-zing.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

That cdj() script came from someone else, I didn't write it. If you did, let me know! Authorship is lost to the sands of time. ↩

22.00.0171 Configuration management

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 13:32:40 GMT

Configuration management

A few weeks ago I was admiring Japanese train drivers' very 'deliberate' behaviour. And I talked about it in the new task and project management (T&PM) course, specifically in the context of setting up a dashboard and 'logging' your work (link requires access to the course).

Effective immediately, I'm committing myself to a new set of behaviours. I don't think this will be easy, but I'm going to stick with it, and document it here. This will be one of my major themes for 2026.

In summary:

Every action I take on my business MUST start and end in my JDex.
Every thing that I create, reference, or update, MUST be contained in my JDex. This includes technical details e.g. all changes to this website and JDHQ.
This documentation needs to be good enough such that a competent stranger could understand what I've done.

To reinforce point 1: there are no exceptions. Everything that I touch or do MUST be documented in my JDex. This might not be practical or helpful; I'm not committing to do this for all of time. But let's find out.

Case study: our recent 'BOGO' offer

I was late in dealing with Black Friday and for reasons that aren't relevant, setting up a 'buy one, gift one' offer ~~was~~ felt simpler than, say, a 20% discount.

Regardless of the offer, there's still a ton of complexity in building something like this. In this case:

Inject some sort of notice of the offer onto a whole bunch of pages.
Create a public database to receive people's invitation data.
- Make it so a stranger can't randomly add a record to this database.
Modify the template that sends you the 'create an account' email so that it includes a link to this database, pre-filled with your details.
Track which account is a gift purchase, and which is a recipient, so that recipients don't also get a link to gift an account, creating a never-ending chain.
Check the database every day and manually create these gift accounts.

And more. A whole bunch of work! The point here isn't these specific details. It's that many things in business are this complex.

It's not like driving a train

Not to take away from the skill of driving a Japanese train, but there I think it's orders of magnitude easier to be more deliberate. Each station, each action, the same. Check the time. Check the doors. Pull away. Check your speed. Slow down. Apply the brakes. Repeat.

Very little of modern knowledge work is like this.¹

What's worth remembering?

All day long, people in PKM forums ask a variant of the question: how do I remember everything that I read?

I get why they ask. They've been told by Big PKM that you're a better person if you remember everything. And if you didn't have so much to remember, you wouldn't need to spend money on that 'second brain'. ;-)

But I disagree, in the most part. (If you're studying for a degree, you might ignore this section.)

I think you'll remember what you're naturally inclined to remember. When I read a book my primary goal isn't internalising every piece of information. That sounds exhausting. And, to what end?

This is why I've always seen Johnny.Decimal more as PRM vs. PKM.

Configuration

But some things are worth remembering. All that stuff I did to my website: now I want to un-do it. The deal's over: let's revert to normal. It sure would be nice if I could just reverse my steps.

I did it in the first place. Surely I can just remember what I did in order to un-do it?²

Well, spoiler: I can't. It's just too complex.³

In the corporate IT world we call this sort of stuff 'configuration'. There's a whole field of 'configuration management': staff, processes, and software. And it's really difficult. I've never seen it done right.

Because humans, what are we good at? What do we enjoy? Work! Changing things. Making things better. We dive in and change stuff; we hack away and get it done.

What isn't fun? Keeping records! Stopping, after the fact, and writing down what you did. Who wants to do that, vs. getting on with the next fun job? We're so bad at it. So it never happens.⁴

My 'BOGO' configuration

So what configuration should I have recorded in the context of this BOGO offer? I think it's sufficient to be complete, but concise. Especially so in the context of computer code: I don't need to describe exactly what my code does. To determine that, I can read the code.

But I need to describe which pieces I created, updated, and deleted. What changed, at a high level? Because that's what allows me to trivially un-wind the thing.

I think if I'd written 5 bullet points, each of less than 50 words, that would have done the job. Hardly onerous.

This will slow me down

Another theme from the T&PM course was that, to do things well, I think it's necessary to do them more slowly.

Computers allow us to be fast. You should see me using this Mac: it can be a blur. I'm good at computers.

But does this help? We just saw how my haste actually got me into trouble. Doing things quickly can be a false economy. When I exhorted you to be neither lazy nor stupid I noted that 'being lazy now just means that I have to do it again later'. There's no net time saved.

I'll YouTube this (in 2026)

I've long wanted to publish an ongoing series of 'how Johnny works'. This is it. I'll give it some thought and, when I start, show my working here and on YouTube.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Almost by definition? If it becomes rote it ceases to become knowledge work. Now its outsourceable. ↩
I know, I should have been better at controlling my git commits and then I could have just reverted those changes. I didn't do that either. ↩
There are 13,573 lines of code in the Astro files that make JDHQ work. That doesn't include any of the content. ↩
At work there's an accompanying field of change management that theoretically helps. I see parallels there too, and might explore this in a future post. ↩

22.00.0170 Decimal Diary: TGIF and vintage annual reports

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 09:20:33 GMT

Decimal Diary: TGIF and vintage annual reports

Dear Decimal Diary,

Last week I did a little TGIF – Thank God I Filed it – time. And when I was nosing around I found a fun folder I'd forgotten about in 43 Images in our Small Business System.

TGIF is Johnny's idea about spending some time on Friday afternoons filing things properly and neatening your system. When your brain is too tired for other stuff.¹ It's the kind of thing I put off, and then when I start I can't stop. Now I know about how files sort beautifully using the date, I get a small thrill from tidying up messy filenames.²

The ID I neatened last week was 43.21 Vintage annual reports. It has some PDFs I'd downloaded for inspiration at some point. The filenames were haphazard and as-downloaded. And since they're annual reports, putting the year out the front makes sense to me. Now they're all lined up and tidy. It's a small win, but satisfying. And I'll remember I have these in the chamber.

Figure 22.00.0170A. A nicely sorted ID.

Some reports

Figure 22.00.0170B. The Bureau of Economic Geology.

Figure 22.00.0170C. The Ford Foundation.

Figure 22.00.0170D. The Deep East Texas MHMR.

Figure 22.00.0170E. A page with a financial report.

Figure 22.00.0170F. The Philippine Wood Products Association.

Figure 22.00.0170G. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Figure 22.00.0170H. A page with a photo by the Voyager probe.

Figure 22.00.0170I. The Electricity Supply Board.

Figure 22.00.0170J. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Figure 22.00.0170K. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

If you have any leanings this way, the vintage annual report world can be a dangerous rabbit hole.³ And so can filing using the date to sort.

From Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Our Friday afternoon soundtrack is often the Platinum Collection by Genesis, but anything similar will improve this type of admin. ↩
Remember, you can set up a shortcut to add dates automatically. ↩
Especially the space ones. ↩

14.04 Task and Project Management

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 14:04:00 GMT

Task and Project Management: a course

Having a neat filesystem and notes is just the start.

So in our latest video course, I'll show you how I use my system to manage my own life and business.

Turns out, having a highly-structured system where everything fits into a category is an amazing way to organise the stuff you need to get done. Here's how.

Tasks

I think of this as a monster with two heads: first, there are tasks. That's all the day-to-day stuff that you need to stay on top of. Whether you're at home or work, you've got a bunch of one-off stuff that just needs to get done. This is keeping on top of life and it's boring, but unavoidable.

Projects

And then there's the longer-term stuff that drives life forward. These projects are the things you want to spend your weekends doing, or the things that make your business better. The more of this you can make time for, the happier you're going to be.

I'll show you how to use the same tools, techniques, and mindset to manage them both.

Comfortable awareness

I won't pretend to have a solution for getting it all done. You won't get it all done. I have 542 tasks in my system: I won't live long enough to get them all done! I'm at peace with that.

Instead, what I'll give you is a comfortable awareness of it all. Because much of what's in there is just ideas for the future. It's stuff that you'd like to do, when you get time. But if it isn't ever done, life will go on. Trust me, it will.

My system is pragmatic and utterly practical. It ensures that you can't forget the really important stuff, while helping you make time for everything else. It's designed to never be overwhelming.

We stick to one of the themes of Johnny.Decimal: reduction of stress. Because at least if you're aware of it all, there'll be no nasty surprises.

I've been using this system for a year now. It's a really nice feeling.

I use Things for Mac a lot

I didn't set out to make a 'Things for Mac' course. But Things is the app I use and I use its features heavily.

And so, at least in this initial release, this is very Things-heavy. I'd like to generalise it over time, but at last count there were over 815 productivity apps, so I obviously can't cover any meaningful fraction of them.¹ I had to choose one app, and it's Things. It's a great app.

That said, I spend a lot of time explaining why I'm doing things a certain way: you'll see my thinking. I'm not just clicking buttons. So you should be able to adapt this for your own setup.

I felt it only right to make you aware of this.

Here's the first episode

Rather than record a trailer, here's the first episode where I tell you about the course.

And here's another that I recorded later for YouTube. This one's a 10-minute overview of the process.

How much is it?

It's part of Johnny.Decimal University, so you get this course, the Johnny.Decimal Workshop, the Life Admin System, and more, for just A$300. No subscriptions, with updates for life.

┌─────────────────┐
│  ▶  Buy now  ◀  │
└─────────────────┘

Human, guaranteed

Lovingly crafted by two humans. No AI here. If you don't like it, let me know within 14 days and you can have your money back. No questions asked.

People like it

Ellane wrote a lovely review over on her blog. And on Discord, Chris wrote:

I've taught GTD courses for 20+ years, teach Project Management to seniors studying CS and information systems, and consider myself pretty dialed in on productivity methods and tools. I loved the course!

You'll find other nice comments in that Discord channel. (You need to join the server first.)

I made that number up. But, right? There are a lot. ↩

14.03 The Workshop

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 14:03:00 GMT

The Johnny.Decimal Workshop

If you want to build your own Johnny.Decimal system, the fastest way with the best result is with our 5-hour+ video workshop. There, we'll guide you through the process step-by-step.

How does it work?

We called this a 'workshop' and not a 'course' because it isn't just me telling you what to do.

Instead, Lucy is our on-camera student and you'll work with her as she builds her system.¹ Lucy's progress and questions are genuine. So as you have questions, we hope that she asks them on your behalf.

Over the five carefully-structured areas of the workshop you'll define the scope of your new system, perform a comprehensive discovery exercise, shape it, create it, and finally build yourself a JDex so you can never lose anything again.

You'll see me explaining concepts at my whiteboard, or the two of us working on her system together. We tried to ensure there's a variety of videos so you won't get bored.

If you need any help, just ask on the forum or Discord. I answer every question personally. By the end, you'll be the most organised person you know.

We spent months planning and recording the workshop. It's meticulously designed, with regular checkpoints so you can't go wrong. And it's backed up by the 20,000-word workbook, which we reference throughout.

People love it. Devesh said that 'your workshop is another level', Ari said that 'implementing this process will significantly reduce the stress I have about my digital mess', and Marcus said that 'the speed and ease of finding what I'm looking for has been totally energizing'. There's more at JDHQ.

How much is it?

It's part of Johnny.Decimal University, so you get the workshop, our task and project management course, the Life Admin System, and more, for just A$300. No subscriptions, with updates for life.

┌─────────────────┐
│  ▶  Buy now  ◀  │
└─────────────────┘

Human, guaranteed

Lovingly crafted by two humans. No AI here.

If you don't like it, let me know within 14 days and you can have your money back. No problem.

Just in case it isn't totally clear, this is all pre-recorded. You don't need to 'turn up' at a time, and you're not literally working alongside Lucy. (People have asked.) ↩

22.00.0169 An invoice disappears

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:49:03 GMT

An invoice disappears

Well this is weird. I just lost an invoice, as in one that I was sure I had raised a couple of weeks ago. Here's how I discovered it, and what I'll do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

The invoice

I don't raise many invoices manually. This one was to a friend, whose domain name I manage. It's a fancy expensive domain so, when it renews, my company bills his company for it.

I raised it the other week. I remember doing it. And yet now: no trace. A puzzle.

Discovering its loss

I know I'm not going entirely mad because, in reviewing my Small Business category 13 Money earned, spent, saved, & owed this morning, I saw a task due next week:

▷ Check that [name] has paid his invoice
▷ Due: 25 Nov

– and I thought to have a quick look. So I'd done some things right:

Set a quick reminder to myself, in a trusted place.
Made sure that I actually saw that reminder, by reviewing my system regularly.

I'll show you how I do this in the upcoming series 'Task and Project Management using the Johnny.Decimal system'. Will be released on JDU in the next couple of weeks.

The vanishing act

I went to look for this invoice in the only place that it could possibly exist: my Stripe console. It just isn't there. No trace.

I'm deeply confused by this, but whatever. No point dwelling; let's just make sure it doesn't happen again.

Deliberate record-keeping

Last time, I raised the invoice in Stripe and that was it. Other than leaving myself the follow-up task, I didn't record its existence anywhere else.

If only I had a predefined ID for this sort of thing. Oh wait, is that 13.23 Invoices & sales for your work at the door? Oh, come in old friend.

Update: found it!

Talk about real-time updates. Gripping stuff.

So there isn't only one place that this could possibly exist. There are two: the other being my Xero account.

This makes our solution more interesting. Why did I choose Xero over Stripe in this instance?¹ How would I know which to choose in the future?

Solution: new ops manual

This is a textbook ops manual. Next time I need to raise an invoice, I need to be following a process. Last time, I just made it up on the fly.

So here's what my new 13.23+OPS1 Raise an invoice says:

Raise all invoices directly in Xero, because this integrates with your accounting system.
Raise the invoice, and create a note at 13.23 with its number and a link.
Create a new customer record at 33.11 and from there, link to 13.23.

That's it. Three easy steps; but now they're unambiguous, and I won't make the same silly mistake again.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

I'll tell you why. Because this invoice has nothing to do with Johnny.Decimal, really. In my mind, that's what the Stripe/Xero split is. Stripe was JD stuff, Xero was more fundamental company stuff. Logically, I now understand, this makes no sense. ↩

22.00.0168 How to remember the Markdown link syntax

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 02:16:10 GMT

How to remember the Markdown link syntax

In Markdown, a universally-handy text formatting language, you create a link like this:

[Title of link](https://…)

Easy enough, but there's a bunch to remember there. Which comes first, the title or the link? And which is in square brackets, which in regular brackets?

Get any of those things wrong, and your link won't work.

'Name and address please, sir'

Let's do the stuff inside the brackets first. When you get pulled over by the cops you'd never be asked for your 'address and name', would you? Same here.¹

Name and address in that order.

Addresses contain numbers

Those regular brackets () live on the keys 9 and 0.

What contains numbers? An address.

What doesn't? Your name.²

That's it

[Johnny](90 Main St)

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Yeah, yeah, you're innocent. Save it for the judge. ↩
Unless you're this guy. ↩

22.00.0167 An(other) advantage of the creative pattern

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 00:43:29 GMT

An(other) advantage of the creative pattern

Our creative system here at JDHQ is in heavy use with production of the upcoming JDU series 'task and project management', seeing me create ID 50092 yesterday. We'll crack that hundred before long.

Previous creative projects -- recording the workshop, say -- tended to sit in their own isolated world. They take up a bunch of disk space, and if you're on a laptop you don't want to (or simply can't) carry those files around forever.

You produce a series, upload the final videos, and archive the original files. So it feels simpler to have all of those files in one folder, and you can just move that folder around.

This is a problem, though, if you ever want to re-edit those videos. To correct a mistake, say. Now you have to get the vidoes off 'the archive drive' and put them back either exactly where they were, which involves you remembering exactly where that was, or you have to re-point your video editing software to their new location. DaVinci Resolve calls this 're-linking the media'.

Neither of us are video editing professionals. This is an exercise fraught with danger that often results in us looking at this dreaded screen. We're not the only ones.

Figure 22.00.0167A. DaVinci Resolve's dreaded 'unlinked media' icon.

What if the files never moved?

With the creative pattern, the path to the file never changes. It's always (truncated for simplicity)
D25/50-59/50082/file.mov.

What changes is whether the original video files are actually at that location on disk. On my laptop, I've told Syncthing, which keeps our files in sync across the world, to remove those files. Lucy, our editor, still holds a copy.

I'll eventually remove all of these files from both laptops. We say that I'm 'dehydrating' those folders. At this point, launching DaVinci will look like the screenshot above. But the only thing I'll need to do if Lucy wants to edit a video is 'rehydrate' those files, synchronising them across the network from our server in Melbourne.

Nothing changed from DaVinci's perspective. Nothing ever will. Bye bye, red timeline of confusion.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0166 Decimal Diary: Business links and food trucks

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Decimal Diary: Business links and food trucks

Today's blog is a guest post by Lucy.

Dear Decimal Diary,

Yesterday I added a bunch of new resource links to several IDs in the Small Business System. And one of them led me to start an imaginary food truck business.

Sensible, governmenty links

Turns out there's a lot of great small-business-related information out there. But it can be hard to find if you don't know where to start (or have the time).¹ We originally planned to include a few curated links in most Small Business IDs. There aren't many yet – I add new ones as I discover and vet them to check they're reputable.

Since we're Australian they're mostly from our Government or 'sensible' government-adjacent organisations. But I do try to find things that are relevant no matter where a business is. For example, there's links to some good general advice in:

14.42 Technical cybersecurity, and
14.43 Behavioural cybersecurity.

But if you need country-specific guidance, hopefully anything we find can help you search for similar advice from your government.

This may or may not be a useful feature, but we thought we'd give it a go and see if it evolves into anything.² At the very least I'm learning heaps of stuff about running a small business that I didn't know before.

Refining search

At the same time I also try to think of new keywords for JDHQ's search feature (remember you can just type / to activate search).

So if you've tried to find something in Small Business (or elsewhere) and search didn't surface it, let us know. The words we use to describe something in Australian business might be different to yours. But it's easy to add keywords that will help you find what you need.

For example, we learned from a Decimal this week that it's common to have an 'operating charter' in American business. So I added that to the examples list for 11.11 Structure & registrations. And now it appears in search.

My imaginary food truck

The first link I found for 11.12 Licences, permits, & accreditations is from the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS). ABLIS has a handy tool to research licences, regulations, council approvals, and compliance requirements for different businesses. So I thought I'd take it for a spin.

I pretended I wanted to start a:

Simple food truck business (aka 'mobile food van operation'),
Located in central Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory,
And I would operate as a sole trader.

Figure 22.00.0166A. Simple Joe.

I then answered a short series of questions about how I thought my business would run. And I got back this list of 40 (!) things that I might need to consider. To anyone out there who has a business that involves any regulation, I tip my cap. I had no idea how much there was to know.

I was just playing around and some of my results were more important than others, like safe food handling. But there's so many other hangers on that might be relevant – there's an entire code of practice just for having a movable sign! But I think my favourite is the Workplace and Telephone on Hold Music Licence.

Like many people, Johnny and I have pretend-talked about having a simple hospitality business.³ However, I reckon if more budding entrepreneurs went to a licencing site like ABLIS before committing money to their idea, they might find it quite sobering.

I'm not saying don't dream big dreams.

The world needs successful small business owners – you make daily life so much more interesting than big corporations.

Just try hard not to procrastinate reading all the tediously boring government regulatory information before taking out a big business loan on a food truck in Canberra. 😉

From Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Of course everyone probably just uses AI now. But given its lacklustre citation skills I would personally always check what reference sites it's using for serious business stuff. As a former science writer this is a habit I will never drop, sorry Chatty-G. ↩
A library of recommendations for go-to, trustworthy small business sites from around the world? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ↩
Not seriously, we're not qualified. But we often do back-of-the-envelope maths and logistics to see if something is food truck-able. At the moment though, we wish someone would start cheap filter-coffee-only carts in Australia, hint hint. You can even use our proposed business name – Simple Joe. ↩

22.00.0165 Find the hidden option

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Find the hidden option

I was trying to book a flight from Rome (FCO) to Bristol (BRS) yesterday. That's where we'll be at Christmas: my sister lives there. Lovely city, worth a visit.

easyJet flies the route, which is handy. Their advertised fare is €70. Not bad. So 2×€70 is about AU$250. Bearable. Within our budget.

Not so fast, of course. We'll need to upgrade our baggage as easyJet's default allowance is basically a bag of crisps. This is the first screen that you see after adding the base flights to your cart.

Figure 22.00.165A. easyJet's bundles.

That's … not as cheap any more. The middle column is what we need: it's the addition of the 'large cabin bag' I'm looking for. That's another €70 per person.

And we only need one of these upgrades: we can fit our larger stuff in Lucy's bag, and mine fits the 'small under seat cabin bag' constraints. But this screen is all-or-nothing. Two, or none. Double the cost.

AU$500 is no longer bearable. That's wonder-if-we-can-get-the-train-instead money, or the dreaded what-if-we-flew-to-Heathrow-and-caught-the-bus option.¹

We started looking at options. And then I thought…

Always look for the trick

These companies employ people whose job it is to design these 'dark patterns'. Be smarter than them.

I selected that leftmost column, 'get light'. No extras. And lo-and-behold, what happens in a handful of screens?

Figure 22.00.0165B. easyJet's baggage options.

Well he-llo there, an option to add a bag to a single passenger for a mere €42! That's €100 less than what we were initially presented. A massive difference to us.

This sort of thing is really common. But if you see the first option and think, that should be illegal! -- well maybe it is. Maybe you just have to find the hidden option. Always look for it.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Normally I'd love the option of taking the train from Rome through Italy, France, and under the Channel, but the week before Christmas? Nah, let's not mess about. ↩

22.00.0164 🎁 Holiday season 2025: Buy one, gift one

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

🎁 Holiday season 2025: Buy one, gift one

This offer has now ended.

This holiday season, give the gift of organised. Buy anything from JDHQ, and we'll gift the same again.

Just sign up for anything. Your welcome email will include a link: fill in the form, tell us who it's for, when you want them to receive it, and add a message.

Whatever you signed up for, we'll send them an invitation for the same. Simple.

Life Admin System
Johnny.Decimal University
Small Business System
or the bundle, or Lifetime membership.

I'm already a member, what about upgrades?

It won't be automatic (I'd have to build it; too hard) but if you upgrade your account while this offer is on, just drop me an email and I'll look after you.

The small print

Offer ends Wednesday 31st December 2025.
- I.e. purchases made after this date will not receive the gift link.
- Update 2025-12-02: I ended it early. Frankly, it wasn't that popular.
Final date for redeeming gifts is Monday 5th January 2026.
- I.e. this is the last date that you can complete the online form.
Last date that I will send a gift link to a recipient is Saturday 31st January 2026.
- I.e. if you have a friend whose birthday is 1st February, that's too late.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0163 /tmp is bad

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

/tmp is bad

In recording the upcoming (soon, I promise) JDU series on task and project management, I'm switching out my real Things database with a test database so I can show some simple examples rather than all of my own actual stuff.

This is easy enough: just move a file from one place to another place. I'm using the 'leave Finder windows permanently open in a known place' trick to great effect: I have a new Finder window (not the usual one I have open in that video) with 2× tabs open specifically for this.

One tab is that ~/Library/… location as per the Things article. That's my live Things database. And the other is some other location where I'm storing copies of that database as I swap in my real file out for the demo.

My nemesis

So I rebooted, and that Finder window went away, and I had to set it up again.

Aaannnnddd … I didn't know where that second folder was. The one with the demo databases. There it is again, my nemesis: I don't know where a thing is.

Fortunately you can search for stuff, and you can search by file type, and in macOS this is quite intuitive.

That search field in your Finder window understands file types. So here I'm searching for Things Database, and when I select that item it shows me only those items. This quickly revealed the location I'd chosen, a few weeks ago.

`~/tmp`

I have a folder called tmp (not backed up) which is exactly what it sounds like. I use it for stuff I know you won't need forever, and it's excluded from backups so I don't send gigs across the wire unnecessarily.

That's where I'd put this stuff. 🤦🏼‍♂️ Why? I don't know. A quick, lazy decision.

Where should it be?

Where it belongs: in the folder for this project, which is 21.41. And a note in my JDex so that if I search there, it'll surface.

Beware of 'temporary' folders of any nature. Your Desktop and Downloads are temporary folders. Don't store things there. You'll lose them, or you'll be frustrated as you have to look for them.

Doing the right thing takes an extra ten seconds.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0162 Decimal Diary: Not-Kondo and deleting Canva

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Decimal Diary: Not-Kondo and deleting Canva

Dear Decimal Diary,

The other day we had breakfast in a cafe with a TV showing an organise-your-house type of program.

This is right up my alley. Ten years ago Johnny gave me a book by a Japanese author called Goodbye, Things that had a big impact on both of us. So given that we're in Japan I was excited to see the end of the show.

When the 'experts' were finished the residents pulled lots of zany shocked delighted faces. But I was disappointed. They didn't throw anything out! It was more like a sliding puzzle where they just moved stuff around.¹

I don't see the point of a re-organisation project if you're also not going to get rid of anything. I'm too addicted to that fresh-start feeling.²

Canva stress

This was my state of mind as I began a long-avoided P3 task labelled 'Decimalise Canva properly'. There was more than 2 years' worth of work-related mess in there. Some files had IDs, most didn't. And the IDs pre-dated the Small Business System that we use now.

I really like making things in Canva. It's easy and fun. But I don't really like being in Canva, all the buttons make me dizzy. So about 10 minutes later I thought "bugger this" and deleted everything in the account.

Canva calm

All that's in there now is an empty area folder called 50-59 Portfolio of creative outputs, ala the creative pattern. Ready and waiting to hold new folders labelled with IDs for future creative jobs.

Figure 22.00.0162A. Canva, Kondo'd.

I could have spent all day re-naming old files and creating links in our current JDex for them. But I was honest with myself and knew I'd never actually re-use those files again. And so I purged. It felt great.

Procreate refresh

This inspired me to do some organising and tidying in the Procreate app on my iPad.

Figure 22.00.0162B. Procreate, neater stacks of similar items.

Again, I deleted a lot of old stuff (freeing up at least 2GB of storage). I grouped existing files into logical 'stacks' of similar work. I made filenames clearer and added IDs where there were none. And I've promised myself that when I start a new creative job in the future, it will be labelled with its ID from 50-59 (pinky swear).

Figure 22.00.0162C. Procreate, files with IDs.

It's far from perfect, but it's a lot better. I tried to:

Be realistic and make an improvement in the time I had,
Get some 'comfortable awareness'³ of what's there and could be re-used,
Give myself a bit of that fresh-start feeling.

I know I can't delete all my old files because that would be madness. But I do think it's good to delete some files on the reg. It feels healthy. And I think that tiny Japanese apartment would have looked way better if they'd had a proper purge. So I'm going to keeping poking around my digital life, neatening and deleting as I go.

Hot tip: circle masks

I just learned how to do this – if you've ever wanted to crop a regular photo into a fancy circle, you can do this really easily in Canva:⁴

Upload your photo in to the 'Uploads' area,
Open a new blank canvas in the dimensions you want,
In the 'Elements' tab search for 'Frames',
Find the circle and drag it on to your canvas,
Go to your Uploads and drag your photo onto the frame,
It automatically crops it into a circle,
Make it the size you want and hit download.

Figure 22.00.0162D. A duck in a circle.

Canva is fuuuun.

From Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Which included a ridiculous amount of stuffed animals for an adult couple who live in a tiny apartment. ↩
There's even a video dedicated to this at 43 in the Workshop where Johnny basically says "don't bring a whole lot of old crap into your beautiful new zen house that you've just designed". 😬 ↩
A concept that's being explored in the new task and project management course we're making for Johnny.Decimal University. ↩
An account with basic features like this is free. There are paid tiers if you want more features or storage. ↩

22.00.0161 Work log

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Work log

I'm trying to get better at leaving myself a log so I know what I was up to when I come back to a piece of work.

Whenever you do a thing and put it down unfinished, to return to later, you're sure you'll remember exactly what you were doing. But who knows, it might be days until you return to it.

A simple work log in your JDex can help.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0160 An anti-distraction trick

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 09:00:00 GMT

An anti-distraction trick

I fall in to the YouTube or Reddit rabbit-holes sometimes. Not that they're all bad all the time: I love watching a good music video with my headphones in. (That track is slow to start but seriously: watch it all the way. I dare you not to love it.)

But being sucked in to Shorts? Lazy-scrolling the Reddit feed? I know that's not how I want to spend my time.

Well it turns out all of these things leave a trace, and you can use that trace to reveal your bad habits. I find this confronting. It causes me to change.

The trick is easy: just open your browser history, and search for the site you don't love.

Figure 22.00.0160A. War on Drugs and chickens. Pretty standard.

In Safari, hit Command+Y to bring up your history, then type in the search field. Here, I have 571 hits for YouTube. That's okay: most of them are music videos.

But when I did this for Reddit last week, well … shame. So shameful, I deleted them. Command+A to select all, then Delete. So I can't show them to you.

This is particularly revealing for YouTube Shorts, each one of which leaves a record. I've only binged there once, because seeing that record later was honestly enough for me to have never done it again.

There's your life, scrolling away. Do something better.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0159 Deliberately

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Deliberately

We took the train from Morioka to Kitakami earlier today. Not some fancy Shinkansen: just a two-car regional train.¹

This allowed me to stand basically in the driver's cab the entire way, which of course I did. I'd heard about the Japanese 'pointing and calling' behaviour but never seen it myself. The idea is that before every action, they point at the thing they're about to do, say it out loud, then do it. This reduces mistakes.

Here's a video that I took, which iCloud tells me will work until the end of November. (If that no longer works, just see the previous YouTube link.)

Doors locked. [00:27, points at orange light in the console.] Scheduled departure time. [Points at iPad, just out of frame on the right, then at his timepiece, center.] Other things checked. [Some more pointing.] And off we go.

They do this pulling out of every station. Very deliberate, every time.

Coding by pencil

Over the last week or so I've had Claude Code knock me up a proof of concept for the LLM-based file categorisation thing I'm working on. Then, as usual, I realised that I had no idea how this thing that I 'vibe coded' worked, so I'm starting again.

(I don't consider this a waste of time. A 'proof of concept' is just that. It did its job.)

I started with a pencil and my notepad. I'm writing down what I want this thing to do. In what stages? Using what commands? I can already feel the difference: rather than just sitting down and bashing the keyboard, it feels like I'm pausing; pointing at the thing; saying it out loud.

Doing it deliberately.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

The Shinkansen does this route in 18 minutes. It must be one of the shortest station-to-stations on the network (once you get outside the major cities). Our train took about 50 minutes. We chose it. Deliberately. ↩

22.00.0158 Personal Business

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Personal Business

Charles Broskoski of the Are.na team posted a lovely article yesterday titled Personal Business.

"In You've Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly is positioned as virtuous but naive, a hopeless romantic stuck in the old way of doing things. But I agree with her, I think more businesses should be personal. In 1998, her proclamation could be seen as proto-nostalgia for a soon-to-be bygone time, but now that we've actually experienced the Joe Fox vision of the future, the line simply reads as solid business advice."

You should read the whole thing (and then watch You've Got Mail, which as it happens we did last year).

This is the sort of business we're trying to run. It feels slower. There are probably things we could do to grow more aggressively; frankly, to make more money. But whenever I think about those things, it just doesn't feel like who I am. So I don't do them.

And then I realise that I quit my job two years ago because I didn't enjoy it. So if I also end up not enjoying this job, what would have been the point?

So here we are. A personal business.

Are.na

Lucy has had her eye on it for ages. Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what it is. But it looks cool and they sound like good people.

She signed up this morning.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0157 Decimal Diary: Confronting mortality and messy passwords

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Decimal Diary: Confronting mortality and messy passwords

Today's blog is a guest post by Lucy.

Dear Decimal Diary,

In May, we left the country on a long trip and we're not sure when we'll return. And what if something bad happens and we never return? We acknowledged that this is a possibility, which triggered a flurry of tedious (and confronting) personal admin.

First stop, write a will

Neither of us had ever done this. I've had a task in my to-do app that I've ignored for the last 5 years. Ten years earlier I bought a will kit, ignored it, and threw it out when I moved house. The shame.

Our life is pretty simple so we opted for an Australian will kit. We'll do a proper lawyer version someday if we're lucky enough to have chickens again.

In my Johnny.Decimal system this is now stored in 33.16 Will & emergency.¹ And the physical copy is in a secure lockbox.

As we were doing this we realised we also needed emergency digital recovery kits. These items are interlinked – our executor can't do much if they can't access the important stuff.

Second stop, emergency digital recovery kit

This ended up being a document that outlines our most important accounts – like a map of our online lives (but without logins/passwords). There was a bit of overlap with the will, but a document like this has more room for detail than the will kit.

In my system this is now stored in 33.16 Will & emergency.² And there's a printed copy in the lockbox.

As we were doing this we realised we also needed to organise our password apps so they would make sense to our trusted executor and/or family members.

Third stop, Decimalise password app

This might sound unnecessary, but our rationale was that it's a nice thing we could do for someone else. Sure they can use search to find stuff. But leaving everything neat and matched up with our JDex and filesystems might be less frustrating.

We've both used 1Password for many years and there was a lot of clutter in there. So we approached the job like this:

Create a new 'vault' in the sidebar for each category in our personal systems.³
Move everything into the Archive (this allows you to start fresh in the main area).
Review the Archive bit-by-bit (which is easy since it's organised by the alphabet).
- Delete old junk.
- Restore active logins.
- File logins in the best vault/category in the sidebar (you can drag 'n drop from the main area).
- Neaten up titles so everything is clear.

A nice side effect of this process was a bit of what Johnny is calling 'comfortable awareness'.⁴ 1Password is another area of my digital chaos that is now tidy. And I have an awareness of what's in that Very Important App, and how far and wide my details are scattered.

Anyways, I'm just an ordinary Jo Lunchbucket. But I did the best I could, in the time I had, to make my 'will and estate planning' paperwork clear and organised for anyone that might have to deal with it. And given that I've put this off my whole adult life, that makes me feel better.

Hot tip: drag 'n drop

After Johnny's lesson on drag 'n drop last week, I bravely tried dragging a file from my computer on to the 1Password icon in my dock to see if anything would happen.⁵ And it automatically created an entry! I had no idea. I did this for some account backup codes I'd downloaded as text files. But it probably works for all sorts.

From, Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

In Life Admin this would go in 11.16 Legal documents & certificates. ↩
In Life Admin this would go in 14.21 My emergency digital recovery kit. It's also something to consider in Small Business at 11.23 Risk & emergency management plans and 14.23 Backups & recovery. ↩
Categories were enough organisation for me. Although I did create a couple of IDs to keep some items separate. ↩
A concept that's being explored in the new task and project management course we're making for Johnny.Decimal University. ↩
From the YouTube playlist: Be better at computer. ↩

22.00.0156 A nice JDex entry: 14.32+1Password

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

A nice JDex entry: 14.32+1Password

I was editing this JDex entry the other day and it struck me that it was an exemplar, the Platonic ideal of what a JDex entry should be. So I thought I'd share it.

ID & title

This is a textbook extend-the-end. This is my Small Business System, so the parent is 14.32 External software & services.

One of those external softwares that I use is 1Password. So this is where its configuration lives.

A log of events

Then I tell myself what I did, using links liberally. I created a service account; that link takes me directly to that setting in the web console.

When I note which of my 14.11 Computers & servers I affected with this change, I wiki-link to them. So this note now shows in their backlinks.

My memory

Then I tell myself how to use this new config to launch VSCode in the future. You think you'll remember this stuff. You never do. Write it down.

That's it

Mine tend to be pretty short. Get to the point.

This is exactly what your JDex is for. Especially in a business context: this becomes your operations guide.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0155 The front door and the elephant

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

The front door and the elephant

When I migrated everyone from our various 3rd-party platforms to JDHQ in August, I ended up with this ginormous spreadsheet: who came from where, with what access, to what product, based on which previous purchase on which platform. It's hideous, but it worked.

I thought that spreasheet's work was done, but it's never that simple. Two months later I still get emails from people who missed the invitation email and can't sign in to their old accounts (which no longer exist). That's okay: customer support is part of the job, that I enjoy. I get to email people and make them happy.

So I've still been using this spreadsheet, weekly. Here's the problem: it was called 2025-08-07 Working out who is Life vs. Annual by extracting Clerk data and munging it with Shopify.xlsx (for real), and I'd been accessing it via Excel's 'recently opened' list. Which worked great. Until it didn't.

Because last week I opened a bunch of other sheets, causing it to be pushed off the bottom of the list. So when I went to open it -- predictably enough, in some sort of a rush -- wait … agh … where the hell is it?

An identifiable stress

I think this entire endeavour, my life's work, is to remove from the world a type of stress that I've come to immediately recognise. It's this one: I know it exists and I'm stressed because I don't immediately know where it is.

So I just want to note that stress here. I see you, tiny stress. I poke you in the eye.

The front door

So here's the first thing I'm going to start doing: stop relying on that 'recent' list. It's a crutch. Handy, for sure, and I'm not going to stop using it entirely. But if you find yourself using it over and over, ask yourself, do you actually know where that file is?

When your recents is obliterated due to some sort of crash or bug, is that An Event? It shouldn't be.

Back to basics

The fundamental nature of Johnny.Decimal is this property where you start at the top, and you have at most 10 things to choose from, then you have at most 10 again, and now you're looking at your IDs.

With this constraint, my system would work without numbers. Numbers are secondary: they help the system along. But its heart beats to the rhythm of constraint.

Use the system as it was designed. And I'm talking to me here. What should I have done in this moment of tiny stress? Just start at the top. I only have 5 areas. Which one? The one that contains customers. Now 5 categories. Repeat. Now I only have 8 IDs in there! This one is 33.14 Customer data mashing and munging.

Three easy decisions. So chill out, and follow the bouncing ball.

The elephant

Of course the true crime is that filename. Every time I opened it I knew it was bad. So, improve it. Stick the ID in there: this is exactly what it's for.

When the filename is 33.14 Customer data from store migration.xlsx, I can use that recent list all I like. Because every time I open the file I'm reinforcing where it is.

This is exactly what be a better human time is for. Tidy up. Poke stress in the eye.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0154 Mitsu-bishi 9852

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Mitsu-bishi 9852

We all know I'm a sucker for a good pencil, and an orange hue. So when I walked past this beauty in Morioka's FES”AN (sic.) the other day, I was helpless.

Figure 22.00.0154A. Mitsu-bishi 9852.

I realise, for someone travelling with a single tiny bag, that I'm now over-pencilled. I have this, a 9850, another Mitsubishi 'Uni' whose exact model I can't track down but it's the blue one from this image, and 1.5 Blackwing Pearls, the smaller of which I just discovered Blu-Tacked in to the back of a notebook.

Given that you can buy a pencil literally anywhere, I might not have needed to bring that many with me.

Mitsubishi

Interestingly, the Mitsubishi Pencil Company has no relation to the broader Mitsubishi Group. It's a name I gravitate towards; I'm pretty sure I viewed my Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ through a late-1980s Mitsubishi TV set.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0153 Bum Man [safe!]

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Bum Man [safe!]

Programming notice. Mon-Fri I'll keep these posts JD-relevant. Weekends might be leisure time.

Lucy has been drawing 'Bum Man' since the early 1990s. A man who is primarily a bum, he "came to her in a dream". She used to keep paper beside her bed so she could draw him when she woke up. Here's the latest.

Bum Man's antics usually reflect what's going on in our own lives. It's nice to look back through the archives, which are at bum-man.com.au or on Instagram.

If you're in Australia, you can buy a colouring book, professionally printed in Fitzroy, VIC. The lovely people at POP Canberra (now POP Local, they went nationwide) stock it here. A great Christmas gift. :-)

That's all. He's too cheerful not to share.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0152 The Japanese web is delightful

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

The Japanese web is delightful

The Japanese web feels like it stopped at 1.0 and it's a delight.

Remember when webpages were simply dense information-delivery mechanisms? I present: the Iwate Prefectural Library. I mean come on.

I only just realised in pasting that link, that's even an old-school index.html! None of this fancy-dancy just end with a directory path nonsense.

Here's the Morioka City Marathon: just a colourful page, full of information.

Our web got so bland; everything just this homogenous lump of rounded-corner pastel. I don't know how the Japanese have held on to theirs. A function of isolation, I suppose?

Either way, I'm envious.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0151 Automated organisation?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Automated organisation?

Today's post was sent to the mailing list 4 days ago. Sign up for the occasional early treat.

Hi, Decimals. This one's going out [to the list] a few days before I put it on the blog. I'm looking for organisations that might be interested in testing this out at scale. Is that you? Let me know, I'll prioritise responses from this list.

I loathe much of 'generative AI', and you'll never read a word of mine that was written by a machine. But to deny its usefulness in other situations feels dogmatic. One of those situations is in the automation of repetitive tasks: exactly the sort of thing that computers are good at.

We spent months creating the Small Business System so that you don't have to. But a hurdle remains: the effort in implementing it! And, unless you happen to be me, organising information isn't your business. It's an overhead.

So what if the machine could do it for us? I see new apps every day that promise to organise your stuff using AI, but without a framework, they're all just guessing. The results are going to be different every time. They're not going to be internally consistent. It might look neater but you still won't know, with total confidence, where everything is.

Would that be different if you gave the machine access to a 55,000-word business operations manual, along with clear instructions on the Johnny.Decimal structure and its various patterns and standards? Well I have those things, so let's see.

I downloaded two files: our latest bank statement, and my latest superannuation report. Both filenames were left unchanged. Then I asked Claude:

"i've downloaded our most recent bank statement and john noble's latest superannuation report. they're in my downloads folder. please file them for me."

Here's what happened.

Figure 22.00.0151A. I really run a green-on-black Terminal, yes.

There's my instruction.
Claude reads the folder, identifying the files. It immediately knows which JD ID these documents should go in, because the basic structure of the system is in-memory.
I've given it extra patterns, like the fact that some subfolders need to be organised according to staff member. So it checks whether those structures exist. It reads the contents of the files so that it can be sure they're going to the right place.
Comfortable that it knows what to do, it moves both documents, creating a subfolder for me in the payroll folder, and renaming them according to my specified standards.
And wraps up by confirming what it did.

I've cleaned up this screenshot (you don't need to see it listing folders on my drive), but this was a 'one-shot' action: it didn't ask me any follow-up questions after my initial prompt. It just worked.

This is pretty good! I'd want to wrap a bunch more controls around it before I set it loose on my business, e.g.

All file operations must be logged. If it moved something, you want to know what it was before and after.
I wouldn't be letting this run on an entire unorganised structure in 'move files' mode. I'd be getting it to copy everything over to a new structure that we could then verify.
There are a bunch more JD-level heuristics I need to add. But for a first crack, a proof of concept … I think the concept is proven?

The nice thing about this is that we're still 100% useful without the AI. It's not a requirement of an ongoing system – it's a tool we can call on as required. We can have it make notes in our JDex so that we can both understand what's going on: it can refer to its own notes in the future, so it'll reinforce its own patterns. And you can refer to those notes just like any other JDex entry without having the AI in the loop.

And of course we can run this on local models so we're not sending our data up to the cloud, provided we have the hardware for it. (My M1 MacBook Air, not so much.)

I'm going to keep working on this. Would you use it? Would you pay for it?… ;-)

Update, 4 days later

I've already made good progress. I have a proof-of-concept app that authenticates against your account at JDHQ and pulls what it needs from an API endpoint.

This allows me to continually refine the system and its prompts, so your local app will be 'smarter' within an hour of me making updates.

Local = slow

What didn't work out was the local model. Even tiny models brought Ollama on my M1 MacBook Air to a crawl. A simple categorisation by filename, not even file content, took almost 3 minutes -- clearly impractical.

More recent hardware will fare better of course, but I doubt it's going to match the sub-2-second response I'm getting from OpenAI's API running gpt-5.

The API allows you to opt-out of data sharing, so I've done that. Whatever I develop will have the option of running locally, but personally I'm in the cloud for now.

(I need to feed it a decent amount of context so that it understands what to do. Splitting the job up into smaller tasks might also help.)

I'm optimistic

I heard from a bunch of people by email and the theme was clear: we'd love to be more organised, but we don't have the time.

This has legs. Watch this space.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.¹

As in, the words written here will never be generated by AI. My policy on the use of AI is documented at 01.03 Policies. TL;DR: I'll use them where they're useful. ↩

22.00.0150 Decimal Diary: Data leaks and credit reports

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:00:00 GMT

Decimal Diary: Data leaks and credit reports

Today's blog is a guest post by Lucy.

Dear Decimal Diary,

My personal details were leaked in two recent data breaches affecting Qantas and Vietnam Airlines. Another batch of little pieces that might one day be reassembled into a pretend me, so they say.

I've read that it's not a bad idea to keep an eye on your official credit report in case someone steals your identity and applies for loans in your name. So today I tried out Johnny's idea of 'be a better human' time and did something I've been putting off for ages – I accessed my credit reports.

In Australia, I learned that there are three companies dealing with identity and credit services:¹

Experian,
illion, and
Equifax.

Finding the stuff to create an account

First, I had to register for an account with each service. This meant providing things like drivers licence, passport, and Medicare details.² In my personal system, this kind of thing is saved under 12.16 Medicare & government and 33.11 Identity.³ No worries.

Saving the stuff they sent me

After the accounts were set up, requesting the credit reports was straightforward. I can get them sent every 3 months for free if I want (I've set a new reminder to do this). I've saved them in my filesystem in 11.26 Credit rating, labelled by year-month-day so they sort.

Other helpful cameos

Other Decimalised things involved in this 'P3' task include:

The item that reminded me that I actually really want to do this was saved in my 11 Money & tax category in Things.
New logins for the credit report companies were saved in my 11 Money & tax category in 1Password.
Emails from the companies were filed in my 11.26 Credit rating folder in Gmail.

This boring life admin task was made a bit less ominous thanks to my system, and I actually bloody did it.⁴

From,
Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Apparently if you're in this line of business you name your company as if it's an intergalactic science-fiction horse. ↩
Which didn't fill me with great confidence after remembering the Equifax data breach of 2017. Oh well. ↩
My ID numbers are artisanal because I built my Johnny.Decimal system in the workshop before the Life Admin System was born. If I had Life Admin I'd be referring to: 11.12 Passports, residency, & citizenship, 11.14 Licences, 13.23 Government services, and 13.13 My credit rating. ↩
There was still swearing involved, but that was mostly due to poor wi-fi in our current location. ↩

22.00.0149 Listmonk on a Pikapod with AWS SES

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:57:34 GMT

Listmonk on a Pikapod with AWS SES

If you'd like to be responsible for your own mailing list, I've found a solution that I can recommend.

Install Listmonk on a Pikapod. Listmonk is FOSS mailing list software. Pikapods are dead cheap virtual app containers. You'll have that up and running in literally one minute.

Now get yourself an Amazon SES account. When I set mine up I had to send them my site details to prove that I was legit. Which is fair enough for a bulk email service. Still, it took a week to get approved. Be patient.

Now configure bounce processing.

And now you're done. I can send a couple of thousand emails to a list that I control for about $1. I love it.

If you run in to any problems let me know and I can share my setup. And if you can't be bothered doing any of this and you still want a privacy-first email service, use Buttondown. I'm a happy ex-customer.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0148 The Johnny.Decimal Workbook is free

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 03:48:33 GMT

The Johnny.Decimal Workbook is free

Click here to download it. Its licence is now CC BY-NC 4.0 meaning you're free to share and adapt it, but not for commercial purposes.

An ode to the workbook

When I quit my job in May 2023, we didn't know what we were going to do. In hindsight, we should have planned it a bit better. And saved more money. Story of my life.

We'd already booked a month-long holiday for August that year. Around the start of July, we realised that we should create this document: the best, most comprehensive guide to building your own system. So, in a flurry that ended two days before we flew overseas, we did that.

It was a lot of work. 20,000 words. 100-ish pages. Everything I knew about taking a bunch of disorganised stuff and turning it in to a Johnny.Decimal system. Lovingly edited and laid out by Lucy. We were really happy with it. We still are. It stood the test of time.

The first sale

I put it up for sale on Gumroad, not having any clue what would happen. Then I emailed my mailing list. Then I went outside to see Lucy, who was with the chickens. I remember it vividly.

Minutes later, the Gumroad app popped a notification on my phone. A sale. Then another. And another. Four, almost immediately. I showed Lucy. We couldn't believe it -- this was the first validation that this thing, this dumb idea that I quit a proper job for, might keep us alive.

Giddy with excitement, we spent more on hotels that holiday than we had any right to.

You can't protect a PDF

I always knew this would happen, but it still stings when it does. The workbook has been available to download for free for ages now. Just Google it. Which is fine -- there's only so long one should expect to eke a living from a PDF.

In fact, we uploaded it to the National Library of Australia ourselves last year. That feels really good. To have our work there. That'll outlast me. Mad.

Don't always be so obvious

Of course the 'natural' instinct when giving a thing away is to get something for it. So I just spent the morning faffing about with my email list, thinking I'd do the thing where you sign up, you get the link to the workbook, you get those onboarding emails that nobody reads. Email address as currency.

To my credit, the time it's taking me to go from implementing The Thing That Everyone Does to realising that I Cannot Be Bothered Doing That is getting shorter. So, no email required. Just the workbook, if you want it.

We hope you find it useful. You can support us by signing up for something at JDHQ.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0147 Globally unique identifiers

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 01:14:43 GMT

Globally unique identifiers

The previous post regarding the creative outputs pattern generated a bit of discussion on Discord, if you're interested.

That discussion led me to give the example of my most recent email to the mailing list, which just went out with the ID D25.14.54+50068.

Let's break that down.

D25 is our system ID for the Johnny.Decimal business.
14.54 is the small business ID for 'electronic mailing lists'.
50068 is the ID in our creative area for this specific email.

Plausibly, someone else might have that exact same ID in their system. Unlikely, but possible. So what if I wanted to reference that in a way that made it globally unique?

(More realistically, the ID D25.14.54 might co-exist in the world, and the question of global uniqueness can be applied equally to it.)

Prefix it

What if I had my own, guaranteed-globally-unique prefix? And you had yours, and anyone who wanted one had theirs.

Let's say that mine was JDCMAL, because we decide that they need to be 6 alphanumeric characters. Now I have:

JDCMAL.D25.14.54+50068

— and this short DOI-like identifier¹ now uniquely identifies this specific thing, globally.

To satisfy some spec I'd probably need to give it a URI scheme?

JD://JDCMAL.D25.14.54+50068

I'm not sure what I'd ever use it for. But it's an idea I keep coming back to.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

'Identifier' there creating a RAS. ↩

22.00.0146 How many things are you trying to do at once?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 08:24:16 GMT

How many things are you trying to do at once?

Here's a trick I've been trying. This is difficult, which I think reveals just how much we flit between tasks in the course of a day. I haven't managed to do it well yet.

Open a new note. Just a blank text file will do, it's not forever. Now, as you go through your day, every time you're doing something, identify what that thing is in your Johnny.Decimal system.

I'm at work all day. So whatever I'm doing has to be represented there somewhere. Am I working on a 21 product or 31 marketing? Helping 33 customers? To make this easier as you start out it's good enough to note a category or even an area number. But an ID is better.

By the end of the day this note should be like a run-sheet of all the stuff you did. Every time you switch, update it.

Can you do it?

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0145 'Creative outputs' should link back to an ID

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 07:54:15 GMT

'Creative outputs' should link back to an ID

When using the creative pattern, it's important to note that creative outputs should always relate back to one of the other IDs in your system. They aren't things in and of themselves: they're always in service of something else.

Think of it like this. When Lucy was a creative professional (copywriter), she was tasked by the 'account service' team to do some 'creative output'. She says that they were never allowed to start work without a 'job code': to which customer and project does this work belong, and to whom is it billed?

The 'job code' is one of the other IDs in your system. Why are you doing this piece of creative work? What is it for?

Our current video projects

In my current system, right now, we have a bunch of IDs in the 500xx range where we're recording and producing videos for the 'Be better at computer' series and the upcoming 'Task and Project Management' course for JDU. Each of those things has its own ID:

21.41 JDU Task & Project Management
31.21 Be better at computer

…and that's where I'm tracking the video series: which episodes we're recording, my inbox of ideas, all of that high-level stuff.

But when I set up my computer, plug in the microphone, and put the camera on the tripod, that all gets saved in a new folder down at 50-59.

So there's a one-to-many relationship from the parent ID -- the 'job code', if you like -- to the creative output. You should use your JDex to create this link, if it isn't obvious from the name of the creative job.

50-59 is your workshop

We like to use the analogy of a workshop or a shed. That's what the 50-59 area is for. You go in there and you have a bunch of wood and tools and you bang about a bit and you make a chair.

But why did you make the chair? You still need an ID somewhere else in your system that's tracking the fact that you make and sell chairs. Because as a chair-maker, you'll make another chair.

See BBaC #002

Speaking of the video series, I also spoke about this in the members-only segment at 08:13 in episode 002 (JDU membership required). It's a common confusion. I'm happy to keep clarifying: let me know what you need.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0144 Use your Desktop

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 09:24:08 GMT

Use your Desktop

We all know you shouldn't permanently store documents on your Desktop.

Right? If you don't know that, call me for some one-on-one time.

But your Desktop isn't useless. We gravitate towards it for a reason: it's right there.

So this tip, via Lucy: store that document where it should be, in a neat JD ID. But if you're using it all the time, create an 'alias' or 'shortcut' on your Desktop.

This is a pointer to the file, but it isn't the file. So when you're not using it any more, you can delete the alias, and the file remains.

Mac

Right-click the file, Make Alias. Now you'll have another icon with a little arrow in the corner. Drag it to your Desktop.

Windows

The same, but it's Create shortcut. You might have to click Show more options first.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0143 Rebuilding the site (again) (slowly)

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 06:10:17 GMT

Rebuilding the site (again) (slowly)

I've started to rebuild this site. It doesn't really need a rebuild, it's a bit of a waste of my time, but I want to do it anyway. Don't hold your breath for the result; this is an after-hours hobby project.

I learn so much every time I build a new thing. Have I ever mentioned that I'm not a trained developer? I'm self-taught, and personally I find building an actual thing, that I need, more motivating than following along with some course.

But there's more to it. I use Claude Code and in many regards it's a godsend. JDHQ wouldn't exist (yet) without it. I feel coding is where AI really shines: I don't want it to write my words for me, but I'm happy to call upon the collective wisdom when I need code that calls a payments API.¹

That code has been written 100,000 times before. There's no craft in me re-writing it; my version wouldn't be better. Certainly it'd be worse. This is exactly the situation where the average of all that has come before -- or 'a pattern', you might call it -- is desirable.

I feel the opposite, very strongly, about words: you'll never, ever read a word from me that was written by AI. Because that is about personal expression. You might feel the same about my code; I do not.

But jeez it makes you stupid

Practice has made perfect for millennia, and so when one fails to practice, what should one expect?

Claude is insidious. You use it a bit, now it did the last bit for you, now you understand it less, so you get it to do the next bit for you, even though you know you should do it yourself, but that would involve re-learning the bit you got it to do for you…

…and now you feel really disconnected from the thing you made. That scares me. These things I make are how I earn my living. Imagine earning your living from a thing you didn't understand.² What happens next? What when it goes wrong? Or your AI tool disappears, or changes such that it's no longer useful, or they hike the price 10× (spoiler: inevitable).

I enjoy coding

And I like coding. I like knowing how it all works. The satisfaction when you build a thing, a nice thing, is immense. I've worked hard to get here.

So the rebuild is a reason to love it again. I'm going to consolidate a bunch of stuff, standardise some of my look-and-feel, freshen it up for 2025. I've got some proofs already and it is nice. Nothing radical, don't worry. Same look, cleaned up.

I'm not saying I won't use Claude; that'd be like saying I won't use the web. It's too useful to not use. But I'm going to make sure that I use it like I use the web. As a resource, a guide. A way to read documentation. To learn.

But it won't write anything for me. That's my job. That's my hobby and dammit I want it back.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Translated from nerd talk, this means that when you add something to your cart and click 'buy', I need to send a bunch of data to Stripe, my payment processor, then listen for their response, and do things with that response so that you get an email with a link to create an account.

This all has to be exactly right, and isn't the sort of place you want to go exercising your creative freedom. ↩
Now you're an economist! lol ↩

22.00.0142 Naming hard drives

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:48:06 GMT

Naming hard drives

If you're like me you've got a bunch of external hard drives, SSDs, and thumb drives. And if you're like me you abhor the default name. Like hell I'm storing my data on SANDISK 64GB.

So what to call them? Well, go to that drawer of stickers. Find one that fits. Stick it on. Voilà.

I present our SanDisk Extreme 2TB: beachball.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0141 Use the numbers (Luke…)

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 03:06:19 GMT

Use the numbers (Luke…)

These IDs of yours. Handy little things. Use them.

When you go to save a thing and that where do you want to save it? dialog pops up, don't go clicking around like an amateur! You're better than that. Use the ~~force…~~ built-in features of your operating system.

Figure 22.00.0141A. It's basically the same on Windows.

In the search box, type the number of the folder you want. I remember this one as I've been working on it for weeks now.
It can't hurt to sort by date modified. Pop the recent stuff to the top.
That's the folder I want! Select it.
Done. What was that, 3 seconds?

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0140 A regional Japanese mall

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 10:45:27 GMT

A regional Japanese mall

We walked to the Aeon Mall in Motomiya, Morioka today. It wasn't far -- a couple of kilometres. After a few beautiful weeks, today was a cloudy, forgettable day.

The mall felt very 'regional'; a word Lucy and I use with some affection. To us, it means a place that just is what it is. Just a place that people go. No big story. Life, going on. I love that. It's why I travel. To be with people, in their life.

We passed through a tiny, empty park. Not even a park. An open area with some slides. I can't imagine it's ever seen more than a handful of Australians. A regional park. There was nobody there. I should have taken a photo. It would have been melancholy. I don't take photos.

This is being in a place, to me. This is why we stay in a place for months at a time. We learn it. We walk to its regional malls. You know what we got, in this regional Japanese mall? McDonald's. You know what Japanese people eat sometimes? McDonald's. Then we walked back.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

32.01 Be better at computer

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 23:32:01 GMT

Be better at computer

A YouTube series where we'll show you how to be better at computer. Realistic, practical tips to help you work better, with more focus, and less stress.

JDU members get it a day early, with bonus content, without the ads.

Update 2026-01-22

We're looking at all of our YouTube content and working out a more cohesive plan for 2026. Keep an eye on the channel.

22.00.0139 Give things stupid names

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:17:53 GMT

Give things stupid names

I'm just consolidating a bunch of ideas at 31.01 Marketing inbox. This is where I stash thoughts that I might use for blog posts, YouTube videos (upcoming series! look out…), social media -- whatever.

I might use an idea in one or more of those places, so I'm testing out a way of moving a task in Things through these phases. It's either new, or I've used it in one or more places, or I've exhausted its potential and it can be completed.

I'm doing this by using headers in Things, moving the task between the headers. (Cmd+↑/Cmd+↓ makes this really easy -- always use the keyboard shortcut!) It's simple, and effective.

Have a bit of fun

What's boring? New → In progress → Complete. What isn't? Tea!

A new idea is fresh tea. Something in production is brewing. Then we all know you shouldn't, but when needs must you can usually eke another cup out of a bag you've already used.¹ Then at some point you have to acknowledge that what remains is dregs.

Dumb, but free, and a nicer place to spend your day.

People crave this at work

People used to enjoy working with me. You know why? Because I wasn't really really boring.

It's so easy to be really really boring at work. Don't rock the boat, right? For evidence, open LinkedIn. (Please don't open LinkedIn.) But being just a tiny bit not boring can be a great relief.

You won't get fired for giving something a stupid name. But you will be remembered.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Leaf tea being superior, but I had to leave our teapot in Australia. ↩

22.00.0138 Delete things

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 04:40:52 GMT

Delete things

Just because I advocate for neatness doesn't mean I think you should keep everything forever.

I'm just reconfiguring my mailing list and came across this screen in the excellent (and FOSS) Listmonk mailing list software.

These are the templates that you use when you send an outbound email. I tinkered with this back in July and I know that I always want to use one of these templates.

Hmm. But which one was it?

Less choice is less friction

It's a common theme around here: less choice is to be embraced. Design fewer areas and categories, not more.

Is this the first time I've mentioned Barry Schwartz' Paradox of Choice?! It can't be but it seems so. That link was the TED talk; it's also a book and is worth a read.

This isn't quite the paradox of choice, but the idea is the same: why have all of these choices? Are they good? Helpful? No! In this case they're just confusing. I don't remember which one I want. They slow me down.

I think we keep things around just in case. What if I wanted to use one of these templates later? Is there some setting in there that I couldn't recreate? Something I might look at and learn from?

Eh, there might be. But probably not. Life would be better -- a tiny bit, but surely -- if I deleted the four templates I didn't use. So I just did.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0137 Your JDex is your PKM

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:04:40 GMT

Your JDex is your PKM

It might be my fault, but there can be confusion between what's your Johnny.Decimal system and, for those of you who are into 'personal knowledge management', what's your PKM system.

What's PKM?

If you're not into PKM, here's a quick primer. People enjoy storing 'personal knowledge': facts and thoughts and notes about whatever it is that they're doing or learning or anything.

Then they like thinking about exactly how to store this personal knowledge, because if you just chuck a bunch of notes in a folder you're unlikely to have a good time. That just became personal knowledge management, or PKM.

It's massive. Some significant percentage of YouTube is taken up by PKM. Discords and forums abound. Creators-a-plenty worship the god that is PKM.

What's not PKM?

I've never framed Johnny.Decimal as PKM; ref. that post I linked at the start. This is a conscious decision: for those who aren't into all that, and just want a way to neatly organise their files, I don't want it to feel like you have to join a cult just to be organised. You don't. You can keep it simple, be organised, and play outside.

But of course there isn't a clean break between these things. The Venn diagram of JD×PKM would look like a solar eclipse. So how do the two intersect?

JD is your PKM

The misconception is that you have this Johnny.Decimal system -- say, Life Admin -- and you have a PKM system. That might look like this.

All I mean when I say that JD is your PKM is that every piece of personal knowledge that you would like to manage must be linked to an ID in your system. In our highly contrived, too-neat-to-be-real example, it looks like this.

Figure 22.00.0137B. Right-click and open in new tab to embiggen.

Nothing doesn't have an ID

That's all it is. If you're a good Decimal there should be no notion of a thing in your life that you can't fit into one of your IDs. That applies to personal knowledge in exactly the same what that it applies to your electricity bill or the confirmation of the flight you just booked.

And if you don't have an ID? Create one. You might need to create a new area or category to hold it. Do that.

'How do I PKM?' is answered

So the question of how to organise one's personal knowledge is that you organise it just like anything else. In a neat system, where nothing is buried too deep, where like concepts live near each other.

Johnny.Decimal, in other words.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0136 Be a better human (a technique, not an order)

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:28:52 GMT

Be a better human (a technique, not an order)

I'm recording a new video course for JDU, working title Task & Project Management using Johnny.Decimal. I'm tackling (again!) the age-old problem of 'getting stuff done'.

(No, I don't think it's a solved problem. Yes, I have my own ideas. They're really helping me.)

In doing so, I've realised that there's a class of task which seems to go un-done. It's the stuff that isn't truly important, otherwise you'd do it, because you just have to. You just have to pay your credit card, so you find the time.

It's the next level down. Stuff that you want to do, and that if you do manage to do, would make you feel like a better human. So let's just allocate some time to it, and decide: be a better human.

I do this by blocking out an hour of my calendar every day.

This morning: boring documentation for my business

I swear the point of this post wasn't to promote these links, but it's too good an example not to use.

I have a Ko-fi and a Patreon that are scarcely used -- I'd rather you buy a useful product -- but that do generate some income. (If that's you, thanks!)

Each of those connects to one of two PayPal accounts, and/or one of two Stripe accounts! And each of those accounts has settings for when and if it automatically pays out to a bank account, and if so, which one.

So when Lucy, who keeps an eye on our finances, asks whether we have any spare Patreon money and how she might get it, and yet again I scrunch up my face and say … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ … then, yeah, it's time to trawl those sites and just write it down.

Oh my god that sounds boring!

RIGHT? Riiiiiight. Really really tedious. And so I look at that task and I think, ha!, like I'm doing you today. And so months go by, and every time Lucy asks me, I still just dunno.

It's kinda pathetic.

So. That's what I did this morning. I took about 45 minutes and I went through all of those sites and at 13.22 Accounts that deliver income and 32.13 Stripe in my SBS I wrote a bunch of notes that link to each other that explain the situation.

And I feel like a better human for having done so.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0135 Start with a mindmap

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 21:53:36 GMT

Start with a mindmap

Over on Discord, @MDMooreUK asked the Small Business group a fairly complex question about their business setup.

Maybe it's because 'I'm a visual learner' (warning: not actual science), but I find this sort of thing much easier to approach if I crack open a mindmap. My love for MindNode is well known, but use whatever you have.

Turn words in to nodes

My first step is to just read through the question and pull out the key parts. While you're here you might as well loosely organise in to concepts.

It's important to realise that you're not creating some work of art here. Often enough I don't even save these files: I just use them as a scratchpad for my mind. So on the left, I've extracted what I thought were the key parts of the original question.

Figure 22.00.0135A. Right-click and 'open in new tab' for full size.

Create links

The point of this is to link these concepts in my mind, and to convey them to others. I was trying to type out a response on Discord and wished I was on camera, waving my arms around. 'This links to that', I'd be saying.

That's when I realised the mindmap was the answer. So on the right I've extracted key parts of the SBS, and I've linked the two maps together (Cmd+Shift+L in MindNode) and added some comments to the links.

Brings an idea to life; breaks it up

For me, this immediately brings the idea to life. And now we have a simple diagram that we can talk to, and specific parts that we can focus on. Rather than one mega-question, now we have a bunch of sub-questions. Much more manageable.

If in doubt, crack open MindNode.

22.00.0134 The previous post has been updated

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:13:47 GMT

The previous post has been updated

FYI, the previous post, 'Extend-the-end: a deep-dive' has been updated.

Added:

Pattern 1 > Example.
Pattern 1 > Folders in your filesystem.
Pattern 2 > Date as short code.
Pattern 2 > Double-chain short codes.
Pattern 3.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0133 Extend-the-end: a deep-dive

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 04:38:48 GMT

Extend-the-end: a deep-dive

Extend-the-end (EtE) is a new pattern that is still finding its feet in the real world. Here's a deep-dive and discussion of the use cases that I see on the forum & Discord.

Pattern 1: 'lifting up' a header

You have some ID, and in that ID you can hold a whole bunch of information. Let's say you keep one long JDex entry with neat headers.

The simplest way to think about EtE is to imagine 'lifting up' each of those headers into its own document. Because eventually that single note is going to get really long.

So this:

# 11.11 Some note

## Header about thing A
Yada yada blah blah for 10,000 words…

## Header about thing B
Blah blah yada yada for 15,000 words…

– is going to become 3 notes. We keep the parent

11.11 Some note, and introduce
11.11+ Header about thing A and
11.11+ Header about thing B.

Format: AC.ID+▁Title of the thing

Note the specific format here, which is in contrast to pattern 2. The EtE'd note's title is:

The ID of its parent 11.11, then
The +, then
A space , then
The note's title.

This recognises the general broadening of IDs

A broad pattern (see YouTube 'What is an ID?') is that IDs are getting broader, and holding more.

I'm not really sure why this is, to be honest. I can't tell you the last time I got anywhere near filling up a category with IDs (our pre-built systems excepted; they were designed to be full).

So exercise caution: if you do think about 'lifting up' a header like this, ask yourself, should I instead just be creating a new ID?

Concerns

It can be easy to forget that you've created these 'sub-notes'. Think carefully before creating one: prefer to 'fold' the header in the existing note.¹

Leave yourself a breadcrumb in the parent note. I always do this at the top.

# 11.11 Some ID

- Sub-notes:
  - 11.11+ Header about thing A
  - 11.11+ Header about thing B

---

Main note contents here.

If your notes app supports it, make these clickable [[wiki-links]].

Example

At the Small Business System's 14.32 External software & services I've created a note each for the services that I use. In this case I was experimenting with linking to these notes from other notes; easier achieved when the item being linked to is itself a note vs. a header in another note.

14.32 External software & services
14.32+ Arq
14.32+ Backblaze
14.32+ DaVinci Resolve
14.32+ Debian
14.32+ Diagrams
14.32+ Discourse
14.32+ MindNode
14.32+ Obsidian
14.32+ Syncthing
14.32+ Tailscale
14.32+ Things

Now when I link to one of these items, it reads almost like a sentence. Here's an extract from a note:

curium does a full nightly backup to [[14.32+ Backblaze]].

(Curium in this case being the name of one of my servers.)

Folders in your filesystem

I'm not totally sold on the necessity of this, but there doesn't seem to be a downside.² Try it and let me know what you think?

If I have an associated filesystem subfolder for an EtE item, I name it with a +. This serves as a reminder that this item is an EtE.

Pattern 2: use it as a short code

I use Life Admin (LAS) as my personal system. So it already has all of the IDs that I need, day-to-day.

I manage my own data storage & backups at 14.14 Data storage & backups. But I also manage this for my bestie Michelle, a photographer. She has her own setup and I don't want that mixed in with my own.

In a 'normal' system, i.e. not the pre-built LAS, I'd probably just create her own ID:

14.83 Michelle's data storage & backups

– but I am in LAS, and I already have a place, and the system is pretty full. Also, this isn't the only piece of data I'm storing for her: I also manage her domains, and who knows what else in the future.

So here's what I've created:

14.14+MGH Data storage & backups
14.25+MGH Domains & hosting

`+MGH` = a reusable short code

Being her initials, in this case. And note the subtly different naming pattern here: no space after the +. Because this enables searching your JDex for this specific string, revealing all of the stuff that is exclusively related to Mishy.

More importantly it conveys to you the fact that this is a reusable short code.

Using this to manage the family

A very common question in the context of LAS is how do I use the system to manage my family?

The simplest pattern is to use EtE as just described. Assign your husband and each of the kids a short code. Obviously this code has to be the same everywhere. Initials are great, but use whatever works for you. I'd probably keep it to <5 characters, but really that's arbitrary. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with +BARTHOLOMAEUS but I think you'll get sick of typing it.

(Actually there is a sound logic to shorter codes: they're harder to get wrong. It'd be easy enough to type +BARTHOLOMEAUS one time and now you're at risk of losing that note.)

Think of this like a 'shadow system'

In this situation, you have one primary system. All IDs are created in this primary system.

But underneath that, you have any number of 'shadow systems'. They're the same system; same structure, so you don't have to remember a whole bunch of other IDs. And you reveal it by searching for your short code.

Alternative (not EtE)

For the record, the other way you might do this is by completely duplicating the LAS structure for each of the kids, or whomever.

10-19 Life admin ← your stuff
   …

20-29 Michelle's life admin
   24 Her online life
      24.14 Data storage & backups
   …

30-39 Bartholomaeus' life admin
   …

This feels like you'll have a lot of empty space. Personally I prefer the EtE pattern.

Date as short code

As usual, if the date is at all relevant you should probably use it.

We're currently on a trip. I'm tracking that at my personal system's 15.53 Jucy's World Tour.

For each new segment of the trip, I create a sub-note starting with the date.

15.53+2025-09-19

Double-chain short codes

Actually, I go further. The 19th September trip was to Japan.

15.53+2025-09-19+JP

I've used the date first, as it'll force the note to sort. Then I've added +JP.

This assumes that I might find +JP a useful filter on my system. Otherwise I might as well have named it 15.53+2025-09-19 Japan. And let's look at that carefully: the ID of this note is now 15.53+2025-09-19, and the title of the note is Japan.

In this case that probably would have worked; but countries already have 2-letter code that I can use. And that feels neater to me, personally. But I'm kinda in to ISO codes which might be a niche thing?

Ac-tually before even finishing this update I realised that I do find this short code useful. I stored a QR code for Japanese immigration there and knew that I'd want to find it real fast when I was in the immigration line.

Knowing that +JP will surface just this note, and no others, was a comfort. And that's what I did, finding the QR code while everyone else was scrambling for theirs.

Pattern 3: use it to store notes 'outside' your main system

Credit for this one to @salutalice on Discord, who wanted a way to keep their EtE notes 'out of the way' of their primary JDex notes.

This leaves your JDex with its AC.ID notes clean. Every note there is a primary, ID-defining JDex entry.

So that's what they do. In their case, using a Bear tag that places their EtE'd notes out of the primary system. Similarly but kinda opposite, @aviskase tags their primary JDex notes with an Obsidian property, allowing them to show only these notes. Same idea, different mechanism.

Exactly how you do this will depend on the app you use for your JDex. Ask if you need help -- channel #13-system-expansion is your best bet.

I don't do this myself yet but I can see myself migrating to this pattern. I really like it.

The concern above re: forgetting that these notes exist is doubly relevant here.

Retraction: the 'blog pattern' was wrong

The EtE page lists as an example this blog. E.g. the page you're reading would be 22.00+0133.

I'm going to remove this example and instead number blog posts using the 5-digit creative pattern. That's a future post.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Any good notes app will let you 'fold' or 'collapse' a header. Typically hovering over the header will show a reveal/collapse triangle ▶ ▼. ↩
On my Mac. Windows/Linux YMMV. ↩

22.00.0132 Personal and work systems: how do they interact?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:55:30 GMT

Personal and work systems: how do they interact?

This is a common question that I just received by email. The author has a personal and a work system -- let's say they're Life Admin and Small Business, but that isn't important -- and wants to know how the two should interact.

The key question is whether these systems should be merged and/or interact in some way, or if they should remain divided. For example should you move Life Admin's 10-19 under your business system and re-number it? Should these systems share a JDex?

(An assumption is that they're on the same computer, like they are for me. I don't have a separate work machine; if you do, this is simpler.)

I split my systems

I have P76 Johnny's personal life and D25 Johnny.Decimal. To each, it is like the other does not exist.

They're different parts of my life and I find the separation helpful. Also, for example, I share the business with Lucy, but not my personal stuff. As soon as you merge them, you lose the ability to do that sort of thing.

I keep my personal JDex in Bear and work in Obsidian. Again, because Obsidian is shared and Bear can't do that. This works for me: when I'm 'at work', I'm at work. It's rare that I find myself wishing I could, say, link a note from my work system over to my personal system.

And when this does happen, I just use the full SYS.AC.ID identifier to tell myself this is what I mean. It just happened this morning: in a note in Obsidian I wanted to refer to a personal thing so I just typed out 'blah blah P76.15.54 blah blah' and that's all I need.

No renaming necessary

Our emailer had asked whether it was necessary to rename any of the systems' subfolders to indicate the system that they belong to.

No. I have two top-level folders which mirror the system names, then the folder structure underneath is as-downloaded from JDHQ. No renaming of folders.

I do name files

I find it useful to name files with SYS.AC.ID at the start. This takes no extra time and now I can quickly see to which system they belong.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0131 Your computer is your workshop

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 04:17:13 GMT

Your computer is your workshop

A century ago, you were an old-timer. You made stuff in your workshop.

It took a while to set up a new job. You had to figure out which tools you need. Maybe sharpen your plane, oil your strop. Clear the bench, sweep. Check that you have enough birch, go to the store, pick up some more two-by-four and a bag of nails. Lay it all out. Have a look at it. Is the plan good? Do we know what we're making?

And now you can start.

Later, the new table finished, this all needs to be tidied away. Ready for the next job. You look over your shoulder as you lock the workshop. Neat. Calm.

You can't wait to work again tomorrow.

Is this how you feel?

Computers allow us to do any number of things 'at once'. Of course you can only ever do one thing at a time, but it's nice to pretend.

When was the last time you prepared the next piece of work? Closed all of your old windows. Opened up a new view on your files and found the place you needed to be. Opened the note you'll be using in a new, clean window. Focused your task manager on the task at hand.

Your computer is your workshop. If you want to work well, you need to slow down. You need to think more, and do less.

What you do will be better, and you will enjoy it more.

Tip: use your task manager

Here's what I've started doing. I use Things but any task manager will work.

Create a new window. In Things, File > New Things Window or Ctrl+Cmd+N. Move it up in to the corner, and make it small. Think of it like a tiny dashboard.
Highlight the single thing you're working on now. Here, I'm using a tag 🫵🏼 focus on the task, then viewing that tag in this window by typing focus.
That's it. Remember to be doing what this window says. Don't do anything else until you've finished, and cleaned up, and prepared the next job. Simple.

More on this in the upcoming JDU course

I'm figuring this out as part of the next JDU course: Task & Project Management using the Johnny.Decimal system. Sign up to the mailing list for updates.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0130 Obsidian tip: link directly to a header

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 03:45:14 GMT

Obsidian tip: link directly to a header

When I'm working on project-level stuff (which is larger than task-level stuff; see upcoming JDU course) I typically (~always) have a task in Things, serving as the reminder, and notes in Obsidian, because it's a notes app and Things isn't.

I always cross-link the two. When you're in one place, you should make it obvious to yourself that there's relevant stuff in another place; otherwise you have notes over there that you'll forget to look at. Links make it trivial to switch between these two places. They're worth the ~minute it takes to set up.

Deep-linking to an Obsidian header

This didn't work with the native Obsidian URL scheme, but the Advanced URI community plugin [Obsidian|GitHub] by Vinzent does the job.

You need to add a block to the header you want to link to. These don't seem very well documented on the Obsidian site (am I missing something?). But they're simple: just add ^xyzabc to the end of your header (or any paragraph).

It must appear as the last text on the line, and xyzabc can be any string of, it seems, arbitrary length. They can start with a number, which is nice. So I have a subheader within JDex entry 21.41:

### +WP1 Map out the course structure ^2141wp1

– and you can see how natural it is to create a block ID to link to that. The block ID represents the header's location within my system.

Creating the link in Things

I make these 'cross-links' look the same every time, using a dash (i.e. Markdown bullet list) and the unicode ⇄ 'rightwards arrow over leftwards arrow'. Raycast's Search Unicode Symbol, bound to Ctrl+Opt+U, enables me to type that easily.¹ (Hopefully it does the same for you Windows users?)

If you use the Advanced URI plugin to Copy URI for current block you'll get the full path to the file:

obsidian://adv-uri?vault=D25%20JDex&filepath=20-29%20Products%2C%20suppliers%2C%20equipment%2C%20processes%2C%20%26%20inventory%2F21%20Products%20%26%20services%20%F0%9F%92%88%2F21.41%20JDU%20-%20Task%20%26%20project%20management%20with%20Things%20%26%20Obsidian.md&block=2141wp1

🤮 Long URLs are ugly.² I wonder what happens if we just delete the filepath part...

- ⇄ obsidian://adv-uri?vault=D25%20JDex&block=2141wp1

Works. Nice.

Linking back to Things

This is much easier. Right-click the Things task > Share… > Copy Link.³

- ⇄ things:///show?id=HRZD78hvnWd3zW24vruy22

Tags for this post (that aren't really tags yet but let's just pretend for now):
- Apps/Obsidian
- Apps/Things
- Content/Tips 'n tricks

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Fuck AI for making use of proper typographic symbols some sort of indicator of slop. On a Mac it's trivial to type these symbols, and you should be using them all the time. An en-dash, for example, is just Opt+-; for the em-, also hold Shift. I've used it 20 times a day for the last decade (though I've never liked the em-dash in my own writing – just feels way heavy. I go with space-en-space.).

(Also FWIW I have Ctrl+Opt+I bound to the emoji palette and Ctrl+Opt+C to the clipboard history. I use all 3 many, many times a day.) ↩
And Things' Markdown support is a bit lazy in that it 'supports' Markdown, but does nothing with it; that is, a long link is always displayed, and never replaced by the [text of the link](uri://…). ↩
On a Mac, the … ellipsis is Opt+;. ↩

22.00.0129 Tags are contextless

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 02:32:03 GMT

Tags are contextless

Tags are also dumb because, once created, they have no context.

I learned this with the JDex: it's not enough just to create a thing. Later, you've forgotten what, and why, and where. So you type yourself some notes so that you can remember. These notes are vital.

No tag system has this. It's just here's a space for you to type a simple string and good luck! So in the moment, every new tag makes perfect sense. And later that day, it's nonsense.

This is a Mastodon thread.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0126 Don't be lazy, don't be stupid

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 04:51:11 GMT

Don't be lazy, don't be stupid

I just wrote a blog post and messed it up by not following my own checklist -- lazy and stupid -- and then tested out a new code idea, and messed it up by just not reading the documentation. Lazy! And! Stupid!

Lazy is default

Of course it is. Evolution and stuff. But when dealing with the complexity of the modern world, it is no longer an advantage.

Because being lazy now just means that I have to do it again later. That's not efficient, and it's frustrating, and it leads to a worse state of mind, and poorer quality work.

Checklists

When I write a blog post, I have a checklist. It's kinda boring: do this, do that. It's more work than just banging out a tweet. But hey, that's what it is. To ignore that fact is to be childish.

So I just published a couple of blog posts and totally ignored my checklist, and now I have to spend more time fixing them than I would have had I just done it right.

Lazy. Stupid.

Tend to your checklists

Checklists are a superpower. Read Atul Gawande's 'The Checklist Manifesto'.

But they must be kept up to date. Because every step is a chore, and superfluous steps will lead you to resent and ultimately reject the whole list.

Every time you touch your checklist, fix what's broken. You need to want to use your checklists. They need to be a relief, not a burden.

Documentation

Then I was messing about with this Astro feature and it wasn't working and arrrgh whyyyyy and eventually I ask their AI support bot on Discord and it tells me about this one line I need to add ... which is just right there in the documentation. Clear as day.

So had I just taken the time to read it, it would have worked, and I wouldn't have been frustrated, and I wouldn't have had to open Discord which is now a distraction, and it would have been working half an hour ago, and all the rest.

Don't be lazy. Don't be stupid.¹

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Sorry Alex. But it still reads well? ↩

22.00.0128 JDU Task & Project Management course: quick update

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 02:23:01 GMT

JDU Task & Project Management course: quick update

A quick update for those of you looking out for the next JDU course.

I've been working on this for at least a year. All through the Workshop I promise to show Lucy how to manage her to-do list using her new system and then ... I never do.

Because I didn't know how. I was still working it out. Turns out it's a hard problem.

Task & Project Management

I don't yet have the pithy New York Times-bestselling title for this thing. What I've realised is that most of us need to manage two quite distinct things: tasks and projects.

Tasks are the one-offs that you might think of as 'to-dos' or 'reminders'. Pay the bill. Buy the milk. Cancel the subscription. Call the vet. They're often time-bound. They're chores. Doing them makes your life not-worse.

Then we have projects. This is the good stuff that helps you achieve your long-term goals. This is what you want to spend your free time doing. This stuff shouldn't be a chore. And yet it feels like we spend so little time doing it.

These two things require very different treatment. I have a method that I've been using myself for the best part of a year, that I now have in the structure of videos that can be recorded. There's still a little more of that to do, then I need to record them and Lucy needs to do the post-production.

It's the thing I'm working on the hardest. It'll be out soon.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

22.00.0127 Tags are dumb. I'm going to fix tags

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 01:50:38 GMT

Tags are dumb. I'm going to fix tags

Tags are dumb. They don't work and if you prefer them over folders, you're wrong.

So I'm rewriting my blog with tags as the primary mechanism of organisation. I'm going to fix tags.

What's wrong with tags?

I got an e-reader for my birthday last month. There are four (4) books on there. It still has that new-e-reader smell. And already, here's what the Tags view in Calibre looks like.

I couldn't have written a better parody. We have British -- France -- Paris -- Fiction and its cousin French -- England -- London -- Fiction, each with what I assume are some sort of clever ISO-standard double-dash separators that enforce a defined hierarchy and allow me to expand/collapse and filter at each level?

Oh that's not what they do? Oh. Well that's a shame. Also when did England morph in to British? Long before the summer of 1789, let me tell you. And I hope you didn't search for France hoping to find that second book because there it's the adjectival French.

So, as implemented, these tags are worse than useless. They're noise. I'll never, ever look at them again.

(For the record: I do see the pattern here. You don't need to email me.)

Tags: the Johnny.Decimal spec

If we were to fix tags, what are the requirements?

1. There must be no ambiguity or chance of duplication

When there is a possibility of duplication in meaning, the system cannot be trusted. If I've selected Historical fiction believing that this encompasses both history, historical fiction, and fiction, and something that I expect to be surfaced is not, my faith in the system collapses.

And these three things are, in this case, distinct entities. They should have their own tags. But I have no confidence that this is as-implemented in my system.

This requirement extends to the act of adding a new tag. In current systems this is hit-and-miss. Do I already have a suitable tag? How would I know? And so you add another, and the problem compounds.¹

2. They must be organised hierarchically

Tags are generally presented as a flat list. And now we're back to Johnny's least favourite thing: the alphabet.²

Here follows a comprehensive list of things worse at presenting information than the alphabet:
1. A tag cloud
Thus ends the list.

Folders are natural

I saved something from the Obsidian Discord the other day. I'll quote it here without attribution as the point isn't to dunk on the author. In the context of a tags vs. folders discussion, they wrote:

I don't see any advantage to folders other than that they are universally intuitive and quick to implement, and that they are the default way of organizing things in operating systems.

My response was that 'this is quite the advantage though, no?'. But it speaks directly to the Foundational Principle of the Tag People: that folders are bad, because we have computers that are capable of virtually 'storing' things in multiple places (as represented by tags), so why limit ourselves to just one place (the humble folder)?³

The fundamental error is that this simply isn't how people conceptualise information. How many places can your drivers licence be? One. And if you were to try to find it, how do you go about that, mentally? You start at the top and you filter down. House → hallway → that little table that holds your keys and other daily junk → wallet → licence.

If at any point in this no-doubt frustrating journey of discovery (I'm late already I know it "should be" in the hallway please can you just help me find my licence) the thing isn't where you expect, it is entirely natural to step back up the hiearchy, choose another branch, and so it goes until you realise that, inexplicably, you left your wallet in the bathroom this morning.

But Johnny, you're wilfully conflating issues here; the Tag People are talking about tagging things like photographs and book metadata, and you're talking about finding your physical licence.

Kinda, but not really. There are Tag People who really do advocate for storing all of your information using tags and not folders. But I think this is beside the point: I don't think it matters what you're using them for. They're still broken for all of the reasons outlined above.

This does speak to the defining feature of tags, which we should address.

3. You must be able to assign multiple tags to an item

This is stating the obvious, but let's make our requirements comprehensive. The entire point of tags is that many things do in fact have multiple properties, and that it can be helpful to be able to filter and group based on these properties.

Let's think about a blog. And let's expand the concept of a blog, which I'm going to do. (Working title: megablog.) Any given '(mega)blog post' might be long- or short-form. It might be a video or not. It might have a certain tone: serious, or snarky? (Like this post, it might be both.) It might be personal or work related; might relate to one or more Johnny.Decimal concepts; it might be one in a series. And so on.

You can extend this concept (which I will) to all of our written and recorded work, public or paid, and to forum posts, Discord threads, and anything else.

4. There must still be a single, canonical list of All The Things

I'm acutely aware of the fact that organising your stuff is a boring chore. If it was heaps fun I'd be a rich man, amirite?

This is a fundamental problem with tags: now you have to tag everything! If you forget to tag that important finance spreadsheet with either important or finance, then now what? Where is it?⁴

And who thinks to go back and re-tag stuff, or to add helpful tags to already-tagged data, or to consolidate tags? It's just never going to happen. Whereas at least the catastrophe that is your work's g:\finance folder is browsable. Every finance spreadsheet is in there somewhere.

So I suggest – this is a soft requirement, as yet unexplored – that every system that uses tags must also have some sort of canonical list by which every item can be referenced. I'm starting with my blog, and expanding to all other content, so in my case it's easy to see how a simple linear ID, or a Johnny.Decimal ID, can accommodate this requirement.⁵

The point is that tags are additive. They do not replace existing methods of organisation.

Note: this does not replace your filesystem

Just so it's clear: I do not intend to replace my filesystem with tags. I am developing this as an idea, for a very specific use-case: published multi-media content.

I already know where to look for my licence. It's in my wallet, and the electronic artefacts are at 10-19 Life admin / 11 Me & other living things / 11.14 Licences. No part of me seeks to add tags to this system.

How? Johnny.Decimal

Conveniently enough, I have a system that meets these requirements. I believe that the solution is as simple as tags, organised per the basic rules: hierarchically, in groups of no more than 10 and 10 again, and then assigned a unique ID.

We will lean heavily on a core Johnny.Decimal principle: fewer is better and close enough is good enough.⁶ Only create a new tag when absolutely necessary; if an existing tag is good enough, use it.

That's it. I don't know if it'll work, but I can't see why not. And could it possibly be worse than what we have now? Let's find out.

Next: 'dynamic discovery'

We already have a hierarchy that describes all books. Why invent the nonsense that is British -- France -- Paris -- Fiction when we already have 823 English fiction, 942 English history, and 944 French history?⁷ Just use those as your tags!

But my megablog isn't books, so I need my own system of tags. Assuming you're not the city librarian, you'll also need your own. Coming up with one sounds onerous, but I think I have another idea: dynamic discovery. That's the next post.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.

Nicely demonstrated by this Reddit comment from 5 years ago, whose experience exactly mirrors mine: 'I'm sure there are hundreds of genres. I have 46 listed in my library & I don't even listen to that big a variety in music.' ↩
Just kidding, the alphabet is great. If you're writing the dictionary. For almost everything else, it's a terrible way to organise information. Concepts are not alphabetical. Concepts are hierarchical. ↩
I know that your computer virtually 'stores' files as inode references and that tags might be, in this regard, conceptually more pure than folders. You don't need to email me about that either. ↩
This reveals another interesting fact. I didn't say that you should tag the spreadsheet with spreadsheet, because it already is, by virtue of its .xlsx file extension. This feels natural and shouldn't be a surprise. But how many of you know that you can trivially search your filesystem for specific file extensions, revealing all spreadsheets at a glance? Or group the view in your file explorer by type of file? Or create saved 'search folders' that show all spreadsheets by last updated date? And how many of you actually use these features on any given day? (I'll show you how, it's on my to-do list.) ↩
This linearity serving to anchor the item in time and space, aiding discoverability. Humans naturally place things in a temporal context. I know I created this after I wrote that, or I remember where I was when I wrote that, and it must have been around September 2025. This feature comes free with your brain; you might as well use it. ↩
The only time when 'good enough' is an acceptable standard. ↩
Technically, the reason for this nonsense is that the authors have tried to shoehorn a tag hierarchy in to a string. This is because most tag systems are implemented as a flat list, precluding any built-in representation of hierarchy. But this reveals yet another footnote-relegated insight: tags must only be used where they are a fully supported, first-class citizen. I'll be building custom tag support for the megablog. ↩

15.04 Small Business System

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:04:00 GMT

Small Business System

Running a small business is hard. We know: between us, me and Lucy have 50 years of experience as contractors, freelancers, and business owners. You want to get on with making and selling stuff, and worry less about the boring administration: where did I save our office insurance policy?

It doesn't need to be this hard. Johnny.Decimal is a great way to organise this. The Small Business System is a ready-made structure, designed to contain everything that your small business does.

One place for everything. No decisions, no duplicates. That policy document? It lives in 12.12 Office insurance, incidents, & claims. Every time.

Job done. Go make your customers happy.

Lucy and I spent thousands of hours designing this so that you don't have to. It's the system we use to manage our own business. Just sign up and move in. You'll be more organised in 10 minutes than you've ever been.

Old Structures Engineering of NYC used the SBS to organise over a million files and recommends it.

And Des from Datum CNC in New Zealand said, "We have recently completely switched to the Johnny Decimal Small Business System … Now everyone is on the same track! … Thank you both, the JDex system has made a big difference to our daily operation!"

If you'd like a demo, or if you have any other questions, book a 30-minute video call with me here.

What does it cover?

Everything. From business administration including your legals, staff, policies, premises, transport, finance, technology, and events. To your products, suppliers, processes and inventory. And your marketing, customers, orders and shipping.

Last, a place for all of your creative assets. Stop spending time frustrated that you can't find stuff. Our system solves this problem for good.

How does it work?

When you sign up, you get access to JDHQ. From there, you can search the 55,000 word Small Business online index. There are 300+ IDs across 21 categories.

Next, you download the folder structure for your computer. And a set of files that you can import into your notes app to create your JDex.

Every page on JDHQ has helpful links to guide you around the system, as well as links to the forum and Discord for community support.

Private support

Getting organised is a big change. So we're here to help. After you sign up I'll send you a link to book a slot in my calendar. If you're ever stuck, let's work it out together.

How much is it?

A$500. No subscription, and you get updates for life.

┌─────────────────┐
│  ▶  Buy now  ◀  │
└─────────────────┘

If you don't like it, let me know within 14 days and you can have your money back. No problem.

15.03 Life Admin System

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:03:00 GMT

Life Admin System

'Life admin' is the unavoidable day-to-day that we all manage. But did you save that new policy document at House/Insurance or Documents/Important? Or give up and leave it in your inbox? Finding it later won't be fun, especially as the house just burned down.

It doesn't need to be this hard. Johnny.Decimal is a great way to organise this. The Life Admin System is a ready-made structure, designed to contain the common stuff that we all do.

One place for everything. No decisions, no duplicates. That policy document? It lives in 12.12 Home insurance & claims. Every time.

Job done. Go play outside.

Lucy and I spent hundreds of hours designing this so that you don't have to. It's the system I use to organise my own life. Just sign up and move in. You'll be more organised in 10 minutes than you've ever been.

Like Chris, who said 'one day using this pack … everything has a home, and I finally feel in control'. Or Jade, who said that it 'has been a game changer for me and I highly recommend to others who want an organised cohesive life admin system'. And Taras, who is 'finally in peace because I know exactly where anything from my life is'. Attribution for these and more is at JDHQ.

How does it work?

When you sign up, you get access to JDHQ. From there, you can search the 10,000 word Life Admin online index. There are 150+ IDs across 5 categories.

Next, you download the folder structure for your computer. And a set of files that you can import into your notes app to create your JDex.

Every page on JDHQ has helpful links to guide you around the system, as well as links to the forum and Discord if you need help.

It's our job to help you be more organised. We'll support you all the way.

How much is it?

A$50. No subscription, and you get updates for life.

┌─────────────────┐
│  ▶  Buy now  ◀  │
└─────────────────┘

If you don't like it, let me know within 14 days and you can have your money back. No problem.

Works beautifully with the workshop

Get the workshop and Life Admin. Use Life Admin for all the common stuff, and learn from its patterns. Use the workshop to build a system for your hobbies and job and local tennis club.

The workshop is part of Johnny.Decimal University, which has more content. Enrolment is A$300, you get updates for life with no subscription, and it includes Life Admin. Great value.

22.00.0125 I created my own platform

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 06:16:10 GMT

I created my own platform

You did what now?

Oh hi. Thanks for asking.

So when you start a business you use these 3rd party services. You sell PDFs via Gumroad and courses via Thinkific and Life Admin Systems via Shopify, and it's great, because you can get started really quickly.

But then 2 years later you've got user accounts all over the place, no cohesive view of your customers, they have 3 different places to sign in, and you don't really control any of it.

And updating your existing products is really hard. The Life Admin System was a zip file that is just a beast to change. I mean, essentially impossible. The Workbook is a PDF, and if you edit a PDF and the pagination is off then Lucy looks really sad. And we can't have that. So small edits become a big job.

And a 'platform' solves this how?

When you build your own thing, you have total control. The Life Admin System can be generated on-the-fly. So we change something this morning, you download it an hour later, and you get those updates.

The Workbook can be presented as a bunch of web pages. Which means that it can dynamically link to the Workshop, which it accompanies. And the Workshop is now under my direct control! No more videos hosted on a 'training platform' which, frankly, I always hated.

Where is it?

We've called it JDHQ and it's at jdhq.johnnydecimal.com.

Do your existing customers get this?

Of course! They'll all get an email soon enough and there's a migration FAQ here.

What next then?

New things! All new things that, until now, just haven't been possible. Hopefully people tell me what they need, and we can build it for them.

It'd also be nice if people told their friends. Maybe if they have a blog or a social media they can mention it there? ;-)

I dare say you'll take the rest of the day off?

We might just, yeah.

01.03 Policies

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 03:37:11 GMT

About these policies

We wrote these policies ourselves. They're intended to be read by humans, not lawyers. You should read them; it won't take long.

Privacy

I go to great lengths to protect my own privacy. I use:

an independent search engine,
an independent email service,
a network-level DNS filter,
a local ad blocker, and
the most privacy-preserving VPN on the planet.

I pay money for all of these services.

I tell you this so that you believe me when I say I care about your privacy as much as you do. These aren't just words to placate you. I mean it.

The simplest way for me to care about your privacy is to collect as little of your personal data as possible. Here's how.

Analytics and trackers

I self-host Umami analytics. No personal data is collected.

Many services will block this, as I've made no attempt to obfuscate it. Feel free to explicitly block network access to umami.johnnydecimal.com.

Cookies

My authentication service, Clerk, uses cookies to track your user session on JDHQ (i.e. if you're logged in or not). They have no other purpose and are required.

Sometimes I use Netlify's split testing feature. This places a cookie nf_ab with a random value between 0–1 so that you are served the same branch each time.

No other cookies are used.

User account and settings

If you have an account at JDHQ, your data is held at Clerk. I can see your name and email address.

You can store some settings in JDHQ, e.g. the name of your Obsidian vault. I can view these settings. I won't, unless you ask for support that requires I do so.

Sentry

I use Sentry to track errors that occur on JDHQ. All user-specific telemetry has been explicitly disabled.

Your Clerk user ID is the only identifiable information sent with the error report. This is a long string of random characters. I can use it to look up your user account, which I might need to help me fix the error.

Stripe

Payments made through my payment processor, Stripe, are subject to Stripe's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Money-back guarantee

The short version

All our products have a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Send a copy of your purchase receipt to hello@johnnydecimal.com.
I'll refund your purchase within 48 hours.
You will lose access to the product that was refunded.

The longer version

I guarantee that our systems will save you time and help you organise your life and/or business. Me and Lucy take extraordinary pride in our work. This is our life. And as a small business, we depend entirely on satisfied customers and word-of-mouth.

So if you're not happy, I'm not happy. If you don't think that the price was worth it, let me know within 14 days and you can have your money back. No questions, no risk.

For the quickest response, forward your purchase receipt to hello@johnnydecimal.com. If you want to tell us what we could have done better, please do: but no pressure. You can just say 'I'd like a refund'.

If you can't find your receipt, tell me what you purchased and when and I'll look it up.

I process these requests manually, on the same day that I receive them. So they'll usually be processed within 24 hours, but on rare occasions it may take a bit longer.

I can't control how long the money takes to be refunded by Stripe back to your payment method. Experience tells me it's usually a couple of days.

Code of conduct

There is one rule: be nice to people.

People of all shapes, flavours, and varieties are welcome. Don’t make anyone feel unwelcome because of who they are. If you do, you’ll be asked to leave.

This part from omg.lol’s Code of Conduct is perfect, so with permission it is reproduced and applies here.

"We believe that everyone has a right to the freedoms of speech and personal expression. We also believe that everyone has a right to live free of abuse, harassment, and harm. In specific situations where these two beliefs are at odds with one another, we prioritise the second over the first."

Use of AI

Created by the humans

Every word we produce was written by me or Lucy.
All of our products are handmade.
I answer all messages personally and will never use AI to reply to a message.

AI is interesting. It definitely has its uses. But we enjoy writing. It's what we've chosen to do for a living. Why would we want to outsource that to a machine whose only skill is guessing the next most likely word and whose output is, therefore, by very definition, average?

If we ever produce content that has been written or altered by an AI, this will be explicitly stated alongside the content. The only situation we can foresee is if we translate some of the system content into another language.

Helping me write code

I find Claude Code useful. It's better at answering my code questions than random web searches.

But as a rule I don't let it write code for me. This produces bad code that I neither understand nor trust. Also, watching an LLM do your work is very unrewarding, and you don't learn anything. I prefer to do it myself.

1. Introduction

Welcome to Coruscade Pty Ltd, trading as Johnny.Decimal ("we," "our," or "us"). By using our website, tools, or services ("Services"), you agree to these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree, please do not use our Services.

2. No professional advice

Our Services provide general guidance on business, finance, and related topics. However, we are not lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, or any other type of licensed professional. The information we provide is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, financial, tax, or any other form of professional advice. You should consult a qualified professional before making any decisions.

3. No client relationship

Using our Services does not create any attorney-client, accountant-client, or other professional-client relationship. We do not represent you, and our guidance does not substitute for professional advice.

4. Use of services

You agree to use our Services at your own risk. We make no guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information provided. We are not responsible for any actions you take (or fail to take) based on our guidance.

5. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages arising from your use of our Services, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

6. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms at any time. If we do, we will email you. Continued use of our Services after changes means you accept the updated Terms.

7. Governing law

These Terms of Service and any separate agreements whereby we provide you Services shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of New South Wales, Australia.

8. Refund policy

If you don't agree to these terms, please contact us within 14 days of signing up and we'll refund you in full.

9. Contact us

If you have any questions, please contact us at hello@johnnydecimal.com.

22.00.0124 Be who you are

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 14:24:28 GMT

Be who you are

Backstory: we're building a new thing: JDHQ. It's the consolidation of years of our stuff -- currently delivered by multiple platforms with multiple accounts, which is a terrible user experience and a nightmare to manage -- into one thing, that I'm building from scratch. It's going to be sweet. It'll launch next month.

There's a conventional wisdom that 'recurring revenue' is vital to a business. And how does one generate such revenue? Subscriptions.

There is a truth to this. I feel sorry for software developers who scrape $20 out of a begrudging user. You don't have to be Andrew Wiles to realise that single $20 purchases do not a living make; whereas $20 every year compounds, as long as you can keep last year's customers happy and re-subscribing. I gladly pay a whole bunch of subscriptions, and you should too.

So the first element of the backstory is: I had in mind this subscription model for JDHQ. Because They Say it's What You Should Do. But I always hated it. It just never sat right with me.

Next: I'm stressed. It's been a funny year. We moved out of our ~~house~~ ~~city~~ country, which sounds glamorous but is in fact traumatic. I'm not complaining, I chose this; I'm just saying. Life is upside-down. We're working 6.5 days a week on JDHQ, both of us. All day every day. And we miss our chickens. Ah god, we really miss our chickens.

Without revealing too much, let's just say that business is slow. The Northern Hemisphere's summer seems to be a dip for us. You guys shouldn't be organising your files when it's 30°C and still light at 10pm.

And given our singular focus on building JDHQ, I've done nothing to alleviate this natural lull. My last JD-related blog post was almost 2 months ago. Nothing on YouTube. No marketing. Nothing, anywhere.

So, again, I'm not complaining. It just is. I'm a bit stressed, and that takes a lot. It's not my natural state. It's hard to admit.

Years ago, I did something at work that I regretted.

Broadly, there are two types of people on a project. There are the conciliatory ones whose job it is to pacify: to join people together, to be calm. And there are the shouty ones, whose job it is to stir things up, to 'tell it how it is', to 'take no shit'. Projects need both types of people. I am very, very much the former. Like, alpha-former.

(I realised my natural role was Manager of the Favour Bank: everyone owes me one, and I owe them one back, and the entire project can trade through me. Need to get something done? Ask Johnny: he knows who'll help you. It's a role I love, because it's Who I Am. This role is entirely incompatible with being 'the shouty guy'.)

So on this project, some other team was being frankly hopeless¹ and that was impacting us and, long story short, I went round their backs and escalated it to our SVP rather than working it out with them. Because I was really stressed. Not-sleeping-at-night stressed.

This was Not Who I Am.

The guy who I screwed over called me and lost his shit. And he was right. I was ashamed. I had been pressured in to betraying my very nature. The regret was immediate and profound, and I vowed never to do it again.

I did it again yesterday.

Lucy and I call you, our customers, 'the family'. We really do. How do we look after the family?, we ask. What are the family benefits?, we ask.² It drives everything we do. It's at the core of every decision we make.

Yesterday I forgot that. And I knew it: I could see it happening. I fucking knew that I was not being Who I Am. I let stress, and frustration, and whatever other excuse I come up with, get the better of me.

(The details aren't important. Money.)

The family, of course, called it out. It's what family does. And because I already knew that I was not being Who I Am, it was easy -- actually a fucking massive, palpable relief -- to back down. To undo the stupidity. To change my mind. To do what I should have done the first time.

It's never too late to be Who You Are. The instant you notice that you aren't being: stop. Pull the emergency brake. Smash the glass. Hit the red button.

It's never worth it.

Because the entire project was a lost cause. Everyone and everything was hopeless. Nobody stood a chance. ↩
Actually we say 'fambly' for reasons that are lost to time. ↩

22.00.0123 Online reviews are dead

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 31 May 2025 08:52:55 GMT

Online reviews are dead

They had a good run. Let's say the mid-2000s until, well, today. 2005-01-01 — 2025-05-31. RIP online reviews.

Airbnb

Late last year, my family visited from the UK. We paid $5,000 to stay at this 4.88-star, 'Guest favourite' Airbnb. Looks stunning, doesn't it?

It wasn't. The kitchen was full of pots and pans that look like they'd been bought from an op shop.¹ The outside loungers were literally rotting. The 'golf course' was in comically poor form. The BBQ was missing its metal plates -- you know, the bits you cook on -- and a gas bottle. The toilet blocked. And so on.

After leaving my 3-star review, 'Harry' called me multiple times and tried to bribe me, with money, to change my review. (I have a conscience. I declined.)

Hotels

We're in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We booked an 8.3 'very good' hotel on Booking.com. Small, but recently refurbished, and reviews rave that it's the cleanest place and so on.

Two weeks ago, 'Lopez' from the USA, 9/10:

Best hotel slippers I’ve ever worn. Can I buy them? Asking for a friend (me)

'Barnhart' from the USA, 9/10:

A small but beautiful hotel tucked away in the city center. Super clean, friendly service, and unbeatable location.

'Janice' from New Zealand, 9/10:

The hotel was fantastic, with great service and beautiful decor.

(I'll point out that Lopez, Barnhart, and Janice are all suspiciously beautiful young ladies. This is relevant.)

We left after an hour. That is the building. Those photos were taken there at some point. But then I don't know what happened to all those soft furnishings. I don't know why there are photos of a croissant and a burrito.

The luxury you see in those photos is simply not real. I doubt it ever was.

I'm on Telegram (for bot notifications rather than anything personal). About once a week I'll get a message from -- would you believe it -- a suspiciously beautiful young lady.

After a brief how'dyoudo?, the offer is made: do you want to make some money by reviewing online hotels? Until today I'd wondered what the scam was. What do they want from me?

Well, the answer is nothing. The scam is the other way round. I think if I say, yes, I'll take $10 to review a hotel, I might actually get the money.

Because all online reviews are now fake. They're purchased. We've known this to be the case for Amazon for years. And now it's accommodation. Gone. Dead. Useless.

Of course, AI will ruin this further and faster.

What now?

Obviously you can still trust the Hyatt. And the larger, older places that are unique to a city. If they were no good, they'd have gone out of business by now.

But if you want somewhere smaller and cheaper, I think you have to see it with your own eyes. That's what we're going to start doing: the first few days in a new city will be somewhere trustworthy but above budget. Then, with guidance from the online booking sites and individual blog posts, we're going to go and walk into places. Can we see the room? Can we make a booking here at the desk, rather than online?

I will never trust an online review again.

That's a thrift store or a charity shop if you're not from Australia. ↩

22.00.0122 Email

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 22 May 2025 04:36:48 GMT

Email

Well we had to talk about it at some point. This might turn in to a mini-series as well, so let's just see how this intro goes and let me know what you want next.

This is necessarily quite technical in parts.

Brief background

Old versions of my site stated that 'I can fix your email'. And I believed that I could: from 2014—2017 I meticulously filed many thousands of emails as part of my job as Technical Project Controller of a $300m data centre deployment.¹ I could find anything, near-instantly. It was wizardry.

And it got us out of contractual holes all the time.
— You said you'd have it done by now.
— No we didn't.
— Slides email from 32.15 across table.

Then two things happened.

I'm talking about work here, because it's the hardest problem. If you can solve it at work, home becomes trivial. We'll get there.

Teams

No, not the fact that you like your colleagues and bond with them as a common unit in service of a greater good. Instead, the antithesis of that: Microsoft Teams.

More broadly, the fact that we're all conditioned to chat now. And what's happened is that we've started to treat email like chat. It used to be that an email would be longer-form and, if you were startlingly fortunate, well-considered. My experience is that these days are gone. My ~~previous~~ last ever boss just hit reply—type—send all day long. Dozens and dozens of one-liners: chats.

You wouldn't dream of trying to organise your Teams, and I think corporate email has effectively merged with chat.

The problem is that useful -- contractually useful -- information still arrives by email. So there's no doubt that organising some of it is a worthwhile endeavour. And the same applies at home. Forum summaries? Meh. My travel insurance policy? Ah yes please.

Outlook became Hotmail

This is very work-specific, but worth mentioning. Outlook used to be a really powerful mail program with amazing features that, properly harnessed, could really help you get on top of your email. See 22.00.0022.

Then they decided that you were a mindless cretin and turned it in to a banal simplification of Hotmail. Now it has essentially no features but, used long enough, it'll lull you to sleep. So, that's good?

Message: don't stress it

The message here is that email should no longer be considered 'solvable'. We can still use sensible strategies to deal with it, but the Platonic ideal simply isn't there. It's best that you accept that now.

Principles

That said, I think we can lay down some principles from which all else follows. I'm typing these off the cuff so they might evolve.

1. Never delete anything

As in, once an email has been received, it should always be accessible in some way. You might equally phrase this as 'always archive everything'.

Because you don't know what you might want later, and if everything is saved, that's one less decision to make. Should I save this one? shouldn't be something you angst over. It's saved. Move on.

2. Only file what's important

I get … let me see … about 100 emails a week. Not that many, thanks to principle 3. Of those, I'd say less than one a week needs to be 'filed': put in a folder with a number so that I can easily find it, without search.

The rest just get 'disappeared' from my inbox. Because they're saved, thanks to principle 1. I'll show you how I do this while not using Gmail.

3. Unsubscribe!

That button works, you know. Smash it! You can't stop spam, but you can stop mailing lists you signed up for.²

4. 'Inbox Zero' is still relevant

In that having only the things you actually need to deal with in your inbox is good for the brain. Why leave all those newsletters and forum summaries there? You wouldn't leave hundreds of files on your Desktop. (Right?…)

I use my Desktop cautiously. I'll drop a file there, briefly, while I decide where it needs to go. If I see a file there, I know it needs to be dealt with. I use my inbox in exactly the same way.

But don't get all religious and lose sleep if you've got half a dozen things in there for a couple of days. It's an inbox. You'll get to them.

Combined with principle 1, this is easy. Get in the habit of reading your mail and, if there's no action, immediately deleting it. The mechanics of this varies depending on your mail program.

I'll show you how I do this with an IMAP account and Apple Mail. It's the default behaviour for Gmail. Your corporate Exchange account is more of a challenge.

5. Minimise addresses

This one might be controversial. I know people love their email anonymisation one-time address services, but I've given them a go and they're not for me.

Primary objection: I want to use my own domain name. I'm never going to sign up for something using whatever@random.com.

And it feels like an over-optimisation to have to manage an individual address for every service. I tried it (self-managed) for a while and it just caused friction. As we'll see I have one address that I think of as 'the sluice'. I use it to sign up to things. I consider it semi-ephemeral.

I think you need at most two addresses.

The sluice. When you need to sign up for a thing, use this. Eventually you might rotate it out for another.
A professional address. If you're at work, you've already got one. If you run your own thing, get one. If you don't run your own thing, you don't need one.

So which address do my friends and family use?, you ask. A: none of them. Do your friends still email you? Mine don't. It's all messages/group chats.

6. Reduce friction

Should have been number 1. Because all of this is in service of reducing friction. Email is something that, once configured, should take as little of your time as possible.

More email and more addresses and more domains just means more configuration. You don't need it. Email doesn't deserve it. Step away.

Implementation details

So here's how I actually do this.

I like old-fashioned email. I do want to control it myself, and I don't want to use a web service. So I have an SMTP/IMAP/POP3 account at a mail provider: Migadu.

I was with Fastmail, who are great. If you're not an expert at this, you should probably choose them.³ Migadu are cheaper if you manage multiple mailboxes as they charge by the account, not by the mailbox or domain. Per principle 5 I now only have 2 mailboxes, but I also manage a handful for other people. I can do this all very comfortably on Migadu's Mini plan for US$90/year.

This isn't a setting up an IMAP/SMTP account tutorial, so I'll just assume you know how to do that. As always, just ask if you need a hand.

The server duplicates all mail

This is how we conform to principle 1: never delete anything. When mail arrives at our mail server, it's immediately forwarded to another mailbox. On Migadu, this is at [Domain] → [Mailbox] → Forwarding.

I've found this to be massively more reliable than trying to have my mail client make a copy of the email. And what if you delete the email on your phone before your Mac creates the copy? Better for this to happen server-side.

So I've configured email to hello@johnnydecimal.com to forward to archive@johnnydecimal.com. Then my mail client uses POP3 -- still supported at Migadu! -- to pull this mailbox, and I have a rule to immediately move that mail to a local 'Archive' mailbox, and mark it as read.⁴⁵

Figure 22.00.0122A. macOS Mail.app rule.

The net result is that all mail invisibly lands in the local archive, and I'm free to delete messages from my inbox after I've read them.⁶ It works great.

Gmail/Hotmail version

Most webmails have the concept of archiving an email vs. deleting it. They're all a bit different, and I don't use any of them, but that's what you're looking for.

Enterprise Outlook version

I think the modern Outlook also has this same concept? The habit you're going to have to build is pressing the keyboard shortcut for 'archive' vs. just hitting the delete key.

If someone can confirm that for me, I'll update this.

Filing important messages

Principle 2 says to file what's important, and I do that in exactly the same way that I do in my file system: with hierarchical Johnny.Decimal folders.

That's it. No secret sauce.

Adding a currently-in-use folder as a 'Favourite' helps with usability. Mail.app handles this nicely: you can favourite a nested folder and it'll appear as a top-level folder in the list. So I currently have 15.53 Jucy's World Tour stuck there as we're about to take a trip.

You might skip area folders

At work, when I had a lot more folders, I found it useful to skip creation of the area-level folders. Go straight to categories. Less clicking, works great.

My sluice address

FYI my sluice address is 2020@joh▒ny.net.au. It gets forwarded to the same archive. You don't need to configure multiple archive targets.

Spam

I did this assuming that the account would eventually be riddled with spam and that I'd eventually cycle up to 2025@ or whatever. That hasn't turned out to be the case: the account gets very little genuine spam, as in Nigerian princes trying to leave me their inheritance.

Spam these days comes from companies who lie to you when they pretend that they won't sign you up to their mailing list. See principle 3.

(Actually I get way more spam to my JD address because they can somehow scrape Shopify stores. I know my site isn't 'ranking on Google for SEO', but no thanks, I don't need your help.)

Sending bulk mail

Just a brief mention, I have a need to send bulk outbound mail because of the forum and my newsletter.

I use Amazon SES for this.

Pros: it's essentially free at my volume.
Cons: literally everything else.

Let me know what else you need

That was just a brain-dump. Let me know what else you need.

More accurately, I had rules set up so that the majority of incoming email was filed for me by Outlook. This is no longer possible. ↩
And those you didn't. It really pisses me off that companies ignore the 'please don't sign me up to the mailing list' button. It's a lie the majority of the time. But when you receive that first unsolicited email, it does have an unsubscribe link, and that does work. ↩
They're more geared up for consumer-level support; their console is friendlier; they have built-in features like single-use addresses. ↩
I've named this account ~ as it needs to remain active in Apple Mail, but I want to ignore it in the list of mailboxes. I find the tilde just gets out of the way. ↩
If you're not familiar with POP3, it's an older email protocol. Where the modern protocol, IMAP, assumes that you want to keep messages on the server -- normally a good thing, so you can access them from your phone, Mac, iPad, webmail -- POP, which stands for 'Post Office Protocol', actually downloads the mail from the server, and then deletes it from the server.

In this situation, where we only want this archive on one computer, that's exactly what we want. ↩
The archived copy even has the same message ID. So you can link the version in your inbox to, say, a to-do, then delete that copy and the to-do will link to the version that remains in your archive. ↩

22.00.0121 Things: processing your categories - part 3 🎬

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 21 May 2025 04:57:07 GMT

Things: processing your categories - part 3 🎬

Continuing the Things video series, we look at the steps taken to organise the jumble of tasks in each of my categories.

In this series

22.00.0120 Backups [SBS.14.23]

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 20 May 2025 23:53:03 GMT

Backups [SBS.14.23]

In the previous post, we left off by documenting our synchronisation strategy. You should have a clear picture of exactly where all of your data is and, crucially, what's a full vs. a partial copy.

Synchronisation is not a backup

Looking at your diagram, I bet you're pretty pleased with yourself. Look at all those copies of your data! How lovely to have so many backups.

But say you (accidentally, without noticing) delete a file from this laptop. The deletion is dutifully synchronised: that is, the file is deleted everywhere.

Or you edit a document and realise that you've made a mistake. You can't go and fetch the old version from anywhere, because your mistake has been synchronised.

So it's great that you have these multiple copies, and in some situations they can help you recover data. If you drop your laptop in the ocean, the synchronised files in the cloud don't become water-logged. You can get a new laptop, install Dropbox, and off you go.

Don't let this lull you in to a false sense of security. Without backups, you could easily lose everything.

What makes a backup?

Backups are just copies of your data, but they have special properties. This is why you need dedicated backup software to manage this for you.

1. You can roll back in time

In the scenario where you've made a bad edit to a document, you might not realise for a while. In that time, you've made more edits that you want to keep.

Figure 22.00.0120A. Whoops.

So you need to be able to go back in time, restoring versions of the document from further and further back until you find the pre-bad-edit version.¹

Figure 22.00.0120B. Restoring an older version of a file.

Apple nailed this metaphor with the backup software it built into macOS in 2007: Time Machine. The Eclectic Light Company has a brief history here, from which I've gratefully borrowed this (old, cheesy) screenshot.

Courtesy of The Eclectic Light Company; link above

Backup software typically keeps what are called 'staggered' backups. So you'll have a copy every day for the last 30 days; then a copy every week for the last 52 weeks; then a copy every month for the last 60 months.²

This allows you to go far back in time without needing to store a massive amount of data.

2. They're immutable

Which is just a fancy computer-science term meaning they can't be changed. Once you've backed up a file, that copy of the file, which represents how it was at that instant in time, is locked, forever.

This can help you restore from scenarios where a hacker has encrypted your files and is demanding a ransom to decrypt them. If your files have been nefariously encrypted and you're relying on synchronisation, guess what was also synchronised? The encryption!

But if you have an immutable copy of your files, you can roll-back to a pre-hacked copy. You might still lose some data, but it won't be a catastrophe.

Backing up

Sufficiently scolded, now we turn to the mechanics of backing up your data. Backup software is just software, so it needs to run somewhere. That'd be your laptop -- you can't run software at Dropbox -- so let's add that to the diagram.

Some new shapes

Before we do, let's quickly review our diagram key. I've chosen the colours very deliberately, and there are a few new block types.

Figure 22.00.0120C. Our updated key.

Green blocks represent a full copy of our data. Orange blocks represent partial or secondary copies. And the new blue block represents a backup of our data. Solid lines are backup jobs, dotted lines are synchronisation.

The ideal case

In the ideal case, all of your data is on your laptop. So you're backing up a full copy of your data.

If your diagram shows a blue backup block coming from a green primary data block, you can sleep easy.

Figure 22.00.0120D. Backing up the ideal case.

Are you backing up everything?

We've seen that I can't afford to keep all of my data on my laptop. More realistically, this is the scenario.

Figure 22.00.0120E. Backing up a partial data block.

Now I'm backing up an orange partial data block, and my backup doesn't include all of my data. There's data at Dropbox that isn't on this laptop, and so can't be included in a backup done from it. The bad news is, there's no easy solution to this problem.

As we'll see, I get around this by having a server with a massive hard drive. If you don't have that, there are other workarounds. This is outside the scope of this blog post, but we'll address it in a future post. As always, I'm happy to help. Just ask.

More backups is more good: 3-2-1

One more factor, as we nudge towards paranoia. But paranoia is good! Paranoia saves you from disaster.

It's good not to trust any one backup. Who knows what might go wrong? If it's in the cloud, the company might go bust. If it's on a hard drive in your drawer, you might plug that drive in and discover it's died.

The simple rule of thumb here is 3-2-1. You should have:

3 copies of your data (including the original),
on 2 different devices,
1 of which is off-site.

Synchronisation helps us with the first and second items. A copy here and a copy at Dropbox is already 2 copies, on 2 different devices. Your backup becomes the 3rd copy.

The third item is crucial. You might have 10 backups in your house; when your house burns down, none of them is going to do you any good! You must also have a backup 'off-site', and the cloud is the simplest solution.

If life goes well, you'll never, ever use it. But isn't that the very definition of 'insurance'?

Bonus points

For extra paranoia points, keep 2 complete backups. And for a 2× paranoia boost, use different software for each. It's good to have one backup 'locally', which might be a hard drive in your drawer. You can restore from this really quickly. And then one cloud backup, which fulfils the third criteria of having one 'off-site'.

Backup lesson over

That's a lot of theory, so I'm going to leave it there for now. In the next post, I'll show you my actual sync/backup diagram and dive into some of the details.

In this series

Here's the table of contents for this mini-series.

22.00.0101 My data storage & backup strategy
22.00.0115 Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]
22.00.0116 Data [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0119 Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0120 Backups [SBS.14.23]
22.00.0180 Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

Which you're then going to have to manually merge with the current version, as you've been making edits (in blue) that you want to keep. ↩
I just made up this typical 'retention cycle'. Check your backup software for details. ↩

22.00.0119 Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 10 May 2025 00:35:39 GMT

Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]

In the previous post, we left off by defining our blocks of data and noting their primary storage host.

20 years ago, that would have been the complete picture. You had files on your computer at home. If you wanted them somewhere else, you had to put them on an external drive and move them there yourself. And now you have two copies! Careful you don't update the wrong one…

Windows 95 shipped with Microsoft Briefcase, a feature intended to make this shuttling-of-data-between-computers easier. It was a cool idea, but I don't remember it working very well; certainly, it was never very popular. 💼

Dropbox

Then, in April 2007, Dropbox launched. It changed everything: suddenly, I could access my files anywhere I wanted. Dropbox introduced the concept of synchronisation to the general public.¹

The first MacBook Air was launched in January the next year. If you don't watch the whole thing, make sure to watch Steve's reveal, another iconic moment in technology. With that, the number of people carrying a computer around with them exploded.

Suddenly, data was everywhere at once.

Everywhere?

So here's the problem. Theoretically -- in an ideal world -- your data could be everywhere at once. Nothing technically prevents it, and if you can do it, you probably should. It's way simpler.

Let's draw that diagram to see what it looks like.

Figure 22.00.0119A. The simplest ideal case: two full copies of your data.

In reality -- and this is my actual problem -- I have more data than can fit on a laptop. You might think that cloud storage space is the limiting factor, but it isn't. Cloud storage is essentially infinite: just pay a few extra quid a month. But this laptop has a 500GB hard drive and the only way to change that is by buying another laptop.

Selective/partial sync

The solution is obvious enough: don't synchronise everything. Only synchronise to each machine the stuff that you need on that machine. It's great that this is a solution…

…but we just cracked open the Complexity Egg. Before: nice neat situation. 🥚 After: complex mess all over the bench. Get a cloth. 🧽

Figure 22.00.0119B. Selectively synchronising a partial data block.

The problem with selective sync

To be clear: technically, this is no bother. This is what computers excel at.

The problem is that what was once simple, clear, and unambiguous -- all of my data is here and there -- is no longer the case. And now you have to think, this piece of data … do I want it here and there? Can I afford to keep it here? How long do I need to keep it here? And so on.

Embedded data; the different classes of data; different sync methods

Here's another consideration, which I'll just touch on briefly.

Data isn't neat. You don't just have one folder of stuff over here and another folder of stuff over there. You have one parent folder and it contains a bunch of stuff and some of that stuff is more important, and within it you might have a subfolder which is yet more important, and it's all embedded and inter-related.

And there isn't just one way of synchronising things. I use iCloud Drive for my Documents folder. Apple Photos has its own method of synchronisation. And I use 3rd-party software called Syncthing to keep data in sync with my server. I'll talk about Syncthing in a future post.

Once these introductory articles are finished we can go deeper on some of these topics. Just ask. But for now, baby steps.

My diagram

Here's how my real-world diagram looks.

Figure 22.00.0119C. A mostly-accurate representation of my data and its synchronisation.

This is where I think the diagram really starts to shine. Because I can still understand what's going on there. And as things change, I can come back and update it.

I've found that a general rule is that if you can't draw it, it's too complex. For sure I've built myself situations like that in the past. If yours is like that, it might be time to simplify.

That's more than enough for one day. Go and update your diagram, and don't forget to ask for help on the forum or Discord if you need it.

In this series

Here's the table of contents for this mini-series.

22.00.0101 My data storage & backup strategy
22.00.0115 Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]
22.00.0116 Data [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0119 Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0120 Backups [SBS.14.23]
22.00.0180 Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

The launch post on Hacker News is famous in nerd circles because of the top-voted response in that thread.

User BrandonM responded (emphasis mine) that 'for a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem'.

This massively understated just how much simpler Dropbox was. Drew Houston became very rich. Brandon did not. ↩

22.00.0118 RSS: a public service announcement

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 06 May 2025 23:23:53 GMT

RSS: a public service announcement

I wanted to explain what RSS was to those of you who don't already know. Because it's really great and you should be using it.

Like the postal service, for websites

Without RSS, you have a bunch of websites that you like visiting. (Why, thank you.) They put out regular content and you don't want to miss anything. So you remember them all and you go there regularly, or you leave tabs open and refresh them, or some other barbaric nonsense.

Here the onus is on you to fetch that content. You have to reach out to each individual place and grab what's new. You're going to miss things, or just forget things, and it's a lot of work.

Your mail gets delivered

This isn't how your postal mail works. Imagine if you had to go to each of your contacts and say, excuse me, do you have any new mail for me?

Eventually you'd forget to ask Aunty Doreen for her mail because it's always about Gerald and isn't he perfect and then she'd get upset and cut you out of the will.

RSS is like your postman

The mail service serves as an aggregator of your mail. They collect it all, bring it to one central place -- your mailbox -- and you can go there at your leisure and read about Gerald's latest test scores damn the little weasel he never fails.

Get some (free) software

We're going to use NetNewsWire because it's been around since the dawn of time, is free, and open source. (NewsBlur is a website that does the same job. And there are many others -- just search.)

Download it and go to File → New Feed… Copy/paste the URL of this blog post in there. Click Add. Done.

You'll see all of my old posts load. (You can select them all and 'mark as read'.) And when I publish new stuff, it'll just arrive. You don't need to do anything.

Add some more sites

The vast majority of blog-like sites have an 'RSS feed'. That's what NetNewsWire needs. But you don't need to care about that. I can't remember the last time that I had to do anything other than add any URL from the site. The feed should be discovered automatically.

That's it?

Basically. Stop going to sites. Let them come to you.

And ask on the forum or Discord if you need help.

22.00.0117 Things: principles and priorities - part 2 🎬

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 06 May 2025 06:44:02 GMT

Things: principles and priorities - part 2 🎬

Continuing the Things video series, we review my design principles, and introduce a simple prioritisation system.

References

📙 The book I mentioned by Oliver Burkeman.

Four Thousand Weeks - Time Management for Mortals

🙋 Ellane's website.

Plain text; Paper, less

In this series

22.00.0116 Data [SBS.14.22]

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 06 May 2025 01:09:27 GMT

Data [SBS.14.22]

In the previous post we looked at your Storage [SBS.14.21]. Now let's consider your Data [SBS.14.22].

Data is all the stuff you make, or get sent, or download, or whatever. It's your stuff. It's the reason you use a computer.

Discovery

The first thing we're going to do is figure out what all of your data is. Not where it is, yet.

Start by thinking of the largest blocks of data. We'll crack each of these open later to see if there are any sub-classes within that need special consideration.

Mine mostly align with my Johnny.Decimal systems. Here's how they look at their highest level.

D25 Johnny.Decimal

This system is where we manage 'the Johnny.Decimal business'. It's the Small Business System.

P76 Johnny's personal life

Obvious enough. This is the Life Admin System.

My laptop

There's also a bunch of stuff that comes along with me just logging in to my laptop. Technically, we'd call that my 'user folder'. I've got the stuff on my Desktop, any extra files stored in my Pictures or Movies folders, my email¹, and all of the configuration that I've done to make this laptop mine.

This isn't a lot of stuff, but it needs to be considered.

My photos library

For the sake of completion, let's consider my photos library. It's stored in Apple Photos and there are copies on my iPhone, my Mac, and in the cloud.

Diagram

Let's add this stuff to our diagram.

Figure 22.00.0116A. Adding my data to figure 22.00.0115A.

Primary data

I've added green shapes to indicate these primary data blocks. But why do I call them primary?

In the past, this was a lot simpler: if you had some data, it was almost certainly just on this disk or that disk. These days, you can trivially synchronise your data across multiple machines and the cloud. So this notion of exactly where any piece of data is has become less clear. Soon we'll see how each of these data blocks also exists in one or more secondary locations.

Data lives on storage

Let's place these data blocks on the devices that are their primary home. (Nerds say that the storage 'hosts' the data.)

P76 Johnny's personal life

We'll start with an easy one. Well ... kinda. At this point I'll note that the next post in this series will discuss synchronisation of your data. So don't worry if it feels like I'm skimming detail here: I am.

This block of data's primary home is on my iCloud Drive. That's the cloud service you get with a Mac: Windows users have OneDrive, or you might use a 3rd party service like Dropbox. The principles are the same and I'll just use 'iCloud' here for simplicity.²

But day-to-day I don't interact with my iCloud Drive. Where even is that? I don't open my laptop and use the cloud. I open my laptop and I want to interact with files that are on this laptop.³

░ Optimised/selective/partial synchronisation

iCloud is software, and its job is to synchronise files between this laptop, and the iCloud service. But not all files. I have 2TB of iCloud storage available to me, but this laptop only has a 0.5TB (500GB) hard drive. If I filled my iCloud Drive, I couldn't possibly carry it all around with me.

So iCloud has a setting, Optimise Mac Storage. Its descriptive text reads:

The full contents of iCloud Drive will be stored on this Mac if you have enough space. Older documents will be stored only in iCloud when space is needed.

What this is trying to tell us (I think it's poorly worded) is that the only place with a full copy of my iCloud Drive is iCloud. Not this Mac. This has implications later when we want to back this data up.

D25 Johnny.Decimal

This block of data is huge. It contains all of the original Workshop videos. Again, too big for either of our laptops.

So the primary location for this data is our server, the always-on Mac mini at my friend Alex's house.

My laptop

Unsurprisingly, the primary location for my user folder on my laptop is on the laptop.

My photos library

Similar to my iCloud Drive, the only place that all of my photos exist is on iCloud. On my Mac this setting is in Photos → Settings → iCloud tab → Optimise Mac Storage:

If your Mac is low on space, full-resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with smaller, device-sized versions. Full-resolution versions can be downloaded from iCloud anytime.

This is a common pattern, e.g. Google Photos does the same sort of thing. Again, this has implications for your backups.

Diagram

Let's represent this all visually.

Figure 22.00.0116B. Placing data on its host storage.

Next time...

Without considering synchronisation, this is an incomplete view. We'll get to that in the next post.

For now your homework is to consider all of your blocks of data, to figure out their primary storage host, and to update your diagram. Again, don't worry about making it neat yet. There's still a bit to do.

And if you need any help, ask on the forum or Discord.

In this series

Here's the table of contents for this mini-series.

I use macOS Mail with an old-school mail account, not a cloud service like Gmail. ↩
They all have the same basic set of features, but they might have different names. For example, they all have the concept of selectively synchronising only certain data to certain machines. ↩
Noting for completeness that it is possible to interact with files directly in the cloud, typically by logging in to a website. It'd just be a horrible way to work day-to-day. ↩

22.00.0115 Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 04 May 2025 01:59:25 GMT

Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]

This will be a short series focusing on the mechanics of storing, synchronising, and backing up your data. It doesn't matter what data: obviously mine is organised with Johnny.Decimal, but that's not a prerequisite. This post follows on from 22.00.0101 but will be expanded and more formal.

This was prompted by Chris on Discord, who asked how people go about doing this. And it ties in neatly with the Small Business System, where we designed section 14.20 ■ Storage, data, & backups.

My situation

Hopefully my specific situation is about as complex as it gets. We'll get in to the details, but briefly:

I no longer live anywhere permanently. So my internet is limited in speed and capacity, as I'm often tethering from a mobile connection.
Me and Lucy share the Johnny.Decimal system, so it needs to be on both of our laptops.
- But it can't be in its entirety, because it's 800GB and wouldn't fit.¹
I produce videos and need to synchronise 3GB+ of data between the laptops. (I record, Lucy edits.)
I have my own personal system, as does Lucy. I need to ensure they're both backed up.
I have an always-on Mac mini with 16TB of attached storage in my friend Alex's house, as well as an 8TB Synology.
I subscribe to various cloud sync and backup services.
I don't want to spend any more than necessary.

Storage

The order of that SBS header is very deliberate. Storage comes first.

Because it refers to the places that your data might be. You can't store data in thin air: it must be on some device, drive, or service.

This might be:

Your laptop or desktop computer.
A mobile device.
An external drive.
- This might be a large array of HDDs, a smaller SSD, or a USB drive.
A NAS, e.g. a Synology.
A cloud sync provider, e.g. Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive.
A cloud backup provider, e.g. Backblaze.

And so the first step is just being aware of these places. You could do this with a note in your JDex, but I think a diagram works really well here. Let's start one: I use Diagrams, but anything will do. Excalidraw is a simple online diagramming tool.

JD implementation detail

Rather than always noting that I'm going off on a tangent, I'll start putting JD implementation details in an orange box like this.

When you create this diagram -- especially if it's online somewhere like Excalidraw -- don't assume you'll remember where it is. You won't.
Make a note in your JDex. I always put this sort of thing 'above the line' at the top of the note.
If it is online, make your note a [markdown](link://) directly to it.

Diagram

Let's start this diagram with blocks that represent our storage. It will help if you make these blocks all the same shape and/or colour. Here, I've used Diagrams and created a key to the shapes.

Figure 22.00.0115A. My storage devices or locations.

You can right-click any of these images and 'open in new tab' to expand them.

Prefer simplicity over accuracy

This diagram isn't technically accurate. The server curium is a low-spec Mac mini with almost no internal storage. Actually its storage is on a 16TB external drive. In early versions of my diagram I tried to represent this, but I found it confused more than it helped. I know what I mean here. You should do the same.

Next time...

I'll keep each of these posts focused on a specific topic. That's it for storage: your homework is to understand where your stuff could be, and start some sort of diagram.

Don't worry about making it neat for now. We'll be adding a lot more to it and moving things around next time.

And if you need any help, ask on the forum or Discord.

In this series

Here's the table of contents for this mini-series.

22.00.0101 My data storage & backup strategy
22.00.0115 Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]
22.00.0116 Data [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0119 Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0120 Backups [SBS.14.23]
22.00.0180 Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

Much of that 800GB being the original Workshop video files. Fortunately I have no need for them on this laptop, but I don't want to delete them unless I have to. ↩

22.00.0114 Things: processing your inbox - part 1 🎬

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 02:15:55 GMT

Things: processing your inbox - part 1 🎬

A video follow-up to 22.00.0110 Things: why and how I use it.

In this series

22.00.0113 Managing customer data (especially exceptions)

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 23:25:42 GMT

Managing customer data (especially exceptions)

Friend of the system Alex emailed asking if I could delete their customer data from Shopify.¹ They're privacy-conscious and, now that the transaction is done, they'd rather not have their details be stored there.

A totally cool request that I relate to. And credit to Shopify, there's a prominent Delete customer data button that does exactly that, with no fuss. So, easy. Right?

But now how do I remember?

The interesting challenge now is, how do I remember to let Alex know that there are future product updates? They bought the Life Admin System and we plan on migrating it to the same platform that I use for the Small Business System. How do I tell them when we've done that?

My current workflow starts in Shopify. That's where the majority of my (recent) customers are. So if there was an update to something, my natural instinct would be to jump in to Shopify, do some sort of filter and export, and send out a comms.

So now that's 'broken' because I deleted Alex? Not really, because that should never have been my workflow in the first place. For the first year or so we sold the Workbook via Gumroad. It's amazing that these tools exist, but as a small business owner you end up with fragmented customer data across multiple platforms. It's really difficult to deal with: I hope you're good at Excel. ;-)

JDex to the rescue

The answer, of course, is my JDex.

All work should start in your JDex. All of it, always. We spoke about this last time in the context of having notes and files. You might have notes and emails, or data in a web app, or anywhere else.

There are so many places that a thing can be. Your JDex is your sanity. It's the one thing that you have total control over. Use it to point yourself to the other places; to remind yourself that there is other data over there that you've probably forgotten about.

Rushing it = 🤦

This is especially important when you're busy. I've done it myself: I export from multiple platforms, do the data munging in Excel, thousands of rows, filters and sheets and sorts all over the shop, it's stressful, I hate sending thousands of emails, the pressure, cross-check Shopify against Gumroad against Thinkific to de-duplicate, test the email, correct the egregious spolling mistake, it's getting late, I’m s̶t҉r̶essеd, my ℝSI іs pl̵aying u̴p, I ju͢st want to g͏o for a w̷aⅼkw̷aⅼkw̷aⅼk with L͞ucy, I pr͞ess__sеnd.∴..░..∵…

…

…then I remember that I had that other list of people who really really didn't want to ever get an email from you ever again.xlsx and I never even opened it.

JDex-first

So here's what I just did. Start from the top. SBS has category 33 Customers & clients 💎.

It comes with an index-like note at 33.00 List of all customers & clients. I've left myself a note there:

The jumping-off point for customers is [[33.10 ■ Customers]]. It contains any meta-notes that you need to be aware of before consulting any of the more specific entries.

I've created a header 33.10 ■ Customers and left myself a note there:

Manual updates

The following entries contain manual updates to customer information.
[[33.11 Shopify customers]]

And finally at 33.11 Shopify customers, I've told myself all about Alex. Over time this might become neater -- a table, maybe -- but for now it's just some bullet points.

Link relevant notes

In the future I'm likely to be doing work elsewhere in my system but want to consider this data about customers.

The most obvious place is in my 21 Products & services. When I update the Life Admin System, that's the time to be reminded that I have this customer data to consider. For now, I've left myself a note at 21.01 Products & services inbox. (I'm not ready to give it my full attention.)

And so that I don't forget about this text in an 'inbox', I've also tweaked my category review task in Things to read Review this category in Things and Obsidian. (See next blog post which is a YouTube that Lucy is just uploading.)

Good enough

This isn't a spectacular solution but it's good enough. The trick is getting in the habit of starting with your JDex. As long as you do that, and actually read your own notes, you shouldn't go far wrong.

Not their real identity. ↩

22.00.0112 PRM vs. PKM; getting a new driver licence

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 05:40:40 GMT

PRM vs. PKM; getting a new driver licence

Johnny.Decimal is part of the global 'Personal Knowledge Management' (PKM) movement. But that's not a term I've ever used to describe my system. I think that 'Personal Records Management' is more accurate. Here's why.

Getting a new driver licence

We just officially moved from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) to New South Wales (NSW). Since Australia is a federation, each state and territory issues its own licences. So we need to get a new one in NSW.

Previous licences?

NSW wants to know. Question 9:

Do you hold, or have you ever held, a licence issued by another State, Territory or Country?

Provide details of any other licences you have held from another State, Territory or Country.

Licences, plural. I got my UK licence in 1994, transferred it to the state of Victoria in 2004, and to the ACT in 2020. Spoiler: I do not have those details.

Minimalism × records-keeping

Being who I am, you might think that I keep everything. But actually I've never been that sort of person, I think as a result of my natural unsentimentality. I don't find historical artefacts particularly interesting, so why bother keeping them? We just sold 90% of our stuff.¹

But it turns out that some stuff is really useful. What sort of stuff? Records.

UK licence

In packing to leave Canberra, I threw away an old copy of my UK licence. Credit card sized, so you might think, ah, I'll keep that. But no! Multiply that by 1,000 and now you're carrying around a bunch of junk.

You know what I should have done before I chucked it in the bin? I should have scanned it, and recorded its details. Because while they're not the whole picture back to 1994, they'd be more than I have now.

Implementation details

So what does this look like? Bullet points, mostly. If you analysed my various JDexes over the years, I think you'd find 80% of the content to be bullet points.

`11.14+ Driver licence`

As I noted the other day, I like the idea of reserving all 'parent' JDex entries for metadata only, and creating a sub-note by extending the end.

This gives us a new JDex entry 11.14+ Driver licence. Let's create that, and get cute with a link back 'up' to the parent entry.² While I'm here I'll fill it out with some headers.

Dates as headers

There are a few patterns that you could use here, but hopefully you're at home shouting use the date! Because of course you should use the date.

You might think the location is more obvious. It's a UK licence then a Victoria licence and so on. And with so few entries, that'd work. But with more entries, future-me is going to forget: did I call it Melbourne? Or Victoria? Or Elwood, the name of the first suburb I lived in? Or just Australia, because when I first moved here I didn't understand that I'd need a new licence per-state, and thought I'd never move anyway.

Not just a header

You should be thinking of this header as a reference that you might use elsewhere. So the headers should match the names of any folders you create, or the names of the files. See figure 22.00.00112C.

I've only used the year for historical entries because it's all I know, and it's enough. For future entries yyyy-mm is sufficient. The bullet points within the header will have the full detail.

Records-keeping

So now to fill this out with my current licence details, before I replace it and throw it away.

Figure 22.00.0112B. Licence labels and values recorded verbatim.

As well as recording the details exactly as written on the licence, I've noted at the top that there's also a scan in my file system. Always, always help your future self like this. You think it's so obvious: you assume you'll also check your file system. The reality is that future-us locks on to the first thing it finds and doesn't think to keep looking.

Saving the scan

Let's create some folders in our file system. I'm still experimenting here, but I think it makes sense to exactly copy, down to the + followed by a space, the name of the folder from your JDex title.

Figure 22.00.0112C. A always. B be. C consistent.

A folder whose name starts with a + … odd? Maybe. But who cares? We keep coming back to this concept: leave yourself hints. Future-you is going to see this and immediately understand what it represents.

The dated subfolder within should be obvious. And the scan of my licence is named with today's date.

Security/privacy

You might wonder if I'm locking this note. While Bear can do that: no, I'm not. You'd have to have one of my devices, unlocked, or have access to my iCloud account, to read that note. In which case you knowing when my licence expires is the least of my worries.

That's enough

And that's it. A simple records-keeping exercise. There's no prose here. Nothing to really think about. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes.

Follow-up post

22.00.0137 Your JDex is your PKM.

I plan on travelling the world with a very small backpack (that I've owned for 15 years). When we return, our dream is to build some sort of tiny house.

As far as digital minimalism, in preparation for this trip I just deleted³ my entire photo library. I never looked at those photos, so why have them cluttering my phone? ↩
Which I've renamed to include an … ellipsis after the number. This tells me that there's more… I've also included a ⬇️ link to the child note, though I don't know if that's overkill. ↩
Actually I archived them to our server. Because there are chicken photos there that I don't want to lose. But you get the idea. ↩

22.00.0111 Things: cross-link to Obsidian and back

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 01:22:21 GMT

Things: cross-link to Obsidian and back

Wherever possible I like to link apps to each other. My to-dos for my personal and work life are in Things. And my Small Business System JDex notes are in Obsidian. I help myself out by connecting the apps together.

I'll just show you how to do this here, but both apps use what's called a URI scheme if you want to explore the concepts further.¹

From Things to Obsidian

Get the URL of the Obsidian note you want to link to by right-clicking it and selecting Copy Obsidian URL.

If you're linking from a category-level project, link to the AC.00 note. In this case I'm linking from SBS.31 so I'll get the link to note 31.00 List of all marketing, PR, & communications.
In the notes of your Things project, add a Markdown link.

Things 'supports' Markdown here but doesn't do much with it. You can just paste the link and it'll be clickable. But I like to indicate to myself where I'm going to be taken, so I do the full Markdown syntax by adding [JDex](link://).²

Figure 22.00.111A. Things' Markdown links aren't amazing.

From Obsidian to Things

Get the URI of the Things project you want to link to by right-clicking it, selecting Share…, and clicking Copy Link.
In your Obsidian note, add a Markdown link 'above the line'.

I'll talk about this more in a dedicated post, but I prefer to keep metadata above a horizontal line, and then actual notes below the line. This link counts as metadata.

As each of the JDex notes already contains a link to 'Open in the Small Business System', add your link to 'Open in Things' directly below.

Figure 22.00.0111B. Obsidian's Markdown links look nicer.

While technically different, most people use URI/URL interchangeably. ↩
Let me know if you need more on Markdown links. ↩

22.00.0110 Things: why and how I use it

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 01:22:34 GMT

Things: why and how I use it

We're going to tackle the 65 items in my Things inbox shortly, but before we do let's set this up with an introduction to the app. Here's why and how I use it.

A delightful, clean task manager

From OmniFocus to Apple's Reminders to … well, if you've heard of it, I've probably given it a go.

I always come back to Things because it hits the sweet-spot of features, appearance, and usability. Some (OmniFocus) are notably more powerful, but therefore harder to use and, frankly, uglier. Some (Reminders) are less powerful but integrate better with the devices I use. Being able to shout hey Siri, remind me to make soup! in to the air is pretty magical.

Things is pretty

This matters to me. And a pretty interface speaks to the care and attention given to the rest of the app. It's a useful heuristic: if you open an app and it's ugly, what care do you think has been given to the rest of the code?

This is something that I use all day. It needs to be pleasant to use. Things is the class-leader here.

Delightful features

This isn't a review of Things -- there are enough of those. So here's just one thing that I find delightful: anywhere in the app, you can just start typing and it'll enter search mode.

And search covers everything: your to-dos, obviously, but also your projects and areas and tags, and even Things' views like Today. So for someone who vastly prefers the keyboard over the mouse, this is a navigational win.

Figure 22.00.0110A. Things' search reveals features such as the 'deadlines' view that I didn't even know existed.

Apple integration

It's available on all my devices, and it can reach in to Reminders and import items.¹ So I can still ask Siri to remind me to make soup! and next time I open Things it'll bring it in.²

Things is on my iPhone dock along with Messages and Bear.

My Things setup

Fairly briefly, as we'll be going over this in a lot more detail as we process my inbox.

Areas = JD systems

I represent each of my JD systems with a Things area.

When this consolidation activity is done, I'll have two JD systems:

P76 Personal for my personal life.
- This is the Life Admin System
D25 Johnny.Decimal for the business.
- This is the Small Business System.

Projects = JD categories

P76 has been like this since I implemented LAS last year and it's working really well. Each of my JD categories is a Things project.

Figure 22.00.0110B. Areas & projects → areas & categories

Where a specific ID needs its own project, create one. In JD-world this can represent one of life's 'projects' as we tend to think of them: in this case the fact that we're taking our lives on the road.

Again, more detail later.

Headings = headers :-)

We introduced the concept of headers with the Life Admin System. Things has the same concept. Which is nice.

Figure 22.00.0110C. Headers → headers :-)

Tags = loosely used, TBC

There's a place for tags, but I'm not sure what it is yet. Probably to assign priority. Work-in-progress.

Everything should be in a project

Things will let you put things in its Upcoming and Anytime lists without those items belonging to a project. I don't like this -- it feels like an opportunity for something to get lost.

Every item must belong to a project.

Inbox-clearing workflow

The gold standard for task workflow -- that is, how a task gets in to your system and then what happens to it once it's there -- is GTD®. Worth a proper read if you're unfamiliar (where have you been?); here's a brief recap, noting my specific implementation details.

Inbox

Most things start in the Inbox. This is a special Things place for items that are new and unprocessed. If you configure Things' import from Reminders, this is where those items end up.

Figure 22.00.0110D. 67 in my inbox! Shame on me. (Yes, I've added 2 since starting this article.)

In normal circumstances, I process my inbox daily. At a minimum, a few times a week. It's vital that you're never worried that there might be important stuff in there. Like if you remind yourself to feed next door's bird and leave it in the inbox the whole time they're on holiday, that's not going to work out.

Processing my inbox is so important, I have a recurring task to remind me to do it.

Figure 22.00.0110E. Processing the inbox is a chore, so I remind myself of the benefits.

If I add a time-critical item to Things, I don't add it to the inbox. It goes straight to where it needs to be, with its relevant dates already assigned (see below). This is why I'm not worried about those 67 items: I know none of them means a dead bird.

Process to a category/project

GTD says that when you process your inbox, if there's anything that you can just do that will take less than a couple of minutes, you should do that.

Otherwise, the task needs to be moved to one of your categories. Here, we need a little JD theory.

Everything you need 'to-do' should fit in a JD category

Because everything you do is part of your life or job. And if you can't define what it is -- and therefore which of your categories it should be assigned to -- then what even is it? And why are you doing it?

This requires mental energy. Of course it does: being organised isn't free. Otherwise everybody would be. But I find this to be a useful checkpoint; an indication that my system is working well.

If I can't find a category for a to-do, my system needs to be reconfigured to create one.

Each category has an 'inbox' (kinda)

A happy accident of design is that, by using headers to group our fully-organised tasks, we end up with a pseudo-inbox in each category by default. So sorting tasks is a two-step process, and I think that makes it easier.

Because now there's a high-level decision, which is easy:

Which category does this belong to?

And later, there's a lower-level decision that might need a bit more thought:

Which header does this belong to?
Does it need to be renamed for clarity?
Do I need to add any notes?
What other properties (due dates, tags…) do I need?

This pseudo-inbox is just the piece of real estate above your headers. It's where a task ends up if you drag it from the inbox directly on to the list of projects in the sidebar, or if you use Things' Move… shortcut by right-clicking the task or hitting Cmd+Shift+M.

Figure 22.00.0110F. A category-level pseudo-inbox.

So, the first step is to completely clear your inbox and have every task in its own category/project. It should be obvious that if you spot anything that feels urgent while you're doing this, you shouldn't ignore it. Never, ever pass over a time-sensitive task. 🦜

If that took a while, you can take a break. Because you'll touch each of your categories in due course, where you'll complete the second step.

Category-organising workflow

Here's the epiphany. Credit for this idea goes to my mate Alex. I'm not sure if he came up with it, ~~but he's the one who told me so that'll do~~ he tells me that he did.

You're going to divide up your categories, and review each of them on a specific day of the week.

Life Admin provides a really nice example, as there are 5 categories. So we review 11 Me… on Monday, 12 Where I live… on Tuesday, and so on.

If your system has more than 5 categories, you might choose to do them less frequently, or to do more than one a day. I'd suggest keeping a weekly schedule to start, and spreading out later if it feels okay. I know after having done it for 6+ months that my LAS categories don't need to be reviewed weekly: very often there's nothing for me to do.

A more rigorous processing

At this stage, you want to make sure that every task is tip-top. Does it have a good title that makes sense? If it needs a date or a deadline does it have one? Is it a Someday task that should be hidden until later?

I'll leave the detail for a future post.

Leave nothing to chance

Don't just think you'll remember to do this review. We're in a to-do system: create a to-do!

This is what the zero-level header category management is for. Create a to-do that repeats on the relevant day of the week.³

Figure 22.00.0110G. A repeating review task.

Flexibility built-in

This system allows you a little wiggle-room. Because let's say last week I didn't review each category on the assigned day. Which in fact I didn't, because I was moving house and driving a van up a highway.

Well, no problem. Here's a section of my Today view.

Figure 22.00.0110H. Repeating tasks remain in Today until done.

I have some catching up to do, but those reviews won't just go un-done.

And thanks to another of Things' delightful features, I can click the name of the project to be taken directly to it. Click, review, complete review task, back to Today, click, review…

So I've still got 67 inbox items…

I better get to doing the actual work! I'll record myself doing that and put it in the weekly YouTube review video, so keep an eye on the channel. (I'll also post it here.)

Diagram

Lucy is our understanding-canary: if she gets what I'm trying to say, I've done alright. And from her new-found understanding, she's going to sketch this out visually. So, diagram coming soon. Will update post.

In this series

To pre-empt any complaints about cost: yeah, you have to buy it for every device class. Yeah, it's not cheap. But it's a one-off cost, and if you don't think that being organised is worth ~$100 every 5-odd years, you might be in the wrong place. ↩
I activate Siri by long-pressing the power button on my phone. It responds within half a second, and you can then just say remind me to make soup. No need for the 'hey Siri' invocation. I find this simple, reliable, and unobtrusive.

You can say something like in Things, remind me to…, but I find this unreliable. It's much simpler to just have your reminder go to Reminders, and have Things import it. ↩
This to-do didn't appear in previous screenshots because I had instructed Things to Hide later items from the view. Another delightful feature: why even see things that you know you won't do until later? ↩

22.00.0109 I'm never distracted when I'm cooking

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:44:34 GMT

I'm never distracted when I'm cooking

Through the day, I often forget what I was supposed to be doing mid-way through doing it. But put a sharp knife in my hand, turn on the gas, and I become hyper-focused.

And I can be focused, free of distractions, for an hour. An hour and a half. Full attention, no problem.

I never want to pick up my phone. Never need to check my email. I think because there's so much else going on, and there are consequences to getting it wrong. Something burns, something goes cold, some ingredient is forgotten. The meal just isn't great.

A great meal needs my full attention for an hour. And it gets it.

How do I bring this same mindset to the rest of my life without having to walk around carrying a wok? It's clearly possible. That's my goal.

22.00.0108 When I migrate to SBS I'll copy, not move

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 04:00:33 GMT

When I migrate to SBS I'll copy, not move

I'm just in the process of implementing the SBS myself. Our current system has the identifier D85.

The new system is going to be D25: memorable to me as it's the year we released the SBS. The previous post made me realise that when I migrate my data across, I should copy it and not move it.

Because these old identifiers will always be useful. I can just leave that data sitting there forever. Maybe move it off to an archive drive so I don't update it by accident. But old systems should never disappear: they should just be left, frozen like Han Solo.

Then an email with an old reference can come in years from now and I'll always have the ability to find its related artefacts basically instantly.

Nice.

22.00.0107 Dave's sticker: on the value of adding an ID to your email subject

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 02:12:13 GMT

Dave's sticker: on the value of adding an ID to your email subject

Dave just emailed from California. The Small Business sticker we mailed back in February hasn't arrived. :-(

(We sent them in standard envelopes with $4 worth of stamps. I wondered what percentage would actually arrive. A: not 100%.)

He replied to an email that I'd sent on 1st February asking people to confirm their addresses. The subject line of that email was:

Decimal.Business sticker mailout - please confirm [D85.21.11]

Well, how convenient. Guess how long it took me to find the original document with the labels we printed?

IDs in filenames

I'm sure I've written about this elsewhere but I can't find it now: a few years ago, my mate and ex-boss Alex sent me an MS Project file that was 5 years old. 'Do you know if this is the latest version?', he asked.

I'd named the file 32.18 Something something. So I logged in, found the old SharePoint Library, and navigated to that folder. I was there in less than a minute. (It was the latest version.)

Having an ID 'follow' a file or email around is invaluable and takes no extra time.

22.00.0106 Creating 'dark mode' images

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:47:01 GMT

Creating 'dark mode' images

I just sat down to do this, and as I'm in 'working out how I work' mode, I'm just going to type this out as I do it. Pretend you're watching over my shoulder.

Objective

When creating images for this site, I want each to have a 'dark mode' equivalent. Personally I rarely use dark mode, but for those who do a mostly-white image in the middle of a dark page isn't pleasant.

But you know what else isn't pleasant? Taking two screenshots of every damned thing! I enjoy writing but honestly I find images a chore. And some apps -- ref. my beloved Diagrams from yesterday -- just don't have a dark mode. So I need a better solution.

The Johnny.Decimal angle

This will involve a bit of research, and I'll learn some stuff. I'll end up with some sort of bash script that creates the new image.

It'd be nice to record this somewhere. But even more than the desire to record the end result is my desire to record the very activity itself.

You're always doing something

I started exploring this in my stalled-by-production-of-SBS YouTube series.

TL;DR: you're always doing something. Being aware of what that thing is should help you be more focused, less distracted, and ideally prevent you from context switching too often.

I used the timers that I show in that video series for months. It was useful. An overhead, for sure, but everything's a trade-off.

Start with an ID, don't finish with one

How I want to manifest this in my daily life is by starting any activity by finding the relevant JDex entry, and recording the fact that I'm starting work.

This makes the activity much more deliberate. Don't sit down, mash the keyboard, finish something, then figure out where to record it. That's backwards. Rather, sit down, find the place, open the note, refresh your memory, log the start of this new activity, and then do the work.

Tracking this under SBS

Unlike Bestie's data, this does count as a 'work' activity. But if I was tracking this in my Life Admin System, I'd put it at 14.22 Software, licenses, & downloads.

This isn't a perfect spot, but we've learned to just find the best spot and make do. Because your mindset when coming back to find this later is exactly the same: of all of the limited places, where would I have put it?

And let's go back to one of the original design principles of JD: the idea that you should be able to start at the top of your system and, by process of elimination, find what you're looking for.

So let's try that with Life Admin. There's only one area, so let's look at its categories. Only one of them is viable:

~~11 Me & other living things~~ ❌
~~12 Where I live & how I get around~~ ❌
~~13 Money earned, saved, owed, & spent~~ ❌
14 My online life ✅
~~15 Travel, events, & entertainment~~ ❌

Now let's scan the headers of 14:

~~14.10 ■ Computers & other devices~~ ❌
14.20 ■ Software & accounts ✅
~~14.30 ■ My online presence~~ ❌

This strongly feels like a software solution to me, but I could also see how you might consider it part of your 'online presence'. Within 14.20 we have:

~~14.21 My emergency recovery kit~~ ❌
14.22 Software, licenses, & downloads ✅
~~14.23 Email accounts~~ ❌
~~14.24 Social media accounts~~ ❌
~~14.25 Domains & hosting~~ ❌
~~14.26 All other accounts~~ ❌

And there we are. 14.22 will do the job. Rather than cluttering the parent note I'd create a sub-note 14.22+ Script to generate dark mode images and put the details in there.

That was a tangent because I'm not doing that

This is a work thing so it's going to live in my SBS. And there is a perfect home for it there: 14.31 Internal software & services.

Figure 22.00.0106A. Searching the Small Business System for 'software'.

By internal software we mean any software (fancy or low-code no-code), scripts, or automations you’ve created to help the business.

Brilliant.

I guess it's time to upgrade myself to the SBS

Talk about tangents. I haven't moved our own business over to the SBS yet. All we've done since we finished it is move house. I guess now's the time to install it. I'll walk through this on the end-of-week review video, but skip the details here.

(I will give myself a bit of credit for how easy that is. I'm really happy with the process to download your system. ☺️)

`14.31+`

Okay, just like last time I'm going to create a sub-note of 14.31 rather than cluttering the main note.

And I'm going to make a decision: I am not going to type any new data in to any parent JDex entry. That is, the entries that create your initial system. Instead, all new data will be in a sub-note.

This leaves the parent note as a holder of metadata and pointer to sub-notes, keeping it clean.

'Open in new window'

When I'm doing this sort of thing I like the JDex note to be as simple as possible.

Both Bear and Obsidian have an option to open the current note in a new window. I do this, shrink it to look like a neat little notepad, and work in there. Keeps me focused.

Figure 22.00.0106B. A neat little JDex entry.

While I said that this is a work task, future-me might forget that. So it can't hurt to leave myself a note in the other place I might look, which is the aforementioned 14.22 in my personal system.

For bonus points, use Obsidian's Copy Obsidian URL feature to get a link to it. Then create a Markdown link like [D25.14.31+](obsidian://…) to jump yourself from Bear directly to Obsidian.

As always, if you want any more guidance with this sort of thing, just ask.

Converting the image

This isn't why you're here, but for the record this is how you do this with ImageMagick.

magick input.png \
  \( -clone 0 \
  -fill "#47a1b3" \
  -colorize 30% \) \
  -compose multiply -composite \
  -brightness-contrast -15x0 \
  output.png

I asked Claude 3.5 Sonnet (via Cursor) to produce that for me, and tweaked the results. It also produced a bash script so I can execute magickdark <filename.png>.

For me this is exactly what AI was made for: why spend an hour figuring out this one-time task when it can be generated for me in a minute?

Switch to dark mode to see the altered images. (Or you can open any image in a new tab and replace light in its filename with dark.)

This has all been a tangent

This morning I thought, time to sort out my Things, which has 61 items in the inbox.

Gonna need some screenshots, I thought. Gonna need that dark mode thing. And here we are, hours later.

So tomorrow, we tackle Things!

22.00.0105 Bestie's data

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 10:22:43 GMT

Bestie's data

The setup: my bestie Michelle is a professional photographer. This is a job with extreme data needs: a single shoot can easily clock over 50GB of RAW images. Do a few of those a week and you soon fill up a hard drive.

Now do that for 15 years, and back it all up without spending $1,000 a year and destroying your internet connection.¹ It's tricky. Mishy isn't a nerd, so I manage it for her.

The JDex entry

I manage this as part of my Life Admin System. It's nothing to do with my job.

LAS has the ID 14.14 My data storage & backups:

Anything related to the devices and services that keep your data.
e.g. physical storage like hard drives and USB sticks, cloud storage services like Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive, notes about what data is where, back up services like Time Machine or Backblaze, notes about back up strategies and tests.

Perfect!

Extend the end

Extend the end (EtE) is a fairly new idea, so I'm still figuring out the patterns. As they become clearer, I'll formalise them on the main site.

But here's my current thinking. I don't think this is far off the end result.

Tag-like entries

If you want to extend the end of various notes across a system and refer to the same entity when doing so -- let's say I'm keeping notes related to Mishy throughout my system -- you want to be able to recall all of those notes, as a collection, really easily.

In this situation I use the following pattern:

The ID: 14.14.
EtE's +.
A short code consistent across all notes: MGH for Michelle Grace Hunder.

This allows me to search my JDex for +MGH and pull up all of the notes related to Michelle. I manage my personal system in Bear, and I have 2 notes.

Note that there is no space in this sequence, and I consider the canonical reference to this note to be 14.14+MGH.

One-off entries

Briefly, as I'll say more about this with a specific example in another post, but for one-off entries, I just use the +, then a space, then a descriptive title.

For example alongside 13.24 Pension I have 13.24+ UK voluntary contributions. This note tracks the historical back-payment to the UK government of annual pension contributions.

That isn't something that will exist on any other ID, so it doesn't need an easily-referenceable code.

Tweak the parent note

If you extend an ID, you should make it obvious that you've done so. Otherwise it can be easy to miss.

The more I do this thing the more I realise that the worst possible sin is causing yourself stress, or even allowing the possibility. The entire point of this system -- which is significant extra work to implement, don't think I don't know it -- is to remove this stress! You must do everything to remove it.

So there's nothing worse than being sure that you created some data -- you remember doing it -- and not being able to find it.

There are two ways to mitigate this.

Rename the parent note, using … to indicate that it has been extended.

My original JDex entry
- 14.14 My data storage & backups is now called
- 14.14… My data storage & backups
You're telling yourself that there's more.

On a Mac you can get the ellipsis by typing Option+; If you're on Windows you might have to copy/paste it, sorry.
Just make a note in your JDex

Alternatively, just note in the JDex entry 14.14 that there's a sub-note. [[Wiki-link]] to it so you can just click to navigate.²

I put all of this 'metadata' above a --- horizontal line. And actually, I'm starting to think that the parent JDex note should only ever contain metadata, and that all supplemental text should be in a sub-note. That'll be a future post.

Saving the file

In my file system, I've created a subfolder +MGH inside folder 14.14 My data storage & back ups.

Again, this is the first time I've used this pattern. I think this will cause this folder to always be at the top, which is probably what I want.

(Can you use + in a Windows file path? I don't have my virtual image handy. Looks to be okay.)

Mishy's data

The point of this post isn't to tell you how to redundantly store and back up 30TB of data, but if you are interested, the Diagram below shows you how I do it.

Of note here is the following.

The file name, which is P76.14.14+MGH Bestie's data. I find it useful enough to use the full JD ID and it only takes another second.
In this particular JDex note, I've created a link to this file. If there's a file that's really relevant, I like the idea of reminding myself that it's there. If you have a folder full of files, this is probably less useful.

I'll play with this some more and report back. This is the first time I've done it. In Bear, hit Cmd+K and you can drag a file from Finder in to the Address field. Bear will URL encode the path. Now add file:// to the front of the resulting text.
In the lower-right of the Diagram, I've added a block with the ID of the file. Feels like an architectural diagram! 🤓

Figure 22.00.0105B. You can right-click and 'open in new window' to see more detail.

Upload in Australia is almost universally limited to 40Mbps thanks to our crappy infrastructure. ↩
Whenever I say something like this, if you're at all unsure what I mean, or how to do it, please ask on any of the forums. There are no stupid questions here and I assume no prior knowledge. I certainly don't assume that all of my readers are tech nerds. ↩

22.00.0104 Everything Everywhere All at Once

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 05:06:53 GMT

Everything Everywhere All at Once

I've wanted to do this for a while, but here at JDHQ we tend to focus on a single task. It's just how me and Lucy work: we go deep on a thing. For months, that was the Small Business System. As soon as we finished that, we had to move house. As of yesterday, that's done.

Figure 22.00.0104A. When we started the SBS in early October, we planned to produce a video and a blog post each week at the same time. Sweet innocent fools.

As a result, some of my own stuff is a bit of a mess. I haven't yet moved our own business over to the SBS. I have … checks … 61! to-do-like items in my Things inbox.¹ That's deliberate: I know none of them are time-critical, and I've been letting them build up so I could process them in public.

Mail: 147 items across a handful of mailboxes. Physical papers: a small stack to process. A couple of documents on my Desktop. And there'll be more as I discover it. Again, a conscious decision these last few weeks to let it build. Giving myself material to work with.

Oh yeah, and we're taking JDHQ international next month, moving to Vietnam with nothing more than a 10kg backpack.² So that'll take some organising. And the scope of my life has already narrowed dramatically: from a house full of stuff to one bag and a laptop. It becomes more important, then, that that laptop is immaculately organised.

The plan

So here's the plan: I'm going to meticulously document everything that I touch. I intend to become nothing less than The Most Organised Man in the World. To the point of absurdity: I don't recommend you do this! Because who has the time? A: me! It's my job, thanks to you.

But I do think that going really deep on this thing will be instructive. It'll reveal patterns. It'll force me to clean up my own documentation. It'll show me what works and what doesn't.

Daily: blog

This will mostly take the form of blog posts. So you're in the right place.

Weekly: YouTube

I'm going to try for a weekly round-up video on YouTube. Videos take much longer to produce, but Lucy's our editor so they can be happening in parallel.

I think most of this audience prefers having the words to refer back to, so I'm not planning any original content in the videos. They'll be a summary/recap style of the previous week's blog posts.

But sometimes it's easier to demonstrate something with moving pictures. Let's just see what happens.

Feedback: socials

Snippets will be cross-posted to Mastodon and Bluesky.

My 'comments section' is Discord and the forum, both of which have dedicated channels where I cross-post links to blog posts.

Tomorrow

I've been documenting my bestie's data storage & backup situation. She's a professional photographer so it's a) complicated and b) really important to get right.

I'll show you how I manage all that in my own Life Admin System at 14.14+MGH.

Some of them are P4 'someday' items, not actual things to-do. Regardless, I'll be processing them all here and showing you how I handle them. ↩
Note to the Australian Tax Office: we're not actually 'moving' to Vietnam, as in becoming residents. We're going on a really long, plan-it-as-you-do-it trip around the world, and our first stop is Vietnam. We remain tax residents of Australia. But trying to say this gets clumsy, so I'm just going to use the word 'moving' in all future posts. ↩

22.00.0103 SBS: Question about portfolio; storing brush templates

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 02:36:17 GMT

SBS: Question about portfolio; storing brush templates

On Discord, theoutermost asks in the context of the Small Business System:

I'm trying to work out where's best to keep my files related to my Portfolio/Showreel and CV. To me they are related to my work and business rather than my Life Admin, so it would seem appropriate for them to be in my SBS but I'm not sure where.

SBS vs. LAS

The first decision is an easy one: if you have the Life Admin System and the Small Business System, and you're wondering where to store stuff related to your work: it's the SBS.

As we'll see below, there's a nice way to leave yourself a breadcrumb in your LAS. So if you go looking for it there, you won't be confused.

Portfolios, showreels, and CVs are 'marketing'

From the description of category 31 Marketing, PR, & communications:

Anything that you would classify as self-promotion, either paid or free.

This category comes 'empty' -- it contains no IDs -- as we can't know what you might need to create here.¹ So you need to create a couple of IDs for yourself.

This feels to me like two things: your portfolio/showreel, and your CV. But you decide: you might like an ID each for your portfolio & showreel if they're distinct.

Process: create IDs in your JDex

First thing to do is create these IDs.

Fire up your JDex.
Create 2 new notes:
```
31.11 Portfolio & showreel*
31.12 CV
```
*You can't use the / character in an Obsidian title as the note's title is the name of the file on disk.

It is mandatory to create the JDex entry first. Don't create file system folders first! This will lead to inconsistency.
While you're in your JDex, if you think it'll help you find these things in the future, add some searchable terms to the note.
You said that you'll be updating these artefacts over time. Let's say annually.

This naturally suggests subfolders named yyyy, e.g. 2024. I'd probably leave the current version of these artefacts at the root of the folder, and move each previous year to a yyyy folder as required.

Updating artefacts over time

Continuing this question:

I need to create new portfolios each year with examples of updated work

This is where your 50-59 Portfolio of creative outputs comes in. The process is:

Each (say annual) update of these artefacts is a new creative output job.

The first job you create is numbered 50001, the next 50002. This allows more than 100 jobs over time.
Create a new ID in your JDex for the job, and create the folder on disk.

Ideally, you're starting from a subfolder template.
Do the creative work in the job folder.
When the job is finished, copy the final output back to 31.11 & 31.12, moving last year's files to a previous-year folder as noted above.
For a JD power-up 🦸, create a wiki-link from 31.11 to the creative job, say 50001.

Because next year, you're going to want to remember what you did this year.

Figure 22.00.0103A. Use [[square brackets]] to link to another note.

As an added bonus, Obsidian's backlinks will automatically link you from the creative job back to the thing it relates to.

Figure 22.00.0103B. Obsidian automatically generates 'backlinks' from the current document.

Life Admin has 11.71 My sales pitch as a place to put your CV:

The documents you use to sell yourself as a potential employee.
e.g. CV/resume, references, portfolio, LinkedIn profile text.

Drop yourself a note in there to tell yourself that your CV is at SBS.31.12. Then there'll be no stress if you come looking for it here in the future.

Digital assets

Continuing, theoutermost asks:

As part of my work storyboarding or animating jobs I have tools and assets I use like templates, brushes, fonts that will be used across all jobs I do so should they live in the Library of Creative Inputs…

Absolutely! This is exactly what it's for. 41 Design elements is the place for stuff like this.

As above, create yourself an ID for each of these types of thing. Here at JDHQ we have 41.11 Typefaces, 41.12 Colours. You might add 41.13 Brushes.

How granular you make these IDs is up to you. See SBS.00.34+OPS9 for more guidance on creating your own IDs, and of course just ask if you're unsure.

Although as patterns emerge -- like this one -- we'll likely add some suggested IDs to the standard system. ↩

22.00.0102 The Small Business System

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 03:03:56 GMT

The Small Business System

After 6 months of work, the Small Business System has launched. Here's why it took that long, what's in it, and what's next.

Why'd it take so long?

Firstly, if you signed up a long time ago: thank you. Some of you gave us money ... let me see ... back on the 10th November. (Anthony in Reading, you were first!) That's a long time, and that money has kept us going. It's allowed us to focus on creating this thing and to not worry about promoting everything else. That's massive, so thank you. You literally made it possible.

So, we followed the process and went deep on discovery. MindNode was, as always, indispensable. Here's an early version, once we'd given at least some shape to the initially-random thoughts.

That took about a month. Many whiteboards, mind maps, walks, chats over a beer. What would it contain? Who was it for? What's a 'small business' and what does it contain?

What's a small business?

A question worth answering. We had a couple of ideal businesses that we kept coming back to. There's person who makes candles and sells them at local market. There's small hairdressing salon like my best friend Berry.

There's personal trainer who meets you at 6am and makes you skip rope and do weights. We've got Jeff from Lovett Sundries who make their own natural cosmetics. Or my mate George who runs a fleet of high-end taxis in Melbourne.

And then classic businesses that we can all relate to. Restaurant. Bakery. Professional services. Consultant. Freelancer. Farmer. Dog groomer.

So you can see, there's a lot to consider. Do you have premises? A vehicle? Staff? Do you keep stock? Do you have a handful of customers or thousands? Do you make a thing, deliver a service, or a bit of both?

We think we've designed something that fits everyone. If you run any sort of business and you have between 1-10 staff -- maybe more, we'll have to test it out -- we think we can accommodate you.

Complete and consistent

The design phase took so long because we checked, again and again, that this thing met our two main design goals: that it be complete and consistent.

We think there's a place for everything. It might not feel like exactly the right place to you, but we learned with Life Admin that it's more important just to pick a place, and get on with it. This is a tool, not art.

And Lucy has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that it's internally consistent. How she holds it all in her mind I'll never know. I'd write something and she'd say, but up here we said..., and we'd revisit that and line it all up.

What's in it?

So what's in it is hopefully a structure that will accommodate all those types of business. Some of you will use more of it than others. That's by design.

We've ended up with 5 areas containing about 20 categories and about 200 pre-defined IDs. Some of the areas are designed for you to create your own IDs as we can't know, for example, how your list of products should be structured. So you'll end up with more over time.

There's guidance on how to do this. Suggested templates (which are included in your download). A whole help system. And user settings: you log in to this thing. Initially that's just do you want to use emoji, but this gives me the ability do to more over time. See below.

Lucy's master document clocked over 46,000 words; about 340 pages. She wrote essentially all of it, while I built the site. (I should rename this thing Jucy.Decimal.)

What do I get?

We learned a lesson with the Life Admin System: manually creating PDFs and folders full of text files is a nightmare. It's difficult, unwieldy, and unmaintainable.

So I've built a website. I think it's pretty neat. Think of it as your business operations dashboard. From there, you download a set of folders and JDex files that are generated on-the-fly. So we can update the system really, really easily. Constantly. Frictionless. We update it, you refresh the page, you see it. It's a joy.

A shared language

This is the natural evolution of Johnny.Decimal which is, of course, inspired by the Dewey Decimal system. In that system, every library doesn't invent its own scheme. That'd be madness. Rather, I can tell you 152.42 LEMB and that'll guide you to the book I'm reading in any library on Earth.

Now imagine this same power in your business life. If you want help with your IT backups, you don't have to explain the scope first: just tell someone you're at 14.23. Now we know exactly what we're referring to, and we can reference (and contribute to) the same set of resources. And you can chat in a channel dedicated to that part of the system. Targeted. Focused. Efficient.

What's next?

We can't emphasise enough that this is version 1.0. As well as constantly upgrading the content, I'd love to build this to be a fully-featured app.

Here's a small example. One of the things we've defined is an ops manual that tells you how to configure and then test your IT backups. So how can we help you do that?

Well, I can build a system of reminders. You tested your backups yet? Check the box and we'll automatically make a log in your JDex. Don't check the box and I'll nag you. Maybe this can feed in to your calendar. This is all fairly easy, I just need the time to build it.

So that's the next couple of years for us. Assuming this is successful enough to keep us off the streets, we'll be working on it full time.

The vision

Because here's my long-term vision. You start a business. Let's say you're making those candles. Maybe this is something you do on the side, so you don't have a lot of spare time. And it's your first crack at being indie.

Today, you have to figure everything out yourself. From business registration to insurance to calculating your taxes and backing up your IT systems, tracking your customers, orders, stock, your marketing, setting up a website and email, all of it. That's wild, right? It's 2025 and unless you go and do a business course at your local tertiary education place, there isn't one place that you can go and find all this information.

I want you to be able to log in to the Small Business System and for that all to be taken care of. I mean, you still have to do the work! But we'll guide you all the way. I want this to feel like you've got us -- and the rest of the community -- on your staff.

The community

I'd also love this to become a genuinely useful community of like-minded business people. You've already self-selected in to a group of people who are actively trying to be more organised. Imagine what that community can do for each other.

I know all about IT. Ask me: I'll help. But marketing? Clueless. Well one of you reading this is a marketing expert. Hi! Let's help each other. Let's swap skills and knowledge, and buy stuff from each other, and support and recommend each other.

I'm in other 'small business' communities. The quality of discourse is ... low. Because it's mostly full of dudes trying to get rich quick on a lazy internet idea. This is not for them. This is for people who are getting on with making a thing. Your time will be respected here.

'Preview mode'

When I built the site I had an idea: what if there wasn't one site with all fancy graphics (lol, me?) that tried to sell you the site, then entirely another site once you were in?

What if it was all the same site?

So that's what I built: one site. If you're signed up, you see it all. If you're not, you see the ░░░░░░░░░░ version. I really like how it turned out.

Check it out at https://sbs.johnnydecimal.com. Now if you'll excuse me I think I might have a few days off.

22.00.0101 My data storage & backup strategy

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 23:16:00 GMT

My data storage & backup strategy

By email, Dylan asked about my data storage and backup strategy. In answering, I thought it'd be useful enough to formalise here.

The 'problem'

Here's what I'm working with. The scope of this is mine & Lucy's personal stuff, and the Johnny.Decimal business.

We each have a laptop. Mine only has 500GB of storage so I'm severely limited. Lucy's has 1TB but this is still smaller than the … checks … ah not quite, 787GB that is the entire D85 Johnny.Decimal business folder.

That folder contains all of the raw footage from the workshop. That's 641GB just there. I probably don't need to keep that now, but whatever. I certainly don't need to keep it all on a laptop.

So we also have a Mac mini. The 'server', even though it just runs plain macOS. The point is that it's always powered on.

Mac minis are great for this. I ran a 2010 version until 2023. It was sold as a server, back when Apple did that. 13 years isn't bad from a ~$1,000 computer.

I replaced it with a refurb M1 mini, lowest spec. Also ~$1,000. Should also last well over a decade.

These machines don't need to do much. No data is stored on them -- we'll get to that. Processor wise, they do next to nothing. They serve files. So don't spend money on anything fancy.

NAS vs DAS

Okay, so where's all the data? The difference between NAS & DAS is both subtle and vitally important. I'll assume you're not a storage expert, so I'll spell it out.

'NAS' stands for 'network-attached storage'. This means that the device itself attaches to your network. It is a tiny server: it has its own smarts. Synology and QNAP are the ones you've heard of.

The advantage of these devices is that you don't need another server. Like a Mac mini. They do it all themselves: you configure them on your network, then you can connect to their storage from any computer. That can be really convenient, and I still have an old Synology in my setup.

The downside is that if you want to configure them to do anything special, you're dealing with a device that is usually underpowered, whose software is not macOS or Windows. It's some specialised Synology or QNAP thing.

So if you want to run, say, Syncthing -- we'll get to all of this later -- then you're depending on that software having a Synology version. Not everything does, and when it does, it's often a cut-down variant. This can be limiting.

For these reasons, I moved away from a NAS when I bought the new mini.

DAS

DAS stands for 'direct-attached storage'. It's storage that is directly attached to a computer. It's basically an external hard drive. And you can just use an external hard drive from your office supplies store.

But if this is your central data store, you probably want something a bit more advanced. Hard drives get hot, so something with a fan is nice. And you can get units that take multiple disks, which can provide redundancy in case one of the drives fails.

(It depends how you set these disks up, and this is as technical as I'll get here. Look up RAID levels if you want to know more.)

So I have a LaCie 2big 16TB DAS that is plugged directly in to the Mac mini via USB-C.

The LaCie doesn't do anything by itself. It requires a server. But now that server is a fully-featured computer, and I can install whatever I want on it.

So where's all the data?

Let's recap. Johnny has a 500GB MacBook Air. Lucy has a 1TB MacBook Pro. And there's an always-on Mac mini whose internal storage is insignificant because it has 16TB of HDD plugged in the back. I'll call the mini 'the server' from now on.

Technically, we could store all of our files on the server and access them over the network. But this would be slow, especially over wifi. Ideally, you want the things you're using all day to be on the machine you're using.

This is where synchronisation software comes in. Dropbox is the one you know: you install it, point it to a folder, and it synchronises all of those files. If you want them on another computer, you just install it there and wait for them to copy over. As a bonus, now they're also in the cloud, and you can log in to a website and access them from anywhere.

This is a great technology but it comes with limits. What if me and Lucy both edit the same file at the same time? This causes a 'conflict', and there's not much you can do about that. Dropbox can't merge our Excel sheets, it's just too hard. So that's just something to be aware of.¹

Syncthing

The secret sauce is an amazing piece of free software: Syncthing.²

It's like Dropbox, but completely configurable. You get to say what synchronises from which computer to which other computers. And you get granular control down to the folder or file level.

You also get to control what happens to the file on this computer after a new version is received from that computer. This is really handy. On the server, I've got it configured to keep versions of each file, which it deletes as they get old. It'll keep … well, let's just quote Syncthing:

The following intervals are used: for the first hour a version is kept every 30 seconds, for the first day a version is kept every hour, for the first 30 days a version is kept every day, until the maximum age a version is kept every week.

So as Lucy is working on the small business system, every time she saves the document, it's synchronised to both my laptop, and the server. The server is then applying the 'retention policy' as described above. This is one form of backup: if Lucy accidentally deletes all the text in the document, we can just grab a previous version from Syncthing. Super handy.

Our Syncthing configuration

In a nutshell: the server has everything, and we each have most stuff, minus the massive folder of workshop video files. There's a bit more to it, but that's all you really need to know.

Start picturing 'blobs' of data

What's important is what this means for our data. When you're planning something like this, you need to have this picture in your mind of:

What your data is, and
Where your data is.

Johnny.Decimal makes this easy for me to think about. Each blob of data -- the minimum unit of 'my data' that I think about -- is a Johnny.Decimal system. I have:

D85 Johnny.Decimal (the business)
D01 johnnydecimal.com (the website)
P76 Johnny's personal life
L77 Learn with Lucy (the Excel course)
Z99 Archive some old long-term archives, including some data that isn't mine

I know that all of this data is on the server. That's really important when it comes to backups, later. It's so important, it's a non-negotiable: all data must always be on the server. Then I know that if both laptops fall in the ocean, nothing is actually lost.

I also know that Syncthing is synchronising the important stuff that we use every day to both laptops. And those laptops synchronise to each other.

This is important because if one of the laptops falls in the ocean, it'd be nice to be able to access our important daily stuff quickly. We can do that from the other laptop. And when we get a replacement machine, the two laptops can talk directly to each other. The server, physically far away, is a last resort.

So that's the day-to-day synchronisation of data. Syncthing is indispensable. It's complex, but worth getting to know. If you need any help, ask.

Backups

Backups? Didn't we just talk about backups? All these copies of your data all over the place on three machines?

We did not. Synchronisation is not a backup.

Read that again. In bold. Synchronisation is NOT a backup.

Because synchronisation -- wait for it -- synchronises everything: including you messing up some file and not realising it. Including you deleting some folder and not realising it. So you MUST also have backups.

Nobody said this was simple. Alright, backups. When you think of backups, think of the event that causes you to be glad that you had it. They get progressively worse. Let's simplify and say you're always at home, and not about to be globe-trotting like we are.

1: Your laptop falls in the bath

Bath, ocean. Laptop wet, laptop no good. In this scenario, you're in your house, you have a new laptop, and you need to get working quickly. You want a local backup that you can restore from.³

(In my situation, I'd try the re-synchronising first; but let's say you don't have that option.)

Your operating system has software built-in: Time Machine for Mac, Windows Backup for the other one, and you Linux nerds can figure it out yourself.

You should probably just use this. Personally I also use Arq but we don't need to go there. Different software, same result.

2: Your backup didn't work

It is not your day. You got your backup drive, tried to restore to the new, dry laptop -- and it failed.

Disk error. Can't read. Backup error code FKU390093-B. Cosmic rays. Whatever: backups also fail.

Lucky you have a second backup on a different disk. This is why I use Arq: it makes it really easy to connect to another machine and to create a backup there. So I have one backup on this little external SSD, one on the server, and another on an old Synology. Multiple backups on multiple storage devices.

But we're not finished.

3: The house is destroyed by a cyclone

So now everything's gone. Laptops, servers, hard drives, the lot. Really really unlikely, but it happens.

This is what the cloud is for. Ironic, as it just wiped us out. Ha ha. I pay for a cloud backup service that I never hope to use. Literally, if I go my entire life and never ever have to restore from the service that costs me about a hundred bucks a year, I'd be happy.

But the day you do, you'll be glad for it. So: use Backblaze. Just do. Now, go and sign up now.

3-2-1 backup strategy

This is the industry-standard way to do things:

Three copies of your data.
On two different media.
One copy off-site, i.e. cloud.

Backblaze, and NAS vs. DAS

We talked about NAS vs. DAS above for a reason. Backblaze is amazing: unlimited storage for ~$100/year. With a catch: it only includes DAS.

Backblaze will not back up your Synology for $100/year. It's a miracle that they will back up your LaCie 16TB for that. So this is definitely a factor when deciding what to buy.

Oh yeah, that Synology

Because I already had a Synology -- an old DS118 single-drive unit -- I'm using it purely as a backup target. Both laptops and the server back up to it, using Arq.

This is probably overkill. If I didn't already have this, I wouldn't buy one for this role.

Review

Let's review with a little diagram. I have no computer drawing skillz so here's one I did on paper.

Now, yours won't look anything like this. Don't just copy me. But make sure that you have this mental model of your data. What blobs are there? Where are they? Which copies are complete vs. partial? Local vs. cloud? Synchronisation vs. backup?

And if you need any help, ask on the forum.

Tailscale

There's a secret sauce here which I'll mention briefly.

The server was in the cupboard in the kitchen, but since deciding to go on the move, it needed a new home. So it's now at my mate Alex's house in Melbourne. Thalex!

Ordinarily this would have broken all sorts of stuff and required complicated network reconfiguration. But I have Tailscale permanently turned on, on every device, so I had to do: exactly nothing.

I turned the server off, gave it to Alex, he took it and the LaCie and the Synology home with him, he turned them on, and everything just works like it did. Albeit a touch slower, as they're now about 700kms away. Only about 40ms of network latency though, which is impressive.

I couldn't recommend it more. Again, too much detail for this post, but let me know if you need help.

In this series

I expanded on this article with what became a mini-series on storage, data, & backups.

22.00.0101 My data storage & backup strategy
22.00.0115 Storage, data, & backups [SBS.14.20]
22.00.0116 Data [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0119 Synchronisation [SBS.14.22]
22.00.0120 Backups [SBS.14.23]
22.00.0180 Backups aren't enough: create 'restore points'

Most sync services will rename one of the conflicted files, giving it a timestamp and putting the word 'conflict' in the filename. Then it's up to you to merge your conflicting versions. You'll never actually lose data. ↩
You should financially support 'free' software that you depend on. Because nothing's really free. As soon as we can afford to, I'll be sponsoring Syncthing. ↩
Computer terms. 'Local' = on this network; in this building. 'Remote' = not. ↩

22.00.0100 Blog questions challenge 2025

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 05:51:13 GMT

Blog questions challenge 2025

Hyde, who had seen a post from Adam, who had been reading Kev's blog, who had seen a post from Brandon, who had been tagged by Jedda, who had been tagged by Ava, who came up with a blog post challenge … wait, where was I?

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I've never really seen myself as a blogger, if I'm honest. Which might explain why I'm so bad at it! I'm hardly what you'd call prolific. Johnny.Decimal as an idea is now 15 years old and here we are at post #100.

Which is funny, because I love writing. But I'm also really conscious of people's attention. I dislike how my own is constantly being bartered for, and so I feel that unless I have something useful to say, I'm not going to spew words out to fill the void. There is no void. There's the opposite of a void.

Also I was on Twitter since 2009 -- when you sent it an SMS to post -- and so I think I've got that tell everyone what you're doing all the time thing out of my system. I've realised that nobody cares what I do. Thank god.

So I feel like my blog is more of a communication channel and less of a blog in the traditional sense.

What platform do you use?

This website was hand-coded by me in Astro. Astro is amazing. My hand-coding is not, so much. But I'm getting better!

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I have a few posts still lingering on a Wordpress site but they're old (2008/9) and embarrassing so I won't link them. And I mean literally, a few posts. Perhaps five.

How do you write your posts?

Usually directly in to Visual Studio Code, in Markdown, with vim keybindings. This whole site is one git repository.

Occasionally I'll draft something in my beloved Bear, but usually not.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

When I have something to say. See above. But not at any particular time of day.

Walking is the ultimate life-hack for writers. I don't know if I've ever had an original thought while sitting on my arse looking at a screen. But go for a walk round the block and let it tumble around up there. That's where the good stuff is.

Do you publish immediately, or later?

Usually pretty quickly. If I do the draft-then-come-back-later thing I tend to find that the moment feels like it's passed.

I'm definitely one of those people who can't really 'see' a post until I literally see it, on the published site. Not on my dev site, where it looks identical. It needs to be the live version. Then you read it and go ooh that's not what I meant and make a few quick edits.

What's your favourite post?

I don't have a favourite.

Any future plans?

I feel that my comms are bit disjointed. I even published a comms plan to try to solve the problem. But I'm not happy with it.

So I'd still like to streamline official Johnny.Decimal communications, somehow. But I don't know what that looks like yet.

22.00.0099 Goodbye, sweet ladies

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 04:51:23 GMT

Goodbye, sweet ladies

Aah, this is hard. We loved them so much.

Wendy

Their leader from the start, she was benevolent and fair. She never ruled by force: she never had to. The other two just understood that she was in charge.

AKA Flapsy-Toot or Flapsy on account of her enthusiastic flap -- cut short by a mysterious wing injury -- and her keen toot.

Wendy was the only one brave enough to honour us with "a sittin'". Usually later in the day, us sipping on a glass of wine in the back garden, she'd come and jump on your leg. She fell asleep on Lucy a bunch of times.

I don't think I've ever been as content as I have with Wendy on my leg. She was a beautiful animal; truly a unique character. I'll miss her more than I can say.

Wendy, asleep on Lucy

Marie

Little Marie, bottom of the pecking order but the most adventurous of the lot. A smart bird, she learned to recognise when we were calling her (hey, Coolie! in a whisper), usually because we'd found some sort of bug and wanted to make sure she got it.

AKA Coolie, Coolie-pie, Cool-bean, based on the feathers on her legs, which made it look like she was wearing culottes.

She'd often go to bed early, to get a bit of time to herself. But then when the other two went in, she'd come back out and Lucy would get the fork to do some digging with her. Marie loved finding grubs in the ground with her mamma.

A gorgeous, gentle bird. She would have gone anywhere and done anything for you.

Marie, curious about something

Belinda

Every flock has a bully, and Belinda was it. But we loved her, because they're your chickens, and what do you do?

AKA The Bruiser.

If Belinda had been a human she'd have been the matron of a girls' school. We always wanted to get her a pair of half-moon glasses.

But she was always the first to come and sit next to us of an evening. We'd set up the outdoor chairs in our 'business class' configuration, and she'd be straight out. She'd sit on the ground and pancake out … it looked really relaxing. With us sitting above them, they knew they were safe.

Belinda, giving it her all

Toot-toot-toot

AKA collectively the tooters.

Goodbye, sweet ladies. We loved you so much. You gave us such happiness. We will miss your little faces and your inquisitive toots. The garden is so empty without you.

Toot-toot-toot. One two three.

One two three

What chickens taught me

Looking after these girls taught me that all I need to be truly happy is Lucy, a quiet back yard, and a handful of chickens.

I don't need things. I don't need money above the basics for a simple life. This realisation has been profound.

≡

There's this idea in meditation practice that this might be the last time you do something. It might be the last time you see your kid. It might be the last time you have dinner with your partner, or visit your best friend. You just never know.

This is a useful reminder to pay attention. Don't sit there in the garden with your chickens and scroll your phone. Be with your chickens. Absorb the moment. Because, eventually, it'll be the last.

We've had our last moment with these girls. We're crushed with grief. But I enjoyed every moment. I'll never forget them.

On chicken care

I write this hoping that it'll be absorbed in to the internet and help future chicken owners.

You're probably thinking, why did he get rid of these chickens he loved so much? It's because they couldn't have moved with us, and we couldn't have given them to anyone else, and this is because of their breed, and its problems.

(Obviously I have learned all of this since getting the girls. My god, the stuff I've learned about chickens...)

ISA Brown

Chickens bred for laying are ISA Browns. So they're a very common back-yard chook, because for the first year or so you get an egg a day. Amazing, right?

The problem is this aggressive laying schedule, a result of selective breeding, wrecks their little bodies. Commercially, they lay for a season and that's it. But when you get one as a pet, it's a problem.

When they reach about 1.5 years old, they start laying lash eggs (image warning).

Untreated, this will kill them. They get an infected reproductive tract and either die from the infection or associated tumours. I can only imagine it's a painful, slow death.

The treatment is hormones: an IUD, the same they give to dogs. And most vets won't give this to a chicken. We're forever indebted to the magnificent, kind staff at the Unusual Pet Vets in Fyshwick, without whom we couldn't have done any of this.

The hormone is effective, and permanently stops them laying. But you can tell that it messes with their moods. They become very subdued; they sleep a lot.

And it costs about $1,000/year/chicken. It's a commitment.

So if you are considering keeping chickens, please don't get ISA Browns. They're beautiful birds, but they're doomed to this life of disease. The eggs aren't worth it. Just buy free-range eggs from the store.

Other breeds of chicken -- in which I have no expertise -- do lay eggs. But you're not going to get one a day.

My consolation

Many back-yard chooks die either in terror, eaten by a fox/dog/snake, or painfully, with an unnoticed disease.

We kept ours safe for over three years. Nothing bad ever happened to them. I'm sure they lived a near-perfect chicken existence. Lucy kept their place immaculately clean. They got treats and love. They were free to roam our whole back yard, every day. What a life.

And when they went, they went together, peacefully.

🐓

22.00.0098 JDHQ is on the move

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 04:51:18 GMT

JDHQ is on the move

Big news: we're moving. Away from Canberra. Away from anywhere! We're going to try being location-independent for a while.

We don't love it here any more. And when you don't love where you live, it's time to go. This is especially important when your house is also your office.

Because how we feel in this home affects the work that we produce. Our work is the most important thing to us. We both gave up our careers to do this.

The Small Business System (SBS)¹ feels like the thing that will make us long-term sustainable. So it has to be the best that it can possibly be. For that to be the case, something needed to change.

≡

We've both lived and worked all over the world. Now, in our late 40s, we're not quite ready to say goodbye to that lifestyle. Because we do, soon, want to settle down. But not in this inner-city rental; this could never have been our forever place.

We need our own place, in the country. Undisturbed by neighbours. Full of chickens.

So, decision made just a week ago, we've already taken decisive action. Notice has been given. Many items have been sold or disposed. There's more to go: we don't plan on keeping much.

Where are we going? First stop is Lucy's parents' place, where we'll briefly re-group and plan the next move. It might be Japan, the USA, Germany … or anywhere else. It might depend on a cheap flight! We really don't know.

≡

To be clear, the production of the SBS is our absolute priority. Some of you have trusted us with a lot of your money. We appreciate that, and after a rough week -- see below -- we're now in total-focus mode.

Since starting development of the SBS we've been talking about visiting some of the businesses we're hoping to help. You can't truly know what people's problems are until you see them with your own eyes. So this will give us an opportunity to come and see some of you.

If this interests you, fill in this form.

≡

⚠️😔🐓 Sadness warning. Skip if you love chickens.

This decision came with a terrible cost. Our beloved chickens couldn't have come with us. They couldn't really have come anywhere: they were all on medication to keep them alive, and without a chicken vet close by their implants would have worn off and they would have died painful deaths. Most vets won't see a chicken.

And so we had to say goodbye. We took them to the vet and they went, peacefully, together. Obviously we're crushed beyond words. It's the hardest thing we've ever done.

I want to honour them with their own page. So: goodbye, sweet ladies.

I'm going to standardise the naming here, it's been a bit all over the place. We have 'life admin' and the upcoming 'small business' systems. So their formal names are the Life Admin System (LAS) and Small Business System (SBS).

Our style guide says that you should capitalise if it feels appropriate, but if you're in the flow of a sentence and it would feel a bit over-the-top, there's no requirement. Or, now, I can just use the initialisms. ↩

22.00.0097 TGIF

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 22:16:25 GMT

TGIF

Announcing a new Johnny.Decimal initiative: Thank God I Filed it! (on Friday).¹

Okay, this one's a little tongue-in-cheek. But I think there's something to be had here.

Filing is boring

I'm constantly aware that I run this website for a thing which most people find really boring. Let's not fool ourselves: even if you're in to this sort of thing, filing things isn't 'fun'.

The result is that we don't do it. We know we should. We might even have a really neat place to file things. (You're welcome.) And still we don't!

So TGIF is a little prompt. Here's the challenge:

This Friday, make an effort to file at least one thing. Make it the thing that caused you the most problems this week.

Invest an hour

Let's say you set aside an hour to do this. This is why we picked Friday: it's a perfect 3pm-on-a-Friday sort of job. You're almost finished, your brain is fried, so why don't you do something menial that helps future you?

In an hour, aim to file four (4) things. Just four. No stress.

If you do this every week for a year, in a year you've filed 200 things. And I bet you don't routinely use 200 things! We're talking your logo, your pricing chart, your list of suppliers.

So in a year, you might not have much left to do. That'd be nice.

Let us know on the forum if this helps!

Noting that I am an atheist and do not believe in any of the gods, but for purposes of the initialism it would have been punitive to lower-case this instance. ↩

22.00.0096 21c/Q2 – new habits for a new quarter-century

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 05:30:04 GMT

21c/Q2 – new habits for a new quarter-century

Happy new ~~year~~ quarter century.¹ This doesn't happen often. I'm going to use it to re-shape some of my behaviours. As I was born in 1976, this roughly coincides with Q3 of my life. Let's shake it up a little.

Would you like to join me? Habits are better formed with friends.

Vision statement

Behaviours are driven by goals, so let's define what I'm hoping to achieve. This is the immutable part. And then we'll talk about how I'm going to do it, which might evolve over time. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

1: Check stuff less often

As in, check my mail less often. The price of that stock I own. That tech website I browse when I'm bored. Reddit. Or something related to what I'm doing: I'm reading a book and the character is on Bleeker St, NYC, and I think I wonder where that is and 35 minutes later I'm on YouTube via maps and a pizza shop and a recipe and … you know how this goes.

This is a habit that wasn't possible at the start of 21c/Q1 and is now endemic. In 2000 I had a computer in the house but its default state was powered off: when I wanted to do a thing, I turned it on and loaded that thing.² The internet, such as it was, was dial-up; the connection took a full minute to establish. You didn't just check stuff.

Now, the device I'm writing this on has instant access to all of the information that humanity has ever generated. Let me try it now. I'm going to time how long it takes me to find some interesting fact about that pizza shop.

15 seconds. John's of Bleeker St is open today 11:30 through 22:00. So we've conditioned ourselves to think that 15 seconds is the distraction: and then, what's the harm? Of course this isn't how it works.

The solution, I believe, is to completely break this habit. It has to be: otherwise Q3 rolls around and I'm a 75-year-old dude glued to his phone? That sounds pathetic. I intend to be a 75-year-old dude glued to Schubert on vinyl.

So am I becoming a meme and quitting the internet? No: my job is on the internet. You can't quit the internet. But you can spend a lot less time there. And you can make sure that the time you spend is deliberate, and that it is serving you well. That's the vision.

2: Live more deliberately

I've alluded to this already in my stalled YouTube series Focus and Productivity.³ I want to move through life more deliberately: to do one thing at a time, and to be aware of what it is.

The first corporate training course I ever took was on 'time management'. I was on a graduate program at Rank Xerox in 1996. The advice was so inane as to be absurd: if you're waiting for a large job to print, said the instructor. Don't just sit and look at your computer screen. Do something else! This is called multi-tasking.

Sounded like a great idea. Something an instructor told you to do. 29 (!) years later, I'm not so sure.

Again, technology is the enabler. In 1996 there was a hard limit on the number of things I could have done while I waited for my print job. Now the list of things is functionally infinite. Great, so I'm more productive! Well, no. Because an infinite subset of the infinite possibilities isn't productive work. It's Reddit.

I think that we need to learn to do less in order to do more. Not a new idea: in Deep Work, Cal Newport sets out four rules.⁴ The second: embrace boredom. Give your brain time to think, to drift, to wander in to idle spaces.

This ties in with Johnny.Decimal. I want to work by engaging with my system. Something like this:

Choose what to do. Identify the appropriate Johnny.Decimal ID.
Open that ID in my JDex and my task management system. Check in with myself. What's to do? What did I do previously? Is there a context to load? A thing to not forget?
Do the thing. And only the thing. If there is a pause, just pause.
Finish the thing. Close it down, mentally. Put it away.

This applies to life as much as it does to work. Example: yesterday, I had to drop a parcel off and shop for dinner. About to depart, I put in one of my AirPods as I was half way through a video a friend had sent me.⁵ Fortunately Lucy was there, otherwise I'd have cycled 3kms without the parcel, which I'd left on the table: a victim of distraction. (It would not have been the first time that this had happened.)

I don't think the solution to this is technology; it's not yet another to-do app. And I don't want my life driven by a reminder app. I want to drive it myself. The solution is to be more considered in what you do. To engage with life and not let it be the background to some YouTube video.

New Year's resolutions don't work…

Yeah, so they say. But I have a data point.

Exactly four years ago, after doom-scrolling Covid for all of 2020, I decided -- mostly in the moment, if memory serves -- to stop reading the news. And I did. Since then I haven't once visited the home page of a traditional news organisation, or watched any significant portion of a TV news broadcast. (I still keep up with 'tech news' because I'm a nerd and it's not really news.)

It wasn't the resolution that helped, it was having a date to anchor it to. By the end of January if you still haven't done the thing, well you're not going to start doing it in February. And four years later here we are. It worked for me. Science.

Let's leave the how for tomorrow

Would you like to join me? Let's do this together.

Your goals should be similar to mine but if they're not exactly the same that's okay. And you might not want to go as hard as I plan on doing. But I'm Johnny.Decimal: this is content. So that's also okay.

I think if we do this together, we can keep each other honest. I've created dedicated threads on Discord and the forum. Throw your hat in the ring!

And if you don't keep it up, that's okay. There's a good chance that I'll fail. This feels like it's going to be difficult.

But let's give it a crack. Think how nice it'll be in 2035: someone says, hey, you are like a really chill person, and you can say, yeah, I haven't been distracted by the internet since the start of this quarter-century.

Don't pedant me here. I don't care if the millennium started in 2001 and therefore it should be '26 not '25. 100/4 = 25. End of story. ↩
This thing invariably being Counter-Strike. ↩
Another perfect example of distraction just occurred. I opened YouTube to grab the link to that playlist. One of the suggested videos was a repair of a vintage Omega watch, just like mine! I've been trying to find its exact model specification for ages. So I can't just ignore that link: I might never see it again. And I didn't. But now it's open in a tab, un-watched, and I'll figure out how to queue it for later viewing. ↩
If you haven't read Deep Work, please do. ↩
Having become aware of this earlier this year, I have drastically reduced the number of podcasts that I listen to. And essentially never while outdoors. ↩

22.00.0095 Back from holiday; minimising the office; Decimal.Business update

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:40:52 GMT

Back from holiday; minimising the office; Decimal.Business update

Hey all. I thought I'd mentioned this here but evidently not: I just got back from a 3-week holiday. My whole family visited from the UK. Mam, dad, sister, brother-in-law, and two nieces.

Ages ranged from 9 to 78. We visited Sydney, Canberra, and the Gold Coast. It was amazing, but you know that old cliché that I need a holiday to recover from my holiday? Well yeah, that's definitely true.

I threw away half the office

I got back, took the few personal items out of my bag, and put them on my desk. Pencil case with a few pencils and charging cables. Notebook. Glasses case. Battery pack. Wallet.¹

Not much. I travel light. But still, I saw them there and was immediately filled with a tiny dread: that of putting them away in a messy drawer.

So what option was there other than to pull everything out of every drawer and throw half of it away? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The time felt right. End of the year: might as well start 2025 with a clean slate. I took a bunch of photos but it'd take too long to embed them here. Here's an iCloud shared library of the 'before' if you're interested. That's each drawer's contents laid out on my desk.

If you don't throw it away...

Lucy started to do the same, and while neither of us are hoarders -- those photos don't show that much stuff -- we had a startling realisation.

Which is that if you don't throw this thing away, somebody else has to. Maybe not for a while. Depends when you die. But, eventually.

So those 16 cards I was 'saving' in a little box along with my still-current bank cards. Why? My old UK drivers licence. PADI diver cards from 2003. Expired Qantas frequent flyer cards. To what end?

It's not like I considered them mementos. I didn't get them out and spread them lovingly on the table. They were just there, waiting to be thrown away. So I did, along with anything else that I don't actively use.

Tending towards minimalism

On a scale of minimalist (1) to hoarder (10) I'd put us at a 4. In counting what I put back in the drawers -- not counting, say, individual pencils -- I have 112 items.² @Skjolnir over on the Discord has 700 items in his life, total.

But I'm comfortable that everything in those drawers has a use. I questioned every item: do I actively use it? Would I pay to put it in storage?

The result feels amazing. My (physical) desktop now contains a laptop, a trackpad, a keyboard, and a mouse. Every drawer is neat and only contains what's necessary. As disposable items age out, I won't replace them. And I've got an entire drawer empty.

I definitely recommend this. There is an undeniable mental clarity that comes from having less stuff around you. Less stuff means less decisions.

Decimal.Business

And so, back to work with a clear mind. We're both 100% focused on the upcoming Decimal.Business system. Christmas means nothing to either of us so, other than allowing ourselves a watching of Die Hard with a Vengeance and a bottle of something bubbly on the 25th, we'll be working hard to get it out as soon as possible.³

For those of you who've pre-purchased, you have our deepest gratitude. We'll have it with you as soon as humanly possible.

In daily life, I don't carry a separate wallet. Apple Wallet (the software) handles my bank cards, and Apple Wallet (the magnetic one that sticks to the back of your phone) holds my drivers licence⁴ and a couple of business cards. But when travelling I take a couple of extra cards -- health insurance, medicare, credit card -- so these go in my tiny Bellroy wallet which typically stays in my bag. ↩
Now tracked in a spreadsheet at 12.14 Inventory. ↩
We feel like we've seen the first two movies recently enough. ↩
Which I hate having to carry around -- I don't drive, on a typical day -- but I've been burned one too many times by not having ID on me. As soon as the ACT introduces digital licences, I'll stop carrying the magnetic wallet. ↩

22.00.0094 Don't type the date by hand

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 23:47:28 GMT

Don't type the date by hand

On Discord, Jade asked:

Theres gotta be a better way of naming Amex (and other credit card statements) than this surely? I always struggle to remember the dates, but this just feels overwhelming, I usually just go with the statement date for naming credit card statements. Amex Ending 12345 - 2024 10 10 to 2024 11 09 - Statement 2024 11 09 - Due 2024 12 05

There are many situations where I recommend starting a filename (or folder) with the date. It works really well for almost any time-based document. Amex statements fall squarely in to that bucket.

Which date?

For the record, this is the ISO 8601 date standard. Once you get in to date formatting¹ you'll see that around, so it's good to know what it is.

That standard defines a bunch of formats, but the one we're interested in is the simple yyyy-mm-dd, i.e. 2024-11-21. It's the only sensible format for your computer dates as it sorts chronologically. Use whatever other weird crap you want in your personal life.

The problem with this date is that it's a real pain to type out by hand. And first you have to remember the date! Bo-ring. Fortunately computers are good at a) knowing the date and b) generating text.

Introducing Raycast

You're gonna need an app. There are many that do this. The venerable TextExpander might have been the first, but we're going to use a reasonably new app: Raycast.

Raycast is a beast. It does so much. But don't let that put you off -- we can start to use it for the stuff we need, and over time you can explore the rest of its features.

It's free. There's a pro plan, but you don't need it. It's currently Mac only, but they're working on a Windows version.

So, install it. You can test it's working by pressing Option-Space. A little window should appear in the middle of your screen.

I won't go over any other Raycast features just now. The manual is here.

Snippets

We're going to create a 'snippet'. How this works is that you type some sort of shortcut, and Raycast converts it to something else.

It's just like the feature on your iPhone that detects if you typed teh and corrects it to the. Or the one that corrects █uck to duck. You know.

There's a trick here, and it's in naming your snippets. You want to guarantee that whatever you type will never ever occur in normal daily typing. Because if your snippet trigger was al, every time you type that out Raycast will replace it for you.

So now instead of Johnny.Decimal you'll get Johnny.Decim2024-11-21. Not ideal.

I recommend `;;`

I think this came from Merlin Mann waaaay back in the 43 folders days (2005!).² If you start each of your snippets with two semicolons, you guarantee that you'll never trigger them by accident.

If you touch-type³ they're under your right pinkie. So you mash ;; and then the name of your snippet and boom Raycast steps in and replaces it with something else.

Let's drop a little video here in case you're wondering what I'm on about.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Raycast: Create Snippet

Cool eh! Let's set it up.

Activate Raycast with ⌥ Space. Type create snippet to find that command. Press return.
The Name helps you identify it in the future.⁴ Call it YYYY-MM-DD or whatever else you like.
The Snippet is what will appear when this is activated. Paste this in: {date format="yyyy-MM-dd"}. This is a little bit of code that Raycast understands. Include the curly brackets.
Scroll the window to reveal Keyword. This is what you type to activate this snippet. I'd recommend ;;date for this one.
Press ⌘ return to save it.
Try it out!

Problem: it's today's date

As Jade is renaming lots of old files, this isn't perfect. But honestly I find even having the skeleton of a date format that I can then edit is more useful than starting from nothing.

Tip: use `option-arrows` to move around

Another small computer power-user tip: hold option (alt on Windows) and use the left/right arrows. This jumps your cursor a word at a time, and it stops at the breaks between the numbers in the date.

This will speed up your editing.

Why stop there?

In Jade's specific case, where she wants yyyy-mm-mm Amex 12345, there's nothing stopping you creating another custom snippet for that whole piece of text.

Repeat the process but now the Snippet should read {date format="yyyy-MM-dd"} Amex 12345. Maybe give that one the keyword ;;ax1? Whatever makes sense to you.

We can do so much more with Raycast, but that's a good start. Let us know how that works for you, Jade!

You will. Just wait. ↩
Archive link in case that's down. ↩
And if you don't, learn. ↩
Raycast command search snippets will list them. ↩

22.00.0093 Is 'private community' an oxymoron?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 21:29:11 GMT

Is 'private community' an oxymoron?

In figuring out what the Decimal.Business membership should look like, one of the 'obvious' features was the private community. After all, everyone does it.

But it never sat right with me. It just feels wrong. It's not what Johnny.Decimal is; fundamentally not who I am. A week later and now I think it's really dumb. I made a bad decision, so I'm correcting it.

When you can't connect two people, you don't have 'community'

Earlier today I was chatting to someone over in private-business-world. And I wanted to connect them to someone in not-private-business world, because I thought they had a thing in common and they'd like to chat.

But when one of those people is behind a closed door, you can't do that. Discord even lets you know, by discouraging you from @mentioning someone who doesn't have access to the channel you're in. I thought this was a bug, until I realised what was going on.

At that instant I knew it had to end.

The intent

There was some logic in the original intent: which is that if you're not in business, you probably don't care about those conversations.

But this can be achieved in myriad other ways. Simplest of which is to mute those channels. So if that's you, here's how you do it.

Discord

Right-click the DECIMAL.BUSINESS folder in the left pane.
Select Mute Category > Until I turn it back on.

Forum

Select a category from the left pane.
At the top right of the right pane, click the bell.
Select Muted.

Business is still business

The other intent was to keep business stuff separate, so that it's easier to refer back to later. The channels don't need to be private to achieve this objective.

If it's not business, I'll steer it away

This is less relevant in Discord, where the chat nature of the platform really does see conversations just flowing by. I think worrying too much about which channel they're in is probably futile.

On the forum, which is more persistent, this is more important. Fortunately it's trivial to move an existing thread to another category, so if something starts in business but shouldn't really live there long-term, I'll just move it out.

Feeling robbed?

If 'the private community' was the primary reason you signed up, please accept my apologies and hit me up for a refund.

I've updated the website to reflect this change.

22.00.0092 A brilliant use for ChatGPT

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 06:02:08 GMT

A brilliant use for ChatGPT

...if I do say so myself.

Since 'how I feel about AI', I've been using ChatGPT a whole bunch. I'm on the paid plan at US$20/month.

A few quick observations. I might say more in a later post.

I've (mostly) stopped searching the web

Unless I know exactly what I want and just need a link to it, my default search is now ChatGPT. (Which needs a better name please. The Claude people got that right. I'm gonna call it Chris.)

I'd guess 80% of what was search, is now not. This is where what I'm looking for isn't a particular page, it's an answer to a question or having something explained.

What I want in these situations is some prose that explains, like a person would if they were talking to me, the knowledge that I was seeking. This is exactly what you get from Chris.

Note: I know GPTs 'hallucinate' and tell you stuff that isn't true. I find that exceedingly rare and if you're using it as an excuse not to like these things you're doing yourself a disservice.

Another benefit -- and, as someone with a visually distinct website I realise the hypocrisy here -- is that every result looks the same. So not only have I eliminated the gamble that is clicking a link from a search engine, I've eliminated the mental overhead of visually parsing the page that opens.

Every page that Chris serves looks the same: black text on a white background. Simple numbered or bullet lists. And no images! God help me if I see another pointless Unsplash image above the fold.

So the moment the words appear, they're in my brain. This alone is transformational. (I should probably try enabling 'reader mode' on every site I visit. I know that's a thing you can do.)

On to my brilliant idea

I'm writing the first operations manual for Decimal.Business. It's the process by which you receive, store, and finally reconcile receipts for purchases.

Here's an extract. The block is part of a larger process diagram.

The trick is that link there: check your local regulations. How can I make that nice and easy for you, wherever you are?

Well, why don't you check your local regulations.

B-)

22.00.0091 'Small business' pre-launch open

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 02:09:36 GMT

'Small business' pre-launch open

I've sent a bunch of emails & updates the last 18 hours, so rather than writing another, I'll just paste the latest Quarterly here.

Hi everyone. This episode of The Quarterly is a touch early, for a couple of reasons.

Let's get the exciting news out of the way first: we just opened up the new Johnny.Decimal Small Business System for pre-launch.

In a nutshell, it's the 'life admin' pack, but for small business. But so much more: where life admin is a static pack -- apart from the odd update here and there -- the business system will be a living thing.

This has been something that I've wanted to do for a decade. Literally: I found the first note that I made, 25.15 Business in a box, dated 9th December 2014. It will be so much more than just the Johnny.Decimal structure and JDex: it'll be your operations manuals, your community, and whatever else you need it to be.

Me and Lucy are planning on working on this full-time for the next couple of years. I've built a mini-site for it with all the details. Check it out at https://business.johnnydecimal.com.

You've no idea how much we appreciate those of you who put your trust in us by giving us money before a thing even exists. It really helps our small business, and puts a bit of a rocket up us to get it finished, and make it as good as it can be.

So, as always, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support.

It's interesting, looking back on the last 18 months since I quit my job. You think, this small business idea: it's so obvious, why didn't we do it at the start?

I really believe that these things need to be allowed the time to evolve. And I'm so glad we did 'life admin' first, because that taught us so much.

For example: the business pack won't be a static set of folders and files. Turns out that updating a bunch of folders and files is a complex nightmare!

So this pack will be generated by a little helper app. That way you can choose your options on-the-fly. Want emoji? Tick a box. Want Bear-style JDex files or Obsidian-style? Choose that option.

For the nerds here, I'm learning Rust to do this properly. I dipped my toe in the waters of Electron and hoo boy did I not enjoy that. (Although for speed I may do a quick version using Deno, as I already know JS/TS.)

So this is step 1 towards a Johnny.Decimal app to help you manage your system. Rust + Tauri, completely cross-platform.

And this is why the business pack is taking longer: it'll just be a much bigger thing. It'll be worth it.

Reason #2 for an early newsletter: on 1st December I'll be in Sydney with my entire family, who are flying over from the UK for 3 weeks. Six of them, ranging from 9- to 78-years-old.

I'm meeting them in Sydney and we're spending a week there. Then we get the train to Canberra, where I'm really looking forward to showing my mam the beautiful gardens. Then as a peace offering to the 9- and 16-year-olds, for whom Canberra will be bo-ring, we're heading to the Gold Coast for a week.

It's been over a year since I've seen them. I can't wait.

I'll still be online, but probably just for an hour or so in the morning to keep on top of stuff.

Small apology for not really keeping up with the YouTube channel: there just isn't time. A typical video takes about 2 days of my time and then about the same for Lucy. Planning, shooting, editing, uploading. We just have to make priority calls and for now, the small business system is it.

Okay, wish me luck ferrying 6 British people around Australia! It's going to be one of those holidays where I need a holiday at the end.

Love from Canberra,
x johnny, lucy, & the chickens

22.00.0090 'Small business' update 04

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 00:10:06 GMT

'Small business' update 04

This was originally sent as an email.

This week we've been spending a lot of time thinking about some of the patterns inside category 12 Where I trade & how I get around.

'Where I trade…' includes all of the things at those premises, and the management of these things. We've split them in to 'back office' (or 'back of house' if you like) and 'front office'. In considering all of the types of things that you might have there, here's the structure we've got so far.

12.20 ■ Back office equipment & operations ⛔️
12.21 Keep the basics running
12.22 Keep us safe
12.23 Keep it nice for us
12.24 Keep the back office well equipped
12.25 Keep us fed and watered
12.26 Keep us sending & receiving
12.30 ■ Front office equipment & operations 🛎️
12.31 Keep the basics running
12.32 Keep our customers safe
12.33 Keep it nice for our customers
12.34 Keep the front office well equipped
12.35 Keep our customers fed and watered

By now you shouldn't be surprised to see patterns emerging. Patterns help your brain, and patterns are surprisingly useful when you're designing a system because they reveal potential gaps.

And you'll notice that we haven't used boring words. We started with boring words: 'office equipment' and so on. Turns out, making them less boring has a number of benefits.

They're less boring! (adj. not interesting; tedious.)
They're more memorable.
They encompass more when you express them as intent vs. content. We can't possibly know what all of you might put in here; but if we can figure out how each of you go about your day, we can hopefully provide a place for (almost) everything.

Let's put a quick example in each of these things. At JDHQ we're using a hairdressing salon as our working example because it seems to provide a nice spread of services, and conveniently Lucy had a cut & colour earlier this week so she had a good look around and asked a bunch of questions.

12.20 ■ Back office equipment & operations ⛔️
      - (This is a header.)
12.21 Keep the basics running
      - Electricity supply to the premises.
12.22 Keep us safe
      - The office security system.
      - This has an operations manual: how do you open up at the start of the day and lock up at the end?
12.23 Keep it nice for us
      - Buying a comfy chair for the staff area.
12.24 Keep the back office well equipped
      - From staplers to photocopiers.
12.25 Keep us fed and watered
      - Getting a fruit box delivered.
12.26 Keep us sending & receiving
      - Parcels and post.
12.30 ■ Front office equipment & operations 🛎️
      - (This is a header.)
12.31 Keep the basics running
      - You might have utility-like services that are front-of-house only. e.g. gas bottles for portable heaters at the front of a cafe.
12.32 Keep our customers safe
      - Security guards.
12.33 Keep it nice for our customers
      - Cleaning the toilets.
12.34 Keep the front office well equipped
      - Hairdryers and straighteners.
12.35 Keep our customers fed and watered
      - Buying a Nespresso machine & pods so you can give your customers a coffee while their colour sets.
      - This has an operations manual: how do you refill it? How often? Who does it? Where do you keep the pods? What happens when they run out?

Each of these IDs is really broad and, again, this is by design. This system will theoretically include a place for everything: a design goal is that we don't want you to have to create your own IDs. As soon as you create your own thing you're off the standard track; that standard gives us all a common language.

So, within each of these IDs there'll be a well-defined set of subfolders. All the same: as usual, consistency rules. Here they are. (*Noting that this is all a work-in-progress.)

10 Invoices, receipts, & warranties (buying it, or supplies for it)
20 Product manuals & training (how the vendor says to use it)
30 Operations manuals (how we use it)
40 Maintenance, repair, & service (keep it in working order)
50 Vendor & supplier details (who to contact)
60 Sale, cancellation, & disposal (it went away or ended)

The (words in parens) here might or might not make it to the finished product, but they're certainly helping me with the design. See previous email re: telling a story.

So now we have a place, for, say, explaining how to reset the office power breaker:

10-19 Company administration
   12 Where I trade & how I get around
      12.20 ■ Back office equipment & operations ⛔️
      12.21 Keep the basics running
            30 Operations manuals
               Electricity - how to reset the mains power.txt

And that little text file tells your staff where the breaker is and how to safely turn it back on, etc.

Designing a system that will theoretically be usable by any small business is, obviously, a challenge. I guess that's why nobody's ever done it. So I'd love to know what you think: do you read this and think, 'yeah, I could use that'...

...or do you think something different? Tell us! Now or never... ;-)

22.00.0089 First Principles podcast appearance

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 04:38:43 GMT

First Principles podcast appearance

Saagar Singh Sachdev was kind enough to have me as a guest on his 'First Principles' podcast. Here it is.

22.00.0088 I don't do Black Friday

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 04:39:28 GMT

I don't do Black Friday

Black Friday -- the American mega-discount shopping day -- is terrible for small, independent businesses. You shouldn't expect them to engage with it.

I don't. No discounts, no specials. No Black Friday.

Would you do it?

I know a successful creator of technology training videos who makes half his annual income on Black Friday.

Can you imagine turning up to work every day and not really knowing what your salary was?

Then on one specific day at the end of November your boss judges your performance over 8 hours and that's it: that's 50% of your annual income?

Would you do it? I didn't think so.

People don't shop the month before

Why would you buy anything the month before you knew of a Black Friday deal? So that's November, at least, gone.

This small business can't survive like that. Neither can any of the others. Don't expect them to.

Honestly my stuff is pretty cheap

It's worth what it's worth, and the price is great.

I'm not even American

So there's that.

Don't wait

If you want something from my store, just get it. You're not losing out on a discount.

22.00.0087 'Small business' update 03

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

'Small business' update 03

This was originally sent as an email.

In the previous messages [0], I spoke about area 10-19 Office administration. This is the common area that contains the stuff that most of us deal with: company, staff, premises, money, tech, and so on.

[0]: https://jdcm.al/qssb/01 & https://jdcm.al/qssb/02

But what about your product? The thing that's unique to you, that only you create?

That's going to be 20-29 Your product, and it should be obvious that there's only so much guidance that we can give you here. Because neither me or Lucy are hairdressers or landscapers or forklift rental companies or...

Here's the plan. For product, we're going to guide you with patterns. A lot of Johnny.Decimal is basically patterns and behaviours. If you've been on the forum or Discord for any amount of time you'll have seen people ask a question that stretches the edges of the system, and my answer is always:

Make this thing your own, because
I provide guidance, techniques, patterns, and behaviour: not hard rules.

Absolutism is one of my least favourite human traits. As soon as you start a sentence with the word 'all', you've lost me. (Unless you're a mathematician.) Because we're different: our brains, our lives, our situations, all different.

But we can make life easier -- for ourselves and everyone else -- through common patterns. Here's one: when you have one version of a document, and you want to update it, what do you do? There's a bunch of ways to handle this.

Just update the document in-place. You've got backups^*; if you need to recall an older version, you can restore it.
Copy it, leaving the existing version and the seven other older versions where they are, calling the new version Document NEW COPY version (008) Jim's copy.doc.
Copy it, appending the current date to the filename in the format yyyy-mm-dd.
- Move this copy to a subfolder called archive.
- Ensure that only one version remains in the master folder.
- Work on this version.

(^*You have backups, right? Small business will make sure that you do -- it'll be one of the core operations manuals, and we'll hold you to account.)

The first method is what we should probably do. But humans seem to like to have a readily-available copy rather than relying on version control and backups. So we need to be pragmatic.

The second will be painfully familiar to many of you. Let's call this the 'I work in a large company' model.

The third is simple, effective, and takes no time. It's just a behaviour: a simple set of rules that, if followed, make life easier and less stressful. So why don't we ever do it?!

Just because we don't know the product patterns for hairdressers and landscapers now doesn't mean that we'll never know them. Because, over time, I hope this community will work together to create them.

I truly believe that community will be what makes this successful. Two people work at JDHQ and we've already established that one of them is no hairdresser. (I do cut my own hair but I'm not sure that counts.)

But once we've got a few hairdressers, our job becomes to discover and codify knowledge. And so by the time the 10th joins, we do have an idea of how that product area should look. And now we've got 10 hairdressers who can all connect and ask each other for help, based on a common language.

Imagine that we've also filled out the company admin area, being specific with examples that relate to hairdressing. So when you're setting up your system, you can choose the hairdressing template and it'll be even more helpful from the start.

(Nerd side-note: I realised that this might be a cool use for that decimal.business domain I bought. What if salon.decimal.business took you straight to the customised version...)

All of which is to say that we're full steam ahead here, and it's progressing very nicely. However: we've realised that we're not going to have this out by our initial end-November deadline. As a reminder, that's when my family lands from the UK. I'll be working minimal hours for 3 weeks.

It's not our style to release something half-baked. I mean, I'd take your money, but Lucy wouldn't be able to sleep at night. ;-) But seriously, while there'll always be more to improve, we want this pack to be a solid v1.0 when it's released. I'll keep you informed.

Tell us what you do! We've got a bunch of example businesses that we're designing for, but it helps us enormously when you mail us. Screenshots of your existing folder structure are pure gold -- it really lets us see inside your business brain. Lucy pores over them and they directly influence what we're building.

22.00.0085 'Small business' update 02

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 05:24:42 GMT

'Small business' update 02

This was originally sent as an email.

This week Lucy has been putting some proper shape to the first 'small business' category, 11 The business & its people. And I've made a good start on the helper app that will create your system for you.

Before we started working on this pack, we talked about using the 'life admin' pack as inspiration. You can draw a line from your personal life to a business that mostly makes sense.

11 Me & other living things → The business & its people
12 Where I live & how I get around → Where you trade & how you get around
13 Money → no change
14 Technology → no change
15 Travel, events, & fun → perhaps becomes marketing & PR? TBC

We really tried to humanise 'life admin'. Organising your files is already a boring chore -- I don't need to make it more tedious. And we found that by telling ourselves a story, and explaining that story in the pack, things became more obvious in our minds.

And unless you've really rationalised it, chewed it over in your mind, changed your mind a few times, thought you were crazy, realised you weren't, yes, no ... it takes a while for this story to find its feet. For the narrative to emerge.

When it does, the story coalesces, and the structure really starts to make sense. It's like it becomes tangible.

Earlier today we had a discussion on the nuance of your 11.12 Licences & permits. In the context of a business, what licences does it hold, which are held by its employees, and what's the difference (if any)?

This pack is a challenge to produce because everywhere you look, 'it depends'. You can very often find a counter-example.

Say you're a freelance forklift driver. In order to be that, you MUST have a forklift licence: therefore it lives in 11.12.

But a few years on and you've hired people to work for you. Now you win business and manage accounts. And so the staff hold forklift licences, and those licences live somewhere alongside the staff members. They're no longer core to the business: because if one of those people loses their licence, your business doesn't stop trading. You just employ someone else.

Now, though, you rent a warehouse, and to run forklifts from there it MUST comply with city ordnance §23.6.(b).iv. So now that's the thing that needs to be in 11.12.

We think the best way to explain how we feel about this ID is this: there's a knock on the door. It's the city's inspector. The first thing they want to see is the licences & permits that your business requires to trade. After that, they'll continue their inspection: but until they've checked the basics, there's no point going on.

This visit is no stress for you: you just give them everything from 11.12.

Meanwhile I've got the skeleton of the JD-system-builder app up and running. You give it 'a system' of data, and it creates your index files and file system folders.

Given the variety of apps that people use to keep their notes, that's not a world I want to play in. I'm going to produce Markdown and plain-text files for you, and you can import them in to whatever app you already use.

But we thought that this app might serve a broader function, as your system manual. For 'life admin' we produced a PDF, and we won't be doing that again: it's a nightmare to keep up to date.

Instead of that, what if my app was your manual? Searchable, constantly updated, all the latest information, interesting links as we find them, new versions of ops manuals as they're written, translations -- whatever you can think of.

This means that we can keep the long wordy stuff out of your JDex. It stays simple: just the ID's header and brief description. Then the rest of the space is yours to keep your own notes. And if you want more background, there's a link there that'll open up the manual page in the app.

(If you do want a PDF, I just got that working earlier today: just hit a button, and it's generated on the fly.)

This is surprisingly hard work, but I sit writing this underneath a crabapple tree in full flower, so life's okay. Onwards and upwards.

Figure 22.00.0085A. The crabapple tree.

22.00.0086 'Small business' update 01

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 05:24:42 GMT

'Small business' update 01

This was the first update, and was originally sent as an email. I'm posting it here so that I can link to it.

Lucy and I have been working on the upcoming 'small business' system for a week. It's starting to take shape: we have the outlines of the categories, and Lucy's sitting next to me now putting shape and structure to some of the first IDs.

We're using the 'life admin' system as our inspiration, but it's interesting just how much more there is to business. As soon as you start to pull something apart, it all unravels.

And we're realising that there are parts of this system that some of you will fill up, and parts that you might never touch. As we're building it we're testing it with a list of types of business:

Personal trainer/yoga or pilates teacher
Freelance/contract designer, writer, editor
Wedding celebrant
Any other type of house-related service - e.g. cleaning or fixing or installing or maintaining a thing
Gardener/landscaper
Pet groomer/trainer/accommodation
Farming/agribusiness
Market stallholders or suppliers of things - things you make (edible, non-edible) or grow (plants, eggs, meat)
Hospitality - cafe, restaurant, food truck, catering
Teaching, training, tutoring
Architecture & interior design
Accountant
Healthcare - smaller or home-based physiotherapist, dentist, GP
You have a retail shop or warehouse people come to
Guiding/outdoor adventure/fishing
Driving - wedding cars and limousines, private cars like George, deliveries and couriering, truck driver with your own truck
Personal services/consulting in any industry

-- and so you can imagine that the food truck is going to make great use of our 'transport' section, but that's not something that Johnny.Decimal Inc. has any interest in whatsoever. We don't even own a car.

For this reason, we're keeping to the life admin theme of fairly broad IDs. As we're developing this using my beloved MindNode, our map of All The Things looks like this. (This is a super early work-in-progress: don't worry, the finished system will be a lot neater!)

z-CleanShot 2024-10-09 08-11-44 share.cleanshot.com

Screenshot uploaded to CleanShot Cloud

MindNode has this lovely feature where you can focus in on a node. And that's how I like to imagine a system like this: yeah, there's a lot going on. But my job is to get you to the single ID that contains the thing you need, at which point your view becomes this:

z-CleanShot 2024-10-09 08-14-51 share.cleanshot.com

Screenshot uploaded to CleanShot Cloud

...and, aah, that feels better.

A small example from real life. Just an hour ago I wanted to update my mailing list. It's called 'The Quarterly' and that's how I refer to it internally. So here's what I did:

Launched Obsidian (with Raycast), hit Cmd-O, typed 'quart', saw the JDex entry appear, noted its number (23.13). Total elapsed time: <10s.
Clicked the Finder window that is always open on the JD business system (remind me to tell you more about this one day), used the arrow keys ~10 times to get from where I was to 23.13. Total elapsed time: <10s.
Opened the spreadsheet. And now I'm where I need to be. Total elapsed time: genuinely less than 30 seconds.

More importantly, this process was stress-free. I knew with certainty that the spreadsheet I was after was going to be in that folder.

This is what I want to bring to your business: I want you to be able to deal with the boring admin quickly, and with no stress. Leaving you more time to get on actually making the thing that you make; helping the people you help.

I'd love to hear more about you. Who are you? What do you do? What are your problems? Just reply, or we've got a Discord thread going here.

https://discord.gg/q2uKdazR29 > takes you to channel #the-lounge, then look for the 'who are you?' thread.

On the topic of Discord: who is already on there? If it's new to you, or you've used it and didn't like it -- I didn't, initially -- here's one little tip. By default it's in 'dark mode'. But I tend to work during the day! So change it to 'light mode'. It totally changed my relationship with the platform.

User settings (gear icon near your name) > app settings > appearance > choose 'light' theme.

22.00.0084 Half an hour a day

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 04:30:15 GMT

Half an hour a day

In my continuing effort to figure out a better way to manage 'to-do'-like tasks,¹ I've started an experiment.

At the end of every day, I commit to spending 30 minutes 'managing' my to-do system. If there's stuff to-do, I do it. In order of importance and date.

If there isn't, I go through old items and tidy them up. Or I look at what remains and make sure it's good and neat and in the right bucket and has the right dates etc.

Obviously this is an end of the day task, not a start of the day. Use your fresh brain for real work. Use your tired brain for this.

My realisation was that I tend to knock off at, say, 17:00. During the day, this stuff never gets a look-in. I'm busy! With real work! And then you work right up to your knock-off time because you're sure the thing you're doing is urgent or that you'll get it finished.

Well it isn't, and you won't. So just take half an hour, 'finish' early, and pay attention to this stuff. Because your overall quality of life will improve. You'll be less stressed because you didn't do any of that stuff that you never get to.

That's it. That's the tip: spend half an hour doing a thing that you don't want to do. I'm about a week in and I tell you what, it's life changing.

But how are you managing those tasks?

Right now, using the venerable Things. It's so nice.

I'm not in a position to share the details yet, but I'm working on it.

Which I don't call 'to-dos' as I'm sure that many of the things that we record in our to-do list aren't things to do: they're just things we might like to do, or ideas for things, or thoughts, or dreams, or ideas that we had that really didn't need to be written down, we just didn't know that at the time. ↩

22.00.0083 Using the new '+'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 06:48:56 GMT

Using the new '+'

Just a quick example of using the new extend the end notation, where you append + to the end of an ID.

Family trip

The family are coming to see me at the end of November. Super exciting: mam, dad, sister, husband, kids. 🥳 Can't wait.

I'm tracking their trip at 15.52 Family trip to Australia, Nov 2024. (This is all life admin.)

That ID has a templated sub-structure already:

10 Planning & ideas
20 Travel documents & visas
30 Getting there
40 Somewhere to stay
50 Moving around the place
60 Fun things to do

My Bear note was already a little busy, so I've split out the fun things to do. Now that note is 15.52+ Fun things to do, and I've wiki-linked it from the main note.

I like how this denotes 'a child note'. The + feels obvious. Note how there's no need to duplicate the parent note's title. If you need to know what it is, just go look at it.

22.00.0082 Coming soon: 'small business'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 01:13:45 GMT

Coming soon

The small business system is in production. Version 1 will be released before the end of November 2024.

Register now for exclusive early-bird benefits.

We're calling it 'small business', but designing it to suit any sort of small-to-medium enterprise. Think your local beer brewing club, or the kids' kindergarten that you got roped in to being the President of.¹

And, of course, small businesses of all shapes and sizes. From 1 to about 50 employees, whatever you do: you might own a food truck, be an accountant, have a shop, be a masseuse, an architect, a landscaper...

More than a folder structure

The 'life admin' pack is a folder structure and a set of files to create your JDex. That works to manage your day-to-day life, but in business you need more.

We know: Lucy and I have both been small business people forever.² We've been contractors, freelancers, and registered business owners. We learned this the hard way.

So 'small business' will be:

The folder structure, hand-crafted by us.
JDex files, full of usage tips and guidance.
Your business operations manual.
- We all do the same basic stuff, and we keep re-inventing it. You don't have time for that.³
A private community of your peers. With a common system, we can all help each other.
- Channels will be structured around the system. Ask targeted questions and get answers from experts.
- As this knowledge builds over time, we will extract it and present it as part of the system.
- So you're never searching for past knowledge: it's neatly indexed and presented for you.

Register now

Email smallbusiness@johnnydecimal.com with the subject SUBSCRIBE. (Just click that and hit send.)

This is a 'pop-up' email list, and communication will be frequent. When the system is released, the list ends and we will delete your address.

You will not be added to the regular list.

Help us shape the product

Expect us to ask you what you need. Tell us what you need! We build this for you.

Early-bird benefits

If you're on this list, you'll get the best deal and special privileges. I guarantee it.

Follow us on Threads

For even more behind-the-scenes, follow @johnny.decimal.

Be like Dmitriy

He knows what works. ;-)

President sounding fancy until you realised how much work it is. ↩
In his 28-year career, Johnny has had one full-time salaried job. It lasted 18 months and it wasn't for him. Lucy was a freelancer for half of her working life. ↩
The ops manuals will be built over time, with input from the community. ↩

22.00.0081 What's wrong with this data structure?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 05:50:52 GMT

What's wrong with this data structure?

Note: this is behind-the-scenes stuff. If you're not a data nerd, you probably won't care.

Context

The current 'life admin' pack is, essentially, a .zip file full of files in folders: completely static files-on-disk. It's a real pain in the ass to keep updated.

The upcoming Quick Start: 'Small business' pack¹ will not be a static thing. It will be something that is built, from data. So when you want to create your file system over there, you'll tell my utility app to do that.

This way, it can look however you want without me having to manage dozens of permutations. Want Markdown files without tags in folders? Just generate that. Want an empty folder structure? Do that. Plain text files? Whatever. Push a button, it'll be generated.

I am a liar

I previously said that my software would be Apple-only. Well, I'm building this in Electron. Because I don't consider this the Johnny.Decimal software. At this stage, it's just a utility app.

So just FYI. I am not to be trusted.

(And yeah I know Electron is a waste and JavaScript and I know. I need to get something up fast, and I already know JS. Don't tell me to learn Rust.)

Break my data structure (please)

So I've been thinking about a JSON data structure, and I'd like your wisdom. Because I don't live in this. Some of you do. What terrible mistakes am I making? What obvious pitfalls am I overlooking?

What does it need to do?

Ideally, I'd like to design something really future-proof. If I'm going to design a JSON/TypeScript schema, it might as well be right for the long-term.

I don't have a list of requirements, but if you know JD you can imagine. It should be able to serve as the data store for any system/JDex. Text/Markdown only; it doesn't need to store data. That's what your file system is for.

It'll be public

This will be the officially endorsed schema so that any compatible app can communicate.

Hmm also

I do want the 'small business' pack to come with more than just JDex entries. I have in mind that it will serve as your ops manual; so that's extra documentation linked to each ID. Think multi-page PDFs.

Perhaps that should just be a separate thing. Keep this core idea simple/pure? Probably.

Feedback how?

I'll be ~~hacking around~~ working away on this for the next few days. Any feedback would be very welcome.

GitHub: there's a file here and a discussion here.
- Preferred.
Forum: there's a post here.
Discord: there's a thread here.

🙏 Thank you!

Working title. We have a better name up our sleeves... ↩

13.32 Guidelines

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:32:00 GMT

Usage considerations

This page relates to extend the end.

Extending the end is for when you have a category that requires more than 100 IDs, or an ID that needs to be repeated in some way.

For example, I need more than 100 IDs in my blog post category. Or you need to neatly store similar details in an ID for each of your kids.

Of the three system expansion strategies, creating a sub-ID to extend the end is the simplest and therefore most preferred.

As well as extending an ID -- as we saw on the previous page -- it can be used to link JDex sub-notes back to a main note.

Your JDex

Recording sub-IDs

If you have a full sub-ID to record, use it in the title of your note. For example 11.24+JEM Jemima's eyes, ears, & teeth. This allows you to search for all of Jemima's sub-IDs using +JEM.

Figure 13.32A. Two Bear notes. 11.24 is the main ID. 11.24+JEM is a sub-ID that sorts below it.

Recording sub-notes

Traditionally, each of your IDs has a single JDex entry: it is this entry that defines the ID.

But one note can get long and become difficult to manage. If you want to create sub-notes, just use the + after the ID in the note title.

Figure 13.32B. Two Bear notes with the same ID. 13.41 is the main note. 13.41+ is a sub-note that sorts below it.

For example, I needed to record a long transaction history for a lawnmower warranty return. 13.41 Purchase receipts is the home for this, but I didn't want to clutter the main note.

I created a sub-note, 13.41+ Ozito mower. This note is an instance of 13.41, and the + makes it sort below the main note.

In this case, I didn't need to create a full sub-ID with a code. Adding the + suffices.

Your file system

The sub-ID can be thought of as a file system subfolder.

As the system owner, you might choose to keep your items in the ID folder and create subfolders for each sub-ID. See below, where the names represent our ~~chickens~~ children.

Figure 13.32C. Your eye prescriptions are stored in the 11.24 folder. Your childrens' files are stored in coded subfolders.

Or you might find it neater to keep everything in subfolders. If so, invent a short code for yourself as well and store your records there.

Naming considerations

Pick a short code for your sub-IDs that works for you, and use it consistently.

These examples use abbreviations for simplicity. I generally prefer initials. So Jemima Matilda Decimal would be +JMD. They tend to be more memorable.

13.12 Guidelines

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:12:00 GMT

Usage considerations

This page relates to multiple systems.

Multiple systems are for when you have two distinct systems that do not overlap. For example, a personal system and a work system.

Do not use this if you think you have 'filled up' an existing system and need more room. Correct your design instead.

Imagine having two personal systems. Doubling the number of IDs you manage would add complexity and reduce clarity. I've never encountered a scenario where this would be required.

Try to extend the end first

Before creating a new system, consider if the simpler extending the end would solve your problem.

Because adding a new system doubles the number of possible IDs under management from 10,000 to 20,000. Each of those IDs is the more complex SYS.AC.ID.

Extending the end of a single ID raises the number of IDs from 10,000 to 10,001. The only ID that changes, becoming AC.ID+SUB, is the one you extended.

Truly separate domains don't require multiple systems

Consider the problem we are solving: conflicting IDs. If you have two instances of 11.11 within a shared domain, you must disambiguate with a SYS identifier.

But if these systems exist in isolated domains, there is no conflict. For example, you have a personal system at home and a work system at work, and you don't use shared tools.

Figure 13.12A. Two isolated domains. There is no conflict between these systems. SYS.AC.ID is not required.

In this case, there is no need to disambiguate. At work, 11.11 can only refer to one thing. Don't burden yourself (and your colleagues) with SYS.AC.ID if it's not necessary.

Your JDex

If the JDex for each system is in the same tool, every ID should become the full SYS.AC.ID.

If you use separate tools -- for example, my personal JDex is in Bear and my work JDex is in Obsidian -- this might not be necessary.

Always prefer simplicity as long as it does not compromise clarity.

Your file system

Each system lives in a folder labelled with its identifier and name. For example D85 Johnny.Decimal.

Figure 13.12B. The system folder for the Johnny.Decimal business contains an otherwise standard system.

Within here, it is usually not necessary to use the system identifier when naming folders. For example, area 10-19 Company administration is not named D85.10-19 ….

If you use folder shortcuts, you might like to add the full system identifier. For example, when 'pinning' to the left navigation pane.

Naming considerations

It can be helpful to name some files with the full SYS.AC.ID. I find this useful when browsing the File > Recent menu. Here, SYS provides guidance.

You should also prefer the full identifier for files that are externally distributed. Encode the full identifier in the name of the file. This will help you when the file is returned.

22.00.0080 Headers

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 00:30:52 GMT

Headers

In the life admin pack, we used 'headers' to break up the categories.

10-19Life admin

11 Me & other living things 🙋

11.10■ Personal records 🗂️

...

11.16Legal documents & certificates

11.17Academic records & qualifications

11.20■ Physical health & wellbeing 🫀

11.21Health insurance & claims

11.22Health records & registrations

...

They all occupy a AC.I0 ID, and in the main version we gave them a bit of visual distinction with the black square and an emoji. They group IDs in to blocks of 10s, e.g. 11.20 … 11.29. You can see we skipped some IDs to 'jump' to the next header.

No.

That was a short blog post

Okay, it's not that simple. We used headers in this situation because the pack, specifically category 11 Me & other living things, is fairly busy. There are 49 IDs in that category: half-full.

But more importantly we used them because this system was designed not to change. In the manual we say that you should try really hard not to create any more IDs. It's about as static an area as you'll ever have.

Because the problem with headers is that it's easy to design yourself in to a corner. You might not think that you'll ever run up against that header, but give it a few years. Remember how long these systems might last.

So when is it okay to use headers?

In the following situations, I grant you my cautious blessing to use headers.

Highly-designed, mostly-static systems. Like 'life admin'.
Systems with very broad IDs. Like 'life admin'.

I don't think 'headers' will ever be a page on the main site. A page there represents a fully-endorsed part of the system that most people are encouraged to use. Bear that in mind before you use them.

If in doubt, give me a shout on the forum or Discord.

13.31 Extend the end

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:31:00 GMT

The problem

There are situations where almost everything fits in a standard Johnny.Decimal system. But a few items either break the 'no more than 100 IDs' rule, or need to be repeated in some way.

These are minor extensions to your system that don't require the more complex expand an area solution.

Examples
Your kids: you're using the standard life admin pack and you have four kids. The ID 11.24 Eyes, ears, & teeth -- which covers things like eye checks, glasses, dental checks, braces, and hearing tests -- is quite busy. You want a way to track each child's visits and documents.
A repeated task within a larger project: we had to install cabling in 13 data centres. But there was already a complete ID allocated to cabling: 72.02. I could have used a new ID for each data centre. But this didn't match the system's overall pattern and it wouldn't have been memorable. Plus I wanted a unique reference for each data centre's cabling for things like our project schedule.
My blog: this site's blog posts will number more than 100. But I want each to have a unique ID.

The solution

Add a final identifier after the ID, and separate them with a +. Ideally a simple sequence or code that represents the thing being extended. We call this the sub-ID, and refer to it as AC.ID+SUB.

Examples
Your kids: in our JDex, we add initials or a short code to represent each child. So 11.24+JEM is a note for anything to do with Jemima's visits to the optician or dentist. Similarly, we have 11.24+BEL, 11.24+MAR, and 11.24+WEN for Belinda, Marie, and Wendy.
A repeated task within a larger project: to create IDs for each of the 13 data centres, I used an existing code for that location. The final IDs looked like 72.02+X01, where X01 was a particular data centre.
My blog: for each post, I begin with the category ID: 22.00. Then append a sequential four-digit post ID. This creates the range 22.00+0000 … 22.00+9999.^* Four digits allows for 10,000 posts. Three digits would not have been enough.
^*The blog currently uses a decimal as the final separator, not a plus. I am in the process of updating it.

What am I extending/gaining?

This scheme extends specific IDs or categories by an arbitrary number of sub-IDs.

How does this affect my IDs?

Your IDs are extended at the end.

How does this affect my JDex?

You may choose to record these sub-IDs in your JDex. But it might not be necessary. See the guidelines.

Can I use this with multiple systems?

Yes. You may extend the end of a SYS.AC.ID system.

Can I use this with expand an area?

No. For an expanded area, extending the end no longer makes sense because you're not using standard AC.ID.

When should I use/not use this?

You should use this in limited situations, in specific categories or IDs.

If you find yourself extending the end too frequently within a system, question its design. You might need to split it into multiple systems. Or you might need to expand an area of the system.

13.21 Expand an area

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:21:00 GMT

The problem

A design principle of Johnny.Decimal is that we can have no more than 10 categories in each of 10 areas. And each category has no more than 100 IDs. This enforces a shallow structure: areas contain categories contain IDs. That's it: three levels.

However some things don't fit in this structure. Trying to make them fit is unnatural and doesn't result in a neat system.

The goal of expand an area is to allow you to use a standard Johnny.Decimal system. But with one area expanded to accommodate the 'more than 10 things' or 'more than three levels' requirement.

Examples
A student or teacher: you have more than 10 classes or topics, across more than 10 semesters of study, across multiple years.
A freelance designer: you manage multiple clients with multiple products that generate multiple jobs. You might have more than 10 of any of these things. These jobs then require their own level of organisation: the brief, copy, art, reviews, and finals. So we require more depth and more than 10.

The solution

We take an area from a standard system and expand it. Exactly how you do this depends on the situation. I will document patterns for academics, creatives, and freelancers.¹

Here are the guidelines for any other scenario. Treat them like a menu of options, mixing and matching to suit your requirements.

A common objection

People see this and say, "well what's the point of Johnny.Decimal if I can just make up my own thing?". To which I say: there are no absolutes in life.

I'm trying to be pragmatic and honest. My default system is great for many things, not every thing. We can still use the principles of Johnny.Decimal to stay organised -- these are outlined below.

Overarching principle: consistency is critical

You can build almost any 'shape' of system and be organised. The key is to be consistent in your structure and file naming. This sounds obvious, but if it's front of mind you won't go far wrong.

Help your future self by documenting your scheme and design decisions in your JDex. The standard zero 00.00 Index would be a good place.

Rule: only expand the part that needs to be expanded

Aim to expand a single area of your system. Most of what you do should still fit in the standard Johnny.Decimal structure. If you're a freelance designer, manage the rest of your business with standard areas and categories.

Rule: all IDs start with the area number

Standard Johnny.Decimal IDs start with the number of the area they're in: 83.66 belongs to area 80-89.

You must retain this pattern. You're going to expand one area. Choose that area, and then ensure that every number that it contains starts with the area number.

Example
In the creative pattern, area 90-99 Portfolio of creative outputs is expanded and uses a five-digit non-standard numbering scheme: A0000 … A9999. A indicates the area that has been expanded.
In this example, the usable numbers are 90000 … 99999. Expanding 70-79 the range would be 70000 … 79999.

Principle: use the alphabet

In a standard Johnny.Decimal system, numbers replace the alphabet as the primary sort. This is because most things do not benefit from being sorted alphabetically.

But some things do. For example, if you have a long list of organisations, ordering them alphabetically makes sense. It makes no sense to allocate the organisations a number and sort numerically. See figure 13.21A below.

Principle: use the date

Many things benefit from being ordered chronologically: jobs for a client; semesters at university. And we tend to remember where these kind of things happened 'in time'. So the date can help us find things later.

Look for opportunities to use the date. This must always be specified as year-month-day in the format yyyy-mm-dd, e.g. 2024-08-30. This will sort chronologically in your file system.² See figure 13.21A below.

Principle: stop using numbers

In a standard Johnny.Decimal system, every item has a number: the ID. However in many expand an area scenarios, numbers might only make sense at the higher levels.

Use numbers to guide you to the place you need to be. Or where there isn't an alphabet or date alternative. But when they become a burden, or when the alphabet or date is better, stop using them. See figure 13.21A below.

Principle: use natural hierarchies

If natural hierarchies exist, use them. Why invent another scheme for something that already has one?

Example
As a freelancer, the jobs you manage are organised by client, product, then job.^* Use this hierarchy in your system. Don't worry that it breaks the area → category → ID structure. See figure 13.21A below.
^*For the purposes of this example. Adapt this to your own situation.

Principle: look for patterns

A sub-principle of 'be consistent': always look for patterns. If you do something over and over it should be a template. This saves time and helps your brain.

Templates usually benefit from having numbers to keep them in order. Numbering in tens (10, 20, 30) makes sense here. It leaves room between items (05, 15, 25) for one-offs or items you forgot.

Example
A freelance designer creates promotional material for the footwear industry. They have two clients, Joe's Shoes and Tammy's Trainers. Joe makes three products: Big Boots, Cool Kicks, and Sick Sneakers.
The jobs follow a similar pattern. The client provides a brief, copy, images, and video. The designer produces working files for review and a final delivered product.
This is an opportunity to make a reusable template. And to use numbers again. Not as a unique identifier, but to control the order of file system folders.
Here's how their system might look. Area 10-19 is a standard Johnny.Decimal area, and they've expanded 20-29 to handle their clients and jobs.

Figure 13.21A. A freelance designer's templated system. This example uses the following principles: Use the alphabet, Use the date, Stop using numbers, Use natural hierarchies, Look for patterns.

Principle: invent your own scheme

There's a reason people love their Johnny.Decimal IDs. They're a useful shortcut in many situations. So if you need an ID for something, feel free to make one up. Just remember: be consistent.

Example
I like to give each of my invoices a unique ID that relates to the job.
In the example above, we might invent a scheme like 20.JOE.BB.20240708. We're not going to use this code every day. But it serves as an unambiguous reference to that job when we need one.
And I shouldn't have to explain this scheme: it's obvious to which job I'm referring. Annotate your file system and JDex to make the scheme self-documenting.

Figure 13.21B. The designer's system annotated with codes for later use. Note the consistency: every client code is three letters; every product code is two.

Principle: Use existing codes

Much of life already uses the concept of a short code. University courses have them. Creative agencies use them. Almost every professional job management system will allocate a 'job number' of some kind. So where a code exists, don't invent another.

Example
Our student attends university in the Northern Hemisphere. They have the standard life admin pack at 10-19. And a similar structure at 20-29 to handle the administration of being a student: finances, accommodation, and extra-curricular clubs. These are standard Johnny.Decimal areas.
Their courses require an expand an area solution. They naturally group by year then semester, and each has a code assigned by the university. Within each course, we use the same template, numbered from 10 … 60.
It's convenient that the first semester, Autumn, sorts before Spring. If this wasn't the case, we could add numbers to the front to force a sort. Perhaps the month?

Figure 13.21C. A student's system with an expanded area for course work. Note the consistency: every year has two semesters; every semester has course codes; every course is templated.

What am I extending/gaining?

One of your standard areas is being expanded. It can grow to an essentially infinite size: we have abandoned the constraints of Johnny.Decimal. So be careful. Remember the chaos of the past. Don't go back there.

How does this affect my IDs?

The items in this area might not have numerical IDs. They might not have IDs at all.

The point of IDs is to help you navigate to an item, and to give you a unique reference. In this setup, you might not need an ID for either of those things. Alternatively, you might design your own scheme as documented above.

How does this affect my JDex?

It depends. Remember the point of your JDex: to help you find things, quickly, with no stress. Because most of life isn't discoverable.

If you design an area that has this discoverability built-in -- because it's a simple hierarchy of clients, products, and jobs -- then you might not need to refer to your JDex as often.

If you want to keep notes in your JDex, you should assign an ID to an item and use that ID in your JDex as usual.

Can I use this with multiple systems?

Yes. You may expand an area of a SYS.AC.ID system.

Can I use this with extend the end?

No. It makes no sense to extend the end of an area that you have expanded.

Keep an eye on the blog for updates. ↩
This is ISO8601 for the date nerds. ↩

13.11 Multiple systems

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:11:00 GMT

The problem

If you manage two or more Johnny.Decimal systems, you need a way to identify them. For example, you have a system at home and at work.

The two systems have nothing in common. But they both contain the ID 11.11. When you use this ID, to which system are you referring? It is now ambiguous.

The solution

We recognise that these two (or more) systems are distinct and separate, and assign each of them a 'system identifier' before AC.ID.

Use three characters of the form [A-Z][0-9][0-9], i.e. A00 … Z99. We refer to this as SYS.AC.ID.

Example
We assign our home system the identifier H01 and our work system W01.^* The full ID for 11.11 in each of these systems is now H01.11.11 and W01.11.11, respectively.
^*I encourage you to be more creative. Interesting letter/number combinations will help your brain.

What am I extending/gaining?

This scheme extends the number of available systems from one (1) -- the classic AC.ID -- to 2,600.

How does this affect my IDs?

Within each system, IDs are unaffected. Each system is a standard implementation of Johnny.Decimal.

How does this affect my JDex?

If your JDex contains entries for both systems, each entry must include the full SYS.AC.ID identifier. Otherwise, searching for 11.11 might return both results, which is ambiguous.

If your systems exist in separate domains, you may not need to do this. See the guidelines.

Can I use this with expand an area?

Yes. You may expand an area of a SYS.AC.ID system.

Can I use this with extend the end?

Yes. You can extend the end of a SYS.AC.ID system.

When should I use/not use this?

Use this when you have two or more systems in the same domain. Or you may choose to label systems in separate domains for clarity -- like in our home/work example.

Avoid creating multiple systems where possible -- always prefer to 'fill up' an existing system. More systems equals more complexity. Complexity is to be avoided.

Most people can fit their entire personal life in one Johnny.Decimal system. If you've run out of room, try to compress your system before creating another.

13.01 Introduction

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:01:00 GMT

The problem

The Johnny.Decimal structure is two-dimensional by design -- areas and categories. This limitation is part of what makes it powerful. It's hard to get lost in a simple space.

But sometimes an extra dimension is required. Maybe you need to make more room in one part of a standard system. Or perhaps you have two or more systems and need to differentiate between them.

This page provides an overview of the three options. More detail is provided on the following pages.

Definitions

The Johnny.Decimal system: is a collection of methods, tools, and behaviours as documented at johnnydecimal.com.

Your Johnny.Decimal system: is your implementation of this system, customised to suit whatever it is that you're organising.

Components: Johnny.Decimal systems are made up of components. The list of components is not restricted, but the following are common: the JDex, file system, notes, tasks, to-dos, reminders, email, calendar, bookmarks.

Domains: systems with one or more shared components are grouped by domain. For example, when you go to work and everything is on the company's systems, 'work' is its own domain. It is completely separate from your home system -- your 'personal' domain.

AC.ID notation: shorthand to refer to any generic Johnny.Decimal system. It stands for area, category, ID.

Multiple systems

Consider this option if: you need to differentiate between two or more Johnny.Decimal systems.

Example

You have a system at home to manage your personal life. When you go to work, the company has its own system. So you have two separate systems and you need to differentiate between them.

Solution: add a unique identifier to the start of each system.

Figure 13.01A. Multiple systems, each with a unique identifier at the front.

For more information, see 13.11 Multiple systems.

Expand an area

Consider this option if: most of your life fits neatly in to a standard Johnny.Decimal system. But you have one area that doesn't. Either it has more than 10 of something, or it requires more depth than the system allows.

Example

You're a student with more than 10 classes. Or you're a freelance designer with more than 10 clients, each with more than 10 products that you work on.

Solution: expand one of your areas to accommodate.

Figure 13.01B. An expanded area within a standard system.

For more information, see 13.21 Expand an area.

Extend the end

Consider this option if: almost everything in your system fits neatly in to the standard Johnny.Decimal structure. But you have an ID that needs to be repeated, or you require more than 100 IDs in a category.

Example

You're using the standard life admin pack and you have four kids. You need a way to organise the busier IDs.

Solution: extend the end to cover each child. 11.24+JEM is the ID for Jemima's visits to the optician or dentist. Similarly, we have 11.24+BEL, 11.24+MAR, and 11.24+WEN for Belinda, Marie, and Wendy.¹

Example

In my old job, 72.02 was the task of installing cabling at a data centre. But there were 13 data centres.

Solution: extend the end to cover each data centre.

72.02+X01 was the centre with site code X01, 72.02+Y02 had site code Y02, etc. This worked because most of the other IDs in this system didn't need to occur 13 times.

Example

My blog will have more than 100 posts over time. So each post can't be a standard ID.

Solution: use the category ID for the blog (in this case 22.00) and extend the end with each blog post number.

22.00+0001 was the first post; we're currently on 22.00+0074.² The ID retains the blog reference, while allowing for 10,000 posts.

Figure 13.01C. Extending an ID at the end of a system.

For more information, see 13.31 Extend the end.

Don't worry about the + for now, we'll talk about it later. ↩
The blog currently uses a decimal as the final separator, not a plus. I am in the process of updating it. ↩

22.00.0079 'System expansion' rewrite

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:56:03 GMT

'System expansion' rewrite

Continuing the all-site re-write, we've re-written and expanded category 13 System expansion.

The original multiple systems concept remains; that page is now much simplified.

Two new pages have been added.

Expand an area

When you need a ~~bit~~ lot more room in the middle, you can expand an area. Use this when the usually-useful Johnny.Decimal constraints get in your way.

Extend the end

And if you just need a bit more room at the end, extend the end. Use this when you just have the odd ID here and there that needs a bit more space.

All the information is on those pages so I'll just let you head over there and read them.

Feedback always welcome. Head to the forum, Discord, or drop me an email.

22.00.0078 Video series: Managing your JDex with Bear

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:05:59 GMT

Video series: Managing your JDex with Bear

Here's something I've been wanting to do for ages: a video series showing how I use the Mac/iOS app Bear, which I love, to manage my JDex.

This series will also serve as the introductory videos for the Quick Start: 'Life admin' pack. In each video I'll use an ID from the pack to demonstrate Bear's features.

Here's the first. Subscribe to the channel for the rest; they'll come at about one a week.

22.00.0077 Old vs. new IDs

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 21:31:01 GMT

Old vs. new IDs

I got myself a snazzy new keyboard this week. They were on sale and my previous, the Microsoft Ergo Sculpt, feels like it's starting to fail.

Figure 22.00.0077A. Keychron K15 Pro (Alice layout). Photo courtesy Keychron; not my desk (but nice pencil).

It comes with a manual which I'd like to save, and while I'm at it I thought I'd download the manual for Lucy's keyboard as well.

There's a place for that

Life admin already has a place! I even remember discussing it with Lucy.

10-19Life admin

14 My online life

14.15My accessories

And so I make a new note in my JDex and that's it, job done.

Figure 0077B. JDex entry 14.15 in Bear.

How I did this previously

I'm really enjoying this shift to a less-granular ID. Designing 'life admin' in to a single area forced us to do it, and I'm thankful for it.

In my previous system this would have been:

10-19Personal, daily life

14 Technology

14.64Keychron keyboard manuals & receipt

(It just happens that my previous 14 was also technology.)

That is a much more specific ID, but more importantly it would have required me to create it first. This tiny, tiny friction is enough to stop you doing a thing.

Whereas this morning, when I thought to save these manuals, there was no friction. Great idea, I thought. I already know where they go.

Why is the receipt in Bear?

In recording a little YouTube series for Bear (keep an eye on the channel), I wondered to myself why I don't use its feature whereby it lets you attach pretty much anything to a note.

This is probably useful, I thought. So I put my keyboard's receipt in there. I wondered whether it was Spotlight-searchable, which it is; the file is just in a folder buried in your iCloud drive.

In this particular case I think I'll move it back to my main file system folder. Because there's no situation I can envisage where I'll be on the move and need this file on my iPhone.

Contrast with, say, tickets to an art gallery. I think there's a case to be made there that having those available in the Bear note 15.34 The arts is going to be way easier when you get to the gallery.

Both locations are available from my iPhone: they're just files in iCloud. But finding a file in Bear is a nicer experience than doing it in the Files app. (Because what isn't?)

22.00.0076 RSS whoops

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 06:36:00 GMT

RSS whoops

Just a quick note to say that I'm aware of the dodgy 13.__ items in the feed.

Thanks to Decimal Gemma for letting me know. Just thought I'd put this in your feed so you know that I know. :-)

(As usual, it was me fat-fingering a git command.)

22.00.0075 Increase contrast

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 22:57:48 GMT

Increase contrast

A couple of weeks ago I had a Zoom chat with Decimal Jade,¹ and noticed that her screen looked really really cool. What's that?, I asked her.

It was macOS' increase contrast accessibility mode, and it's changed my life.

Here's how a modern mail window looks.

Figure 22.00.0075A. That's not a button…

And here's how it looks with increased contrast. (And Berkeley Mono set as the display font.)

Figure 22.00.0075B. …that's a button!

This difference is startling to my eyes and it's changing how I use my computer.

I use windows -- lowercase -- heavily, as in I have lots of overlapping windows open. As well as making each individual app easier to use, it makes my entire desktop more cohesive.

Here's the before. (Full size light, dark.)

Figure 22.00.0075C. Low-contrast desktop.

And after. (Full size light, dark.)

Figure 22.00.0075D. High-contrast desktop.

To my eyes we've gone from a kinda-pleasing-I-guess? smush of windows to a version where everything pops. Windows have an identity now. You might not find it as visually pleasing, but functionally it's night and day.

And, after running it for a few weeks, I do find it more aesthetically pleasing. What made us so afraid of a border around an icon? (A: Jony Ive.)

Modern apps have embraced this squishy-edge mentality, to their detriment. Here's Slack on my iPad. Honestly I look at that and I've no idea what I'm meant to do. I hate it.

Figure 22.00.0075E. Slack on iPad. A big meh sandwich.

There are whole threads of information hidden behind 8-point blue text. It's ridiculously un-discoverable.

Try it

Give this a go for a couple of days. It's a single toggle in your system's Settings → Accessibility → Display → Increase contrast.

I don't think I'll ever go back.

Friends-of-the-system are bestowed with the honorific 'Decimal'. ↩

22.00.0074 YouTube: Focus and productivity series

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 22:58:44 GMT

YouTube: Focus and productivity series

For those of you not subscribed¹ to the channel, we put up the first in a new series of videos yesterday.

'Focus and productivity' will be about how I use my system to stay focused myself. The first round of videos will explain how I'm using Timery's widgets, Live Activities, Apple's Focus modes, with Shortcuts tying everything together, to stay focused.

If that sounds complex it's because it is, a bit. But once set up, it works. Basically I tell myself, via a timer which is displayed as a widget, what it is that I want to be doing.

Floating iPhone tells me what I should be doing

Am I writing this blog post? Creating the video series? Spending time on my forum or Discord?

Or am I not at work? Should I be with ~~the chickens~~ Lucy? Should I be offline entirely?

The problem

There was a day when I was working, and I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and an hour later I swear I was at the shops or something and I thought, wait ... what am I doing here?

Many of us know the problem of distraction; of trying to stay focused on this thing. Your computer makes it positively easy to do something else. So this is me trying to build a habit; trying to be better at doing this thing until I decide it's time to stop.

The 'solution'

Heavy air-quotes there. So far this is really helping, but there's a ways to go.

I'm using Apple's Live Activities, which are basically widgets everywhere -- including on your lock screen -- along with Timery, to always display a running timer on all of my devices.

That timer tells me what I should be doing. Basically that's it. So now when I wander off to the shop, as I pick up my phone on the way out the door I see that widget and think, wait a minute.

At my desk, I've got a spare iPhone suspended on a microphone boom arm above my monitor.² It's pretty cool! So I've got this floating display, as well as a widget on my Desktop, always reminding me: do this.

Exploring this topic

I'll show this setup in detail, and the rest of this series will address the topic of focus and productivity more broadly. We're aiming to put out a video a week.

I hope you like them and, as always, let us know what you think and what else you'd like to see.

The video

Shame on you! Subscribe and get me to 1,000 followers please. :-) ↩
It's the phone we use to shoot video; it's too precious (and enormous) to ever leave the house. My iPhone is a 12 mini. ↩

22.00.0073 Slack × Life admin: an experiment

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 04:06:38 GMT

Slack × Life admin: an experiment

Update 2024-09-25: the experiment worked, in that it made me realise that I will not be using Slack. The invitation has been disabled. Watch the blog for more updates but, spoiler: it'll be Discord.

There's been some great discussion in the life admin support thread on the forum.

In thinking about the next Quick Start pack, which will be 'Small business'¹, I'm interested in the idea of providing really specific support at the ID level.

I want to start this experiment with the life admin pack.

The goal

An example will help. Let's say we end up with
13 Finance > 13.11 Quarterly accounting.

The pack will give you a place to put that: but what if it was also your operations manual, so that you not only knew where to store your accounts, but how to do them.

Why does every small business have to figure this out for themselves? Surely we can be more efficient than that.

I can't create a small business operations manual by myself. But together, we can.

One channel per ID

The idea is that we'll use Slack, and each ID in the pack will have its own channel.

Then you can ask for help in that channel and get really specific advice. Perhaps someone is an accountant; or maybe they live in your state and understand your question about tax law. Or maybe they just did it themselves last month and have experience to share.

I'll extract this knowledge and make it a permanent part of the system.

Why Slack?

I'm wary of adding another comms channel to this system. It's something else to manage.

But my existing options aren't suitable. I want this to be the sort of place you can jump in and 'chat', so that rules out the forum. Discord could possibly work -- but I get the feeling that small business owners would rather not spend their day on a platform built for gamers.

So I'm going to try Slack. Like the title says: this is an experiment. Feedback is welcome.

Free now; not always

To seed this, invitations are currently open. When we create the small business pack later this year this will become a perk that is only available to those who buy it.

Because, to reinforce the point: this is place to get targeted advice on a specific Quick Start issue. So if you're not using the pack, it's not going to be useful.

Life admin

This all applies to the life admin pack, so let's try it out. Here's how it works.

You need advice about a specific ID in the pack. Say 13.21 Budgets & planning.
If that channel doesn't already exist, create it. All members have permission to do this.
Post your question.
Happiness.

Get access

~~Here's the link. See you there.~~

It'll also cover your community club, or that kindergarten you're the treasurer for, or anything similar. ↩

14.02 JD University

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:02:00 GMT

Johnny.Decimal University

When I sit at my computer, I know where everything is. I know what to do next. I feel calm, and in control. At JDU, I'll teach you these skills.

All-in-one

It's better value for you, and simpler for me, if I give you all of our video content in one package.

We create courses that reference each other. I want to be able to tell you something over here and refer you to something over there. This is simpler and more effective for both of us.

I can only do that if you have access to everything we make. So that's what JDU is: access to all of our existing learning content, and everything we'll make in the future.

A$300 + A$300 = A$300

This is stunning value for you. Because if the workshop, our task and project management course, and all their benefits were sold separately, what would I be charging?

They'd be A$300 each, easy. Find a meticulously planned and recorded 5-hour+ training course that isn't at least A$300. Doesn't exist.

But instead of selling them separately, we package them all up as JDU. Because that makes more sense. And so how much is JDU?

A$300. One-off, no subscription. Massive bargain.

What's in it?

You get:

The 5-hour+ video workshop, where me and Lucy show you how to build your own Johnny.Decimal system.
The 4-hour task and project management course, where I show you how to use the system to stay on top of everything you want/have to do.
The online version of our free workbook, which is the textbook for the workshop.
All video courses we record in the future will appear in your dashboard. They're all included.
Personal support. If you're stuck, ask in the forum or Discord and I'll be there to help.

┌─────────────────┐
│  ▶  Buy now  ◀  │
└─────────────────┘

Oh also, the Life Admin System

It makes sense for us to give you the Life Admin System.

It represents ideal patterns that we spent months thinking about: so when designing your own system with the workshop, it would be stupid not to have it as a reference.

I am far too rational for my own good, so it's included with JDU. It's worth A$50. I must be mad.

Oh and a 14-hour Excel course

Back in 2022, Lucy and I recorded something I'd wanted to do for years: a complete beginner-to-expert Excel course.

Lucy was literally using Excel as a neat grid of numbers, and doing maths on a desk calculator. So when we say 'beginner', we're not kidding.

Now she uses Tables and VLOOKUP. When everyone else is struggling to figure out what the AI did, be the one who actually knows how Excel works.

I think it's a really great course. It's included.

Fair value all round

This business is just me and Lucy. We don't want to be greedy. We know the internet is full of people trying to get your money. Usually too much of it.

We've priced this to be realistic. A$300 keeps our business going. And I honestly, truly believe that it's exceptional value for you. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night otherwise.

Here's a short video trailer.

Join the Johnny.Decimal family

It's our job to help you to be more organised, and less stressed. Join us, and we'll give you all the support you need.

A$300. No subscription, and you get updates for life.

┌─────────────────┐
│  ▶  Buy now  ◀  │
└─────────────────┘

Human, guaranteed

Lovingly crafted by two humans. No AI here.

If you don't like it, let me know within 14 days and you can have your money back. No problem.

31.02 Other useful tools

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 23:31:02 GMT

Other useful tools

This page contains a list of apps (or links to other lists of apps) that people find useful. This list includes the apps from 31.01.

This list is large enough to warrant its own Airtable database. It's embedded here (and can take a few seconds to load), but for the full experience click through to Airtable.

Many apps these days are 'freemium', and if the free version is functionally usable, its price is shown as $0.

Submit an entry

The form is also available here.

I wish I could just give y'all write access to the database, but Airtable doesn't have a sensible way of doing that that doesn't involve me giving them a thousand dollars.

Note that your entry will appear immediately, and I'll tidy it up if required within a day or so. So don't go writing 'boobs' in the form, okay?

31.01 For the system

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 23:31:01 GMT

The canonical version of this page is awesome-johnnydecimal on GitHub.

I will copy it here occasionally for convenience. Last copied: 2024-09-30T23:07:35.

awesome-johnnydecimal

Utilities, tools, and scripts that people have built to support the system.

LINKS TO THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED FOR CONVENIENCE. I DO NOT ENDORSE OR VERIFY THE CONTENT, FUNCTIONALITY, OR SECURITY OF THESE EXTERNAL FILES. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Add your thing to this list

Please add your entry to this file and submit a PR. Corrections & updates also gratefully received.

Check the forum

You should also check forum category 31 Apps and utilities where people post scripts and helpers that might not make it to this page.

Platform-agnostic/unsure

SwissArmyWrench/johnnybgoode
- A cross-platform terminal tool to jump between your JD folders and export an index, instantly.
tifrueh/jdfs
- The jdfs utility is a simple but powerful tool navigate and manipulate johnny.decimal file systems with.
Grayson/jdexmd
- This tool will create both an Obsidian structure as well as a parallel directory structure for non-notes files.

Linux

bminusl/ulauncher-jd
- Ulauncher extension for the Johnny Decimal filing system.

macOS

bsag/alfred-jd
- First! 🥳 An Alfred workflow to jump straight to the JD folders on your filesystem.

Windows

Johnny.Decimal folders normalization tool
- This application was intended to quickly change a number in the folder names according to JD system; a user could easily change names of folders and not keep the correspondence between different folder levels. The application being launched inside the root folder will recover folder name consistency.

Web

johnny-decimal-generator
- A web application that lets you create an index map (@emory: up to 9 areas) and the johnny-decimal-generator repository, ~~maintained by ekafyi~~ no longer maintained.
- ⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ This tool stores everything in your browser's local storage. So if you clear that, or if you use this in a private/incognito window, it is easy to lose your work.

23.02 Discord

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 23:02:00 GMT

Discord

If chat's your thing, join the Discord.

~~I prefer the forum, personally -- Discord feels chaotic to me.~~

~~Maybe I'm just too old. The last game I played with any regularity was Doom... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯~~

You know what, I've grown to like Discord. Top tip: as soon as you sign up, change from the default dark to the light theme. It makes it feel less like a gamer hangout and more like a standard chat app.

23.01 The forum

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 23:01:00 GMT

The forum

We have a Discourse forum at https://forum.johnnydecimal.com.

If you have questions or need help, this is the best place to ask. Personally I prefer it to the Discord: the information is more persistent in a forum.

Forum maintenance

I generally update the forum software at 14:00 every other Sunday afternoon, Australian Eastern time.

This can make the forum inaccessible for 15 minutes. If the forum link is timing out at this time, this is why.

21.04 Comms plan

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 21:04:00 GMT

Communications plan

This plan describes how I communicate updates to the Johnny.Decimal system.

Goals

To respect your time and attention.
To not gather your data unnecessarily.
To give me the confidence that I've communicated important or interesting updates effectively.

Blog

If you follow the blog, you won't miss anything of note. If it's 'important', it'll have a blog post.

https://blog.johnnydecimal.com or https://blog.jdcm.al will get you directly there.

RSS feed

This site, including the blog, has an RSS feed. All new pages and posts will appear in the single feed.

Your reader should discover it, or it's at https://johnnydecimal.com/rss.xml.

Forum

I will cross-post each blog post to the forum, which serves as the comments section. (You'll find a link in each blog post to search the forum.) Feedback is welcome.

Mailing list

My mailing list is a quarterly publication. I send exactly four emails a year, in plain text, with no tracking.

I will summarise the previous quarter's goings-on in each issue. But I won't be adding links to every blog post.

You should sign up to the list. It'll be the best email you get.

YouTube

We made a decision in July 2024 to put more energy in to YouTube. My channel is @johnny.decimal and you should follow it -- I plan on broadcasting everything I do.¹

Mastodon and Discord

Discord is a ~~great~~ ad-hoc chat medium but won't be used for anything permanent.

Mastodon is a lovely little social network that I enjoy personally. But I won't be conducting much business over there.

I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I utter the words 'like and subscribe'. ↩

21.03 RSS feed

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 21:03:00 GMT

RSS feed

Your feed reader should discover it.

If it doesn't pick it up, the URL is https://johnnydecimal.com/rss.xml.

It's now a full feed with images and all.

21.02 Mailing list

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 21:02:00 GMT

Mailing list

Never more than one email every couple of weeks. No trackers, unsubscribe any time.

Like newsletters used to be. 💌

Spam prevention

To prove you're not a bot, answer this puzzle.

You have two pet chickens. You get one more pet chicken. How many chickens do you now have?

21.01 Contact me

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 21:01:00 GMT

Email

hello@johnnydecimal.com

I do read all mail, but like most people I get more than I can usually manage.

If you have a question about your setup -- how to start, what sort of structure you should have, exactly how I would organise your Magic: The Gathering card collection -- you're guaranteed to receive a response from me if you post a question on the forum or Discord. That way everyone else can learn.

Product or account support

The exception to this is email related to product or account support for a thing you purchased.

I respond to these as a priority: usually within 12 hours, and always within 24.

I migrated from Twitter to Mastodon. I'm enjoying it there, it's like the good old days.

You can find me at @johnnydecimal@hachyderm.io.

15.02 Creative pattern

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 15:02:00 GMT

Creative pattern

Problem description

When you -- individually, or as an organisation -- produce 'creative output', it is reasonable to expect that you will, over time, produce more than 100 things.

This breaks the standard Johnny.Decimal structure, which does not allow for more than 10 areas or categories, or more than 100 IDs.

Creative inputs

It is useful to have a library of 'creative inputs'. These are artefacts that you might use in any project.

We define a standard area.

`80-89 Library of creative inputs`

This is area 80-89 so it is pushed to the 'end' of your system. By doing so, we can standardise this number range across the maximum number of systems.

You are free to use categories 10-79 for the rest of your business.

If you would prefer to use this area at a different number, e.g. 30-39, please do so.

A library

The term 'library' was chosen deliberately. Once established, libraries do not change much. Yes, new books are added, but not at the rate that they were at the start.

Creative outputs

It is the creative outputs which might exceed 100 in number. These are the projects you produce: the product brochure, marketing video, and so on. Each is a 'job' in creative agency parlance.

We define a standard area.

`90-99 Portfolio of creative outputs`

This follows area 80-89 so the two sit together at the 'end' of your system.

If you would prefer to use this area at a different number, e.g. 40-49, please do so. I do recommend that it immediately follow your library of creative inputs.

Numbering scheme

This area uses non-standard numbering.

Each output has a unique ID. Assuming 10,000 jobs is sufficient, we start at 90001 and increment by 1 each time.¹

We do not use categories in this area: instead, jump straight to the job ID.

90-99Portfolio of creative outputs

 90001 First job description 2024-06

 90002 Second job description 2024-07

...

Naming jobs

I suggest it will be useful to put the date that the job started at the end of the title.

Year and month will be sufficient, in the format yyyy-mm. This is to help you anchor these jobs in your mind when you review them in the future.

If you have your own job number

If you're working in or for an agency, you might already have a job number.

In this case, you should use this number in place of 90001.

Standardise subfolders

You should create a standard subfolder structure. I recommend the following.

90-99Portfolio of creative outputs

 90001 First job description 2024-06

       10 Design elements

       20 Words, text

       30 Images, drawings, screenshots

       40 Photos

       50 Audio, music

       60 Video, animation

       90 Exports, finals

You will note that this mimics the category structure of 80-89.

Process

Broadly speaking, each job is as follows.

You take artefacts from your library of inputs (green), as well as job-specific additional inputs (yellow) and possibly material from your portfolio of outputs (blue).
You do some creative work (red).
You save the output in your portfolio (blue).
You identify reusable artefacts and move them to your library.
Optionally, if the job was a quick one-off, you publish it without saving it.

Example

This is our system as of 2024-07-03. We've only been using this for a few weeks but so far it feels good.

80-89Library of creative inputs

81 Design elements

81.11Berkeley Mono

81.12Our colours

81.13Nice colours for inspiration

82 Words, text

82.11Inspirational words

82.12Patreon, Ko-fi, and so on

82.13Hashtags

82.14SEO-related, summaries of pages

82.15Where our brand copy is used

82.16Johnny.Decimal style guide

82.17TikTok comment replies

83 Images, drawings, diagrams, screenshots

83.11Our logo (just the logo)

83.12Our logo on background or banner

83.13favicons

83.14Other companies' logos

83.15Stock images

83.16Lucy's drawings of JD concepts

83.17Screen grabs we make or take

83.18Combined LwL & JD logos or banners

83.19Backgrounds or banners - organised by external site

83.20Reference, example screens from social media

83.21Miscellaneous other shapes

84 Photos

84.11Photos that include one of us, or are about us or our place

84.12Photos that don't include one of us

85 Audio, music

86 Video, animation

86.11Videos that include one of us, or are about us or our place

86.12Videos that don't include one of us

87 Platform-specific instructions

87.21Facebook

87.22Instagram

87.23Linkedin

87.24TikTok

87.25Twitter

87.26YouTube

87.27Reddit

87.28Gumroad

87.29Snapchat

87.30Mastodon

87.31Threads

87.32Bluesky

90-99Portfolio of creative outputs

90 Management of library of outputs

90.01Inbox

90.03To-do & lists

90.05Templates

90001 From chaos to calm 2023-05-31

90002 New website launch announcement 2023-05

90003 Launch workbook on Gumroad 2023-07

90004 If your house looked like your file system 2023-07

90005 When a librarian needs to find something 2023-07

90006 Patreon posts 2023

90007 The Manifesto 2023-06

90008 Visualising the Teams hierarchy 2023-06

90009 What is JD? with emoji 2023-07

90010 Blog post videos

90011 Business cards for street workshop experiment 2024-03

90012 Business cards for Moo print job 2024-06

90013 Website copy proofing

90014 The freelancer problem 2023-09

90015 Workshop pre-launch video 1 2024-02

90016 Workshop pre-launch video 2 2024-04

90017 Workshop launch announcement 2024-04

90018 Workshop highlights reel 2024-06

90019 First edition stickers 2023-09

90020 Second edition stickers 2023-11

90021 Diagrams including the two ways of looking at a work project 2023-11

90022 Canberra Expo 2024-05

90023 JDSS 15.53 Aus trip 2024-07

          10 Design elements

          20 Words, text

          30 Images, drawings, screenshots

          40 Photos

          50 Audio, music

          60 Video, animation

          90 Exports, finals

10,000 is enough. That's one job a day every working day for 40 years. ↩

15.01 Introduction

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 15:01:00 GMT

Introduction

There are patterns that have been observed in Johnny.Decimal systems after a decade of public use.

Some are standard and fit in the as-documented Johnny.Decimal structure.

Some are non-standard and require a modified numbering scheme.

This website section will explore and document these patterns, and provide downloadable templates where appropriate.

Check the forum

Note that there are recurring themes, and that you would be wise to search the forum for your topic of interest.

For example, genealogy has been well covered.

14.01 Build your own system

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 14:01:00 GMT

The goal

We saw how much time this was taking, so we did the work for you. Check out our pre-built Life Admin and Small Business Systems. Take our 5-hour video workshop to become a master system-builder and learn how to master your to-do list. Or download the free Johnny.Decimal Workbook, a comprehensive, step-by-step guide.

You've made a decision to become more organised. The world needs more people like you. Thank you.

Let's begin by noting some definitions.

The Johnny.Decimal system is a collection of methods, tools, and behaviours.
Your Johnny.Decimal system is your implementation of this system, customised to suit whatever it is that you're organising.
The end result of the process is a collection of personal or work stuff (files, notes, emails), neatly organised, and tracked in your JDex.

Our goal is to design a system that a stranger could use. We want to end up with:

At most, 10 unambiguous areas (preferably fewer).¹
Each containing, at most, 10 unambiguous categories (preferably fewer).
Each containing, at most, 100 IDs in which you store your things (definitely fewer).
And a notes app, with 1 note per ID, that becomes your master index.

That's it. But of course there's some decisions to be made to get there.

The process

This is a basic overview of the process to build a system. If you get stuck, the forum is full of helpful people, including me, to offer guidance.

The best piece of advice I can give is: take your time.

If you rush, you'll make areas and categories that are too broad or narrow. You'll mis-categorise things, forget things, and end up having to change it later.

Most of my work systems were active for a couple of years. I used my first personal system for 10 years. Take the time at the start to get it right.

Step 1: Define your system's scope

Action: in your own words, write a couple of sentences stating what's in and what's out for your system.

It's crucial that you understand the boundaries of what you want to organise. Don't forget things that should have been included, or include things that aren't relevant.

For example, "In scope for my system is anything to do with my life admin, home business, or the community tennis club I manage. Not in scope is my actual job, Lego collection, old hard drives, or photos and media."

Step 2: Discovery

Action: within the scope you've defined, write down everything you do (or need to do) for at least 1 week.

I recommend using sticky notes for this exercise. But if you prefer software, a mind map works great.

When you think of something, write a few words on a note and stick it on the wall. Or add a new first-level node to your mind map, attached to the root. Do not be tempted to organise anything yet.

Keep going until the end of the week. Your wall should look like Lucy's. Remember to involve others who will use the system at work or home. More people = more ideas.

For example, "paid phone bill, booked concert tickets, ran 10km, met accountant, update website images, review tennis club budget, order new nets".

FIGURE 14.01A. LUCY'S WALL OF STICKY NOTES AFTER A WEEK OF DISCOVERY IN OUR WORKSHOP.

Step 3: Create your areas and categories

Action: take all of your notes and group them in to areas and categories.

Let this happen naturally: don't have your future system in mind. Just bring similar things together.

It doesn't matter if you do categories first or areas first. I strongly encourage you to try it both ways. And remember to involve others who will share the system.

How many categories? There's no right answer. Just bear in mind that the more active categories you have, the more mental overhead you will endure. The goal of Johnny.Decimal is to reduce mental burden. It is not to use up all the numbers.

When you're happy with your groupings, give your areas and categories a name. Do not think about numbers yet.

FIGURE 14.01B. AN EXAMPLE OF A CATEGORY SORT (LEFT), FOLLOWED BY AN AREA SORT (RIGHT) FROM THE WORKSHOP.

Step 4: Build your system

Action: number your areas and categories, make folders in your file system, create IDs, move your files in.

It's time to build your system and start organising stuff. Ignoring your IDs for now -- the sticky notes -- number your areas and categories.

Then make matching folders in your file system. This is a simple way to create a structure.² At this stage I encourage you to think about it for as long as you can.

When you're happy with your structure, create IDs -- one for each unique thing that you wrote on a sticky note. Consolidate if there's multiple notes for the same thing.

Finally, move your existing files into the ID folders. Now's a good time to tidy them up. At this point you should have a working Johnny.Decimal system.

Step 5: The index

Action: choose a notes app and create your index/JDex.

It's time for the icing on the cake. Decide which notes app to use and follow the guidance from the index.

Remember, this is now the master record of your IDs. When you're looking for something, search here first, not your file system. When you need to create a new ID, do it here, then in your file system or email or wherever.

Well done!

If you've made it this far, you're now more organised than most people. You should be feeling calm.

If you're stuck, check out JDU for more comprehensive guidance. Get organised fast with the Life Admin System, or download the free workbook, which is like a much expanded version of this page.

An example

Here's a short video from the workshop where we build a simple Johnny.Decimal system by sorting emoji.

Fewer areas and categories means fewer decisions to make when you're moving around your file system. Plus it's important to leave room to grow. ↩
You could also create your structure in a text file. It's easy to tweak if you want to make changes before finalising things. ↩

12.05 AC.ID notation

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:05:00 GMT

AC.ID

As we have seen, the number before the decimal tells us what area and category we're in. The number after the decimal is the ID.

On the rest of this site, I use AC.ID notation as shorthand to refer to any generic Johnny.Decimal system. A, C, and ID serve as variables.

For example:

AC.ID is any ID in the system.
1C.ID is any ID in area 10-19.
11.ID is any ID in category 11.
AC.11 is ID .11 in any category.

SYS.AC.ID

When we use multiple systems the notation is extended to SYS.AC.ID -- System Area Category ID.

AC.ID+SUB

When we extend the end the notation is extended to AC.ID+SUB -- Area Category Sub-ID.

12.04 Working at the command line

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:04:00 GMT

Working at the command line

The structured nature of the Johnny.Decimal numbering system lets you move to any folder with the minimum number of keystrokes using tab completion.

At each level, you know with certainty that there will be no conflicting items.

FIGURE 12.04A. TAB COMPLETION IN TERMINAL.

Script your way around

Easier still, use a simple bash script to change to any directory immediately. Put this in your .zshrc or equivalent.

cdj() {
  # Update with your document root folder
  pushd ~/Documents/*/*/${1}*
}

export cdj

And now switch to any directory with cdj 11.11.

Library of tools

You'll find command line tools and more at 31.01. And there are always people sharing their tips on the forum.

12.03 The standard zeros

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:03:00 GMT

What happened to 00-09?

You may be wondering why we started our:

Areas at 10-19 and not 00-09,
Categories at 11 rather than 10,
IDs at .11 rather than .00 or .01.

Why don't we use these numbers?

We reserve them for the system

Sometimes you want to keep information about the system, in the system. And sometimes you want to keep special things 'at the top' with a consistent number.

This is simplest to describe from the bottom-up. This also mirrors how useful I find them: the category-level IDs are more useful than the area-level, which in turn are more useful than the system-level.

Note: this is definitely an advanced concept. It's okay to ignore this until you're really comfortable with Johnny.Decimal.

Category-management IDs

Within each category, the following IDs are standard. Use them when you want to manage information or data specific to the category.

.00 JDex

If you need to, this reserved ID is where you store category-specific JDex data.

.01 Inbox

This is a place to store something that you intend to organise soon.

When building your system, this can be particularly useful. Design your categories, create inboxes, and as a first step move your existing stuff in to them.

You must tidy this up regularly. Don't let anything sit here: you will forget about it.

.02 Task & project management

This is a place to manage tasks that relate to this category.

'Tasks' in this context means any thing to be done. This might be more expansive projects, or you might use it to store checklists for items that repeat.

e.g. store a video recording checklist here and run through it before you record a video for your blog.

.03 Templates

This is a place to store templates that might be used anywhere in this category.

e.g. in our creative system, we copy the same seven folders to every new job. These empty folders are stored at 90.03.

.04 Links

This is a place to store links that relate to this category.

I tend not to use my browser bookmarks. Instead, I record interesting links in a note in my JDex. This way I can annotate them with descriptive text, and they're easy to find.

This is particularly useful at work with a shared system.

e.g. create a shared note that links to all of the places you always log in to, like the timesheet system.

.05 .06 .07

Reserved for expansion. Do not use.

.08 Someday

This is a place to store something that you intend to organise someday.

A similar concept to .01 Inbox, but where the inbox should be sorted soon, this will be sorted … someday.

.09 Archive

This is a place to store something that you do not intend to organise, but do not want to throw away.

This folder might be chaos: that's fine. If there's stuff in here that should be organised, move it to .08 or .01.

Name them explicitly

Make it obvious what these items relate to.

e.g. 11.01 Inbox for category 11.

Summary

.00 JDex for category …
.01 Inbox for category …
.02 Task & project management …
.03 Templates for category …
.04 Links for category …
.05 -
.06 -
.07 -
.08 Someday for category …
.09 Archive for category …

Area-management categories

Within each area, the category that ends 0 is the area-management category. We name them so that this is explicit.

e.g. 10 Management of area 10-19.

This is a less specific place than the category-level IDs we just saw. So you should prefer to use those where possible. But if you have something that relates to the whole area, use the zeros here.

A0 Management of area A0-A9
 └─ A0.00 JDex for area A0-A9
    A0.01 Inbox for area A0-A9
    A0.02 Task & project management…
    A0.03 Templates for area A0-A9
    A0.04 Links for area A0-A9
    A0.05 -
    A0.06 -
    A0.07 -
    A0.08 Someday for area A0-A9
    A0.09 Archive for area A0-A9

e.g. if you have stuff you want to archive related to 10-19 Life admin, and you can't decide on a specific category, put it in 10.09 Archive for area 10-19.

System-management area

00-09 System-management area is the system-management area. ;-) This is less specific again than the area-management categories. So you should prefer to use those where possible.

In this area, we create a standard category 00 System-management category.

So if you have something you want to store in an inbox but you have no idea which area it relates to, put it in 00.01 Inbox for the system.

00-09 System-management area
 └─00 System-management category
    └─ 00.00 JDex for the system
       00.01 Inbox for the system
       00.02 Task & project management…
       00.03 Templates for the system
       00.04 Links for the system
       00.05 -
       00.06 -
       00.07 -
       00.08 Someday for the system
       00.09 Archive for the system

00.00 JDex

This is a very important location: it holds the system's JDex.

This is the very first ID. If you were lost, where would you look? You'd start at the beginning. That's how to think about 00.00.

Your JDex might not be here. I keep mine in Bear, which has its own way of handling notes. But you should tell yourself, using this JDex entry, where the system's JDex is.

And if you do use an app that keeps notes on disk, like Obsidian, then those notes should live here.

Also see the 'single file' JDex method.

A map

The pattern in area 10-19 repeats for all higher area numbers, and similarly for the categories.

00-09System-management area

00 System-management category

00.00JDex for the system

00.01Inbox for the system

00.02Task & project management…

00.03Templates for the system

00.04Links for the system

00.05-

00.06-

00.07-

00.08Someday for the system

00.09Archive for the system

10-19Area

10 Management of area 10-19

10.00JDex for area 10-19

10.01Inbox for area 10-19

10.02Task & project management…

10.03Templates for area 10-19

10.04Links for area 10-19

10.05-

10.06-

10.07-

10.08Someday for area 10-19

10.09Archive for area 10-19

11 Category

11.00JDex for category 11

11.01Inbox for category 11

11.02Task & project management…

11.03Templates for category 11

11.04Links for category 11

11.05-

11.06-

11.07-

11.08Someday for category 11

11.09Archive for category 11

12 …

20-29…

A decision chart

When saving data, you should prefer the most specific zero. Follow this chart.

FIGURE 12.03C. DECIDING WHICH 'ZERO' TO USE -- THE FURTHER DOWN, THE LESS ORGANISED YOU ARE.

12.02 Other JDex methods

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:02:00 GMT

One note, one line per entry

Rather than multiple notes, create a single note (or text file or document or spreadsheet or whatever). The note's contents are your index -- each line is an entry. Name it 00.00 Index so that it sits at the top of your system.

This style of index is more suitable if you want to programmatically query your system. It does work as a manual index but I found it more cumbersome.

Advantages

Computer-readable, especially if you're exact with your formatting. I provide a formal structure here.¹

If you store this somewhere that allows collaborative editing -- like Google Docs or Microsoft 365 -- it's easily shared with the team.
If you're really adept at moving around large text files this approach may have benefits. (So if I tell you I'm writing this in Vim and you know what that means, this might be for you.)
Not dependent on any particular notes app. Anything that reads text will work.
Your entire Johnny.Decimal system is visible 'at-a-glance', so it's easy to understand its structure.

Disadvantages

I find the 'individual notes' method easier to search. But perhaps that's just what I'm used to.
Can become unwieldy with a large index.
Less friendly for the beginner.
Doesn't integrate your notes in to the index.

What this looks like in plain text

A fixed-width font in your text editor helps the structure be more obvious.

FIGURE 12.02A. FORMATTING A 'SINGLE NOTE' INDEX.

A database

You can also use an actual database. Each of your IDs is a database record with associated data. Databases are well suited to this task, but you have to know how to set up and maintain them.

Advantages

Database columns can track metadata related to each index item.
You could program an interface to allow easier creation of, and searching of, your index entries.
You can query your database using any other program via its API.
A shareable option for collaborating with colleagues.

Disadvantages

Not quite as immediate and easy in daily use. (Unless you build some sort of hotkey-activated front end, in which case call me immediately.)
Now you're a database administrator.

Airtable

Airtable is a great SaaS database.² I've created a template that you can use as a starter here. Click the 'Copy base' button in the menu bar to add it to your own account. I don't currently use this myself so it may need a bit of work.

SharePoint lists

If you're at work, you might have access to SharePoint. It comes with a database feature: just create a list. They work fairly well and are shared by default.

Anything else?

After reading this you might come up with another method. As long as it meets your needs, that's great. If it's interesting, let me know.

It makes sense for the content to be consistently formatted, especially if you want to query it programmatically. This is the formal specification for the Johnny.Decimal index file. (I need to properly formalise it, but this is a good start.) ↩
That link earns me a $10 referral credit if you sign up. If you'd rather not do that, that's cool: just go to airtable.com. You can copy the template database either way. ↩

12.01 Managing email

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 12:01:00 GMT

Who loves email?

Email is notably different from your file system, in the volume of items that you typically receive. Few of us create 20 new files every day, but we could easily get that many new emails.

Here are some strategies for dealing with your email.

File the important stuff

It's unrealistic, and almost certainly a waste of time, to file every email you get.

But when you know you might want to recall this thing -- a travel booking, a policy document, or a written agreement to start some work -- you should file it.

We do this in exactly the same way that we store our files: in neat Johnny.Decimal folders.

FIGURE 12.01A. FOLDERS IN MAC MAIL.

Archive everything else

A general rule with email is: never delete anything. Archive it. You can always find it later using search.

Gmail does this by default. When you 'archive' an email, it's just removed from your Inbox. It isn't actually deleted.

If you use another system you'll need to figure out how to do this. Ask for help on the forum.

Use the Johnny.Decimal ID in the subject

If you put an ID in the subject of your email, it makes it really easy to find later.

I put it at the end, in [square brackets]. For example when I used to send weekly timesheets to my boss, the subject looked like this:

Subject: Timesheets to approve [14.11]

Now I can tell him to search for [14.11] and my email appears from his pile of unread messages.

At work

At previous jobs, it was common for me to receive hundreds of emails a day. This is clearly unmanageable.

I think there are two ways to deal with this.

First is just to give up. I'm serious! Recognise, consciously, that 100+ emails a day is not a thing that you can meaningfully manage. And it's not your fault: the organisation enables this behaviour. So don't feel bad.

Second is to be the Librarian for your project. This was me in a previous job. So now you're the person who can find any email: but your boss needs to know that you'll be spending up to 20% of your week filing messages.

This can be incredibly valuable. But if anyone thinks that it comes for free, they're a fool.

Outlook's filters and rules

Outlook has powerful filtering rules that you should use. Be aware that Microsoft seems intent on turning Outlook in to Hotmail. When offered 'the new Outlook', decline.

See blog post 0022 for more information.

11.08 The Librarian

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:08:00 GMT

The problem

When we kept everything on paper, organised people had filing cabinets. They stored their documents in them in a structured way so that they could find them again.

They didn't toss things into the cabinet without thought. But that is exactly what we do today with our computer's file system.

In large organisations it was someone's job to organise these cabinets. They knew what they contained and how the information should be structured. They helped you find things if you weren't sure.

The solution

This person is the Librarian and they oversee the Johnny.Decimal system.

The Librarian understands your system's structure and the type of artefacts you generate. They must be a part of the team that sets everything up. And they must own the index.

It doesn't matter if you're at home or work. Maybe you have a shared personal system with your partner -- decide which of you will take this venerable role.

If you're at work, there's usually someone in the office/on a project who would relish this task. Find them and empower them.

Benefits of having a Librarian

They annotate the system and/or develop process documentation to guide new and existing users on what goes where, and why.
They monitor the system, keep it neat, and proactively help people who aren't following the rules.
They consider disputes, discuss them with the teams involved, and if required they're the final arbiter.
They keep the index up to date. They own it, the tool in which it's hosted, and all the data it contains.

An investment that pays back many times over

As I've said, this system isn't 'free' from a time perspective. It requires an investment, which you will recoup many times over.

Consider an example from my past -- a medium-sized IT transformation project with a $10m budget. I estimate that the Librarian should be allocated funding for one day a week. More at the start, ramping down as the project matures. Larger projects scale linearly.

"Wait, isn't this already someone's job?". Maybe. But do they do it? If yes, great. You can stop reading.

If not, either get them on board so they implement this for you, or do it yourself. But stop thinking it's just going to happen.

11.07 Keeping notes

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:07:00 GMT

Why notes?

Note-taking is one of my favourite uses of Johnny.Decimal. And if we've used a notes app to keep our JDex, we get notes 'for free'. There's already a note for each ID. Just type more words in it.

I need to tease you away from your file system. Files are heavy from a mental perspective. Consider the process of creating a note in Word. Actually, let's not. It's exhausting just thinking about it.

Embracing your notes app

When you stop creating documents for everything and embrace your notes app, the flow goes like this:

Click your notes app, which is already open.
Find the index note you need. Everything has an ID, search is great, and you've learned the keyboard shortcut: so this is near-instantaneous.
Type your note. Done.

Become ludicrously efficient

Notes give you somewhere to put all the details about something in one findable place.

For example, your house category has the ID 12.11 Official documents. A PDF of your rental lease is in that folder. But there's also related stuff that isn't a document.

Your real estate agent's phone number. The bank transaction reference for the deposit. Maybe a list of to-dos to finalise the agreement. Just add these to the index note.

"I already write notes", I hear you say. Of course you do. But can you easily find what you need? Are you using them effectively?

Instantly filter your notes

As we saw in the index, typing a category number and . into search will only show notes in that category. Add some keywords and you've found what you want instantly.

FIGURE 11.07A. USING SEARCH TO FIND THE NOTE WITH OUR AGENT'S DETAILS.

Adding metadata

The great power of notes is storing 'metadata' (information) about the item. Below are the 'metadata fields' that I often use. Invent your own to suit your needs.

I put this information directly below the title of the note, formatted as a blockquote. Just because I like how it looks.

Description

Remind your future self what this thing is about. And remember, these words will appear in a search and help you find this entry later.

Location

The location is where you will find the thing/s that the ID refers to. If it's a document I enter 'file system'. If it's an email I enter 'email'.¹

Since there's so many places a thing can be in the digital world, this is extremely useful. And don't forget the physical world -- your birth certificate might be a PDF and a piece of paper in your desk drawer.

Relates to

Sometimes you want to link notes together. This relates to that.²

Keywords

To be sure that you'll find this note by using a specific word in the future, just add it to your list of keywords.

FIGURE 11.07B. AN EXAMPLE OF ADDING METADATA TO A NOTE.

If there's only the note itself, nothing in my files, I won't enter a location. ↩
In all good notes apps, this can be a link to another note. ↩

11.06 Saving files

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:06:00 GMT

Structure vs. content

Before we start saving things, let's take a quick look at the structure of the Johnny.Decimal system. Just to reinforce why we put things where we do.

The number before the decimal tells us what area and category we're in. It gives our system its structure. The number after the decimal is the ID. This is where we store our content.

So if we wanted to find folder 15.52 in our file system, we can see that:

It's in area 10-19 because it begins with 1.
It's in category 15.
And its item number is .52.

Saving files in ID folders

We save our stuff in our Johnny.Decimal ID folders. Spreadsheets, documents, scanned receipts, references, emails, images, and whatever else you're organising.

FIGURE 11.06B. NEATLY-SAVED FILES IN AN ID.

We don't save things in areas or categories

We never save things in area or category folders -- these are structural only. They're there to guide us to our content.

If you genuinely can't find an ID that feels right, you might need to spend some time expanding your system to include a new category, or even a new area.

Saving files in subfolders

I used to be anti-subfolder but I've folded like a cheap suit. There are plenty of cases where it makes sense to use subfolders.

However

There's no point to any of this if you just go back to putting your stuff in boxes-in-boxes-in-boxes-in-boxes. Stick to one level of subfolders, label them neatly, and don't have too many.

For example, our trip to Japan is quite complex. So we've organised by subfolder.¹

FIGURE 11.06C. ONE LEVEL OF NEATLY-LABELED SUBFOLDERS IN OUR JAPAN TRIP.

If we didn't have subfolders there would be files all over the place. They're helping us find our things quickly, confidently, without stress. So it's all good.

Sorting by year-month

Let's take this even further. Whether you're naming subfolders or files, if you use the date correctly it solves so many problems.

For example, the ID 15.41 All short trips contains all of our short trips. The sort of thing that you don't really plan, you just book and go.

You can fit a lifetime of short trips in one ID if you create a new subfolder for each trip, and start it with the yyyy-mm-dd date like this:

FIGURE 11.06D. EVERY SUBFOLDER SORTS NEATLY BY DATE WHEN YOU START WITH YEAR-MONTH.

Remember, year-month must come first. If you reverse the above dates, the folder would sort like this and be chaos:²

FIGURE 11.06E. OH NO!

This works for so many things

Purchase receipts is another nice example. You can fit a lifetime of receipts in one ID if they all start with the date, then what it is and where you bought it.

Also consider things like utility bills and finance statements. Don't save them with the gibberish names from the utility company or bank. Using the year-month method, you can store hundreds of neatly-sorted, easy-to-find documents.

This is actually a standard template we're using for any longer work trip. I recommend making templates where relevant -- don't reinvent the wheel every time you do a similar task. ↩
We've used the UK date format, but the US format would still deliver chaos! ↩

11.05 The JDex

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:05:00 GMT

The index is your Johnny.Decimal system

A Johnny.Decimal index (or JDex) is the master record of every ID in a system. It can be kept in a few ways; I recommend using a notes app.

Some people push back on keeping an index because it's extra work. But they haven't realised the pitfalls of not keeping an index versus its advantages.

I consider this more important than your file system and encourage you to try it. It takes less time than you think, and you'll find many ways that it helps you be more organised.

The index is your Johnny.Decimal system. You need to be sold on this concept, so let me convince you.

Why I love my JDex

I know where everything in my life is

Until recently the main place we looked for things was our file system. But now there's so many places a thing can be.

Email, chat, cloud storage, hard drives, servers, apps, collaboration software, calendars -- the list is long.

The index solves this problem by giving you a place to note an item's location. Simple.

14.14 My data storage & backups

←

Title of the index entry

Location: Dropbox, iCloud, Backblaze, blue hard drive

←

Recording the 'location' of the thing

I never re-use IDs

It's easy to accidentally create the same ID twice if you don't have an index.

Let's say you book a trip to Vietnam. It gets ID 15.53. You save PDFs in your file system, and email confirmations in your email.

Then you book a trip to New Zealand. You only have emails to store, so you don't create a folder in your file system. Your situation looks like this.

Item	File	Email
15.53 Vietnam, 2024	■	■
15.54 New Zealand, 2024		■

Next, you plan a trip to Japan and want to save a PDF. You look in your file system. How do you know which number to use? Don't pretend that you'll remember that 15.54 is taken and you want 15.55. You won't. I've done it.

Item	File	Email
15.53 Vietnam, 2024	■	■
15.54 New Zealand, 2024		■
15.54 Japan, 2025
15.55 Japan, 2025	■

You need an index as the central store of your IDs. Now you won't go to your file system to create a new ID: you'll open your JDex.

This is why your filesystem is not your JDex.

My note-taking is next level

What if you had a place to store quick notes and knew that you could find them again? As we see below, when you keep your JDex in a notes app, you get this for free. All your notes live in IDs.¹

From those of you familiar with PKM concepts, your JDex is your PKM system. Knowledge exists as notes which are organised by their ID.

How to keep your JDex

Until I get around to making a Johnny.Decimal app, the simplest way to keep an index is in a notes app. I've tried other ways but they were more effort.²

Any app that lets you search your notes quickly will work.

I use, love, and recommend Bear for all Apple platforms.
Obsidian is a crowd favourite. Cross-platform.
If you're looking for something much simpler, the aptly-named Simplenote is okay. Though I'm not sure if it's being maintained by its owners.
In the workshop we see Lucy create her JDex in Apple Notes.

One note per ID

To create a new ID, just create a new note:

First, search your notes for the relevant category.
Your app should filter all notes and show only those that match.
Identify the next available number and make a new note.

The title is the index entry. The rest of the note can be blank. But, as mentioned, adding location data can be really helpful.³

You must do this before you create a folder in your file system, email, or anywhere else. Creating the note is creating the new ID.

What this looks like in Bear

By typing 15 and . in search, we can (usually) filter out other notes that just include the text '15'.

FIGURE 11.05D. USING SEARCH TO SHOW ONLY THE IDS IN CATEGORY 15.

It's showing us that 15.55 is the next available ID in the category. So we create a new note.

FIGURE 11.05E. WE'RE OFF TO JAPAN.

The power of search

When you're saving all sorts of items in your system, you won't always remember where they are. Did you store your car insurance policy in your email or file system? Is your hotel booking in your email or a travel app?

The whole point of the Johnny.Decimal system is to remove this frustration.

Having a central index allows you to search for items by title, or filter everything by area or category. This lets you see, immediately, what you've saved. If your system also tells you the item's location, fantastic.

FIGURE 11.05F. USING SEARCH TO INSTANTLY FIND THE LOCATION OF OUR CAR INSURANCE POLICY.

As you can see here, we've also added 'keywords' to our JDex entry to help us find it in the future.

Your system's memory

As you use it more, your JDex becomes your system's memory. As well as just keeping simple lists of what's where, you can use it to record higher-level details about the system.

For example, I have two systems in my life: life admin, and small business. Each contains a category 13 which relates to finance. And in there I have IDs where I track my subscriptions.

But some of my subscriptions apply to both life and business. I use the same backup service for both, for example. So which system should I store that in?

Decide, and document

This is where you decide, and document.

Decide: just decide! I decided that my life comes above my business. If you like, life contains business. So where there are things that could be in either system, I put them in life admin.

Document: a simple decision, which you're sure you'll remember. But why chance it? This is exactly what your JDex is for.

I talk more about this in keeping notes. ↩
12.02 documents the more advanced ways to keep your JDex. ↩
An index is not an inventory. It is for recording the IDs that you have assigned, not to track all of your documents. ↩

11.04 Philosophy

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:04:00 GMT

What's the point again?

Before we go any further it's worth reinforcing the philosophy behind Johnny.Decimal.

This is all a waste of time if it doesn't help you find things quickly, with more confidence, and less stress.

People often ask about tweaking their Johnny.Decimal setup. I don't mind, adapt it as you please. But my core advice is always the same. Do whatever you need to do so you can find your stuff.

Limit your choices

We've all seen share drives with dozens of folders at the top level, that get worse the deeper you go. It's near impossible to find what you need. And every chance that if you do, it won't be the correct or only copy.

No more than ten

When you encounter a Johnny.Decimal system you are presented with, at most, ten folders. The areas. When you go a level deeper, you are presented with, at most, ten folders. The categories.

These limitations help you look in the right place. And not the wrong place. We can further improve discoverability by using an index.

Benefit from a little friction

When you don't need to consider a numbering system, it's easy to create folders willy-nilly. At the area and category level it shouldn't be easy -- a little friction can be a good thing.

Creating a new category should be something that takes time. Assigning numbers, and limiting your availability to ten, forces you in to this moment of consideration.

Once you're down at ID level it doesn't matter so much. You're in a category. You are, by my definition, organised. Create folders as needed.

Time well spent

Setting up a Johnny.Decimal system is certainly not free from a time perspective. You need to plan and maintain your system. It doesn't manage itself.

But the time that you spend is repaid over and over by the reduction in frustration whenever you go to open or save a file.

11.03 IDs

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:03:00 GMT

What is an ID?

IDs are the manila folders we just talked about. This is where we store our stuff. But what exactly is an ID? How much should they contain?

When you sit down to do something, your thought process should be:

Which category is the thing in? You will find yourself remembering those you use frequently.
Which ID is the thing I need to work on? It will usually be a higher number because recent things have higher numbers.

Now you're 'in' an ID and that's where your stuff is.

It's the documents from your travel agent for your next trip, the notes and spreadsheets for the meeting with your accountant, or the design files for the tennis club's competition flyer.

Examples

A trip to NYC

Think about the artefacts you generate when you go on holiday. You have to book a flight and a hotel, and you might research things to do when you get there. The trip is one Johnny.Decimal ID, 15.52 Trip to NYC, and in it you might save:

A PDF of the hotel booking, in your file system.
The flight confirmation, in your email.
Notes about what you want to visit.¹

A travel insurance claim

The airline lost your bag and you need to make a claim.

We've already seen the ID for that: 15.23 Travel insurance. Create a new subfolder starting with the date of the claim, and store your documentation neatly in it.

FIGURE 11.03A. An ID for a travel insurance claim.

Managing your IDs

Helpful names

When naming your IDs, try to help your future self.

Sometimes it's useful to be descriptive about the kinds of things to be stored. For example, your main utility bills might go in 12.21 Electricity, gas, & water (versus 'utilities').

Sometimes you may prefer to keep things simpler, broader. For example, anything to do with moving house might go in 12.13 Moving (versus 'checklists, quotes, & truck hire for moving house').

Neat subfolders

I used to be anti-subfolder. But sometimes one more level (and I mean one) of subfolders makes sense.

In the example above, we could have saved all the insurance claim documents in the main folder. But it was neater to create a new subfolder.²

Don't let it get out of hand. Remember, we're trying to avoid the boxes-in-boxes-in-boxes-in-boxes chaos from earlier. Split the thing in to multiple IDs if it's getting too busy.

Will I run out of IDs?

Nope. And if you do, the category you defined was probably too broad. Split it up.

An example from my own system is travel. I've been a reasonably active traveller for several decades, but I'm nowhere near my 99th ID.

You may have noticed that these aren't all files. This is where the real power of Johnny.Decimal lies -- it's a system to organise everything. Files, email, notes, physical items. We cover this in more detail in the index. ↩
Later in saving files, I explain how useful it is to name your subfolders and files using the year-month format. It's a superpower because everything sorts by date, which means you can fit lots more in an ID without it feeling chaotic. ↩

11.02 Areas and categories

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:02:00 GMT

What is an area?

Areas are the shelves we just talked about. Think of them as 'areas of your life' or 'areas of expertise'. That's how broad they should be. If they're too narrow, you'll use them up. Leave room for expansion.

Areas group categories

Area 10-19 groups all of the categories from 10 through 19.¹ Everything also has a title, so this becomes 10-19 Life admin.

Similarly, area 20-29 Home business groups the categories 20 to 29. And area 30-39 Tennis club groups the categories 30 to 39.

What is a category?

Categories are the boxes we just talked about. They're collections of similar stuff: travel documents; marketing material for your small business; facilities maintenance for the tennis club.

And they're the most important Johnny.Decimal concept.

Categories group IDs

A category is as organised as you need to be. When you get there, you see a bunch of ID folders. But they all relate to the same thing. And they're ordered in the sequence that you created them.

A category is where you work

Any type of 'work' you do can become a category. When you sit down at your computer you have a task in mind -- researching a holiday, writing a flyer for your business, employing a new groundskeeper.

The goal of Johnny.Decimal is to get you to the place where you do this work, quickly, with no stress.

Prefer fewer, broader categories

If you have granular categories called investments, budget, and savings, you've created ambiguity. This slows you down because there's more decisions to make. Compress them in to one -- money -- and the ambiguity disappears.

Categorising is worth the effort

Categorising our stuff requires some effort. But it is necessary because it helps us find things again.

And it can feel harder when things could go either way. For example, do I go with
Insurance > Car and Insurance > House or
Car > Insurance and House > Insurance?

In reality, you just decide. It's not like you're ever paralysed with indecision: that's the entire point of the structure of Johnny.Decimal.

Making areas and categories

There's two main approaches to sorting the stuff in your life when designing a Johnny.Decimal system.

Top-down: sort everything into areas first, then divide those into categories.
Bottom-up: sort everything into categories, then group those categories in to areas.

I talk more about this in build your system.

Area 00-09 does exist; I'll discuss it later in the advanced topics. ↩

11.01 Introduction

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:01:00 GMT

A system to organise your life

Johnny.Decimal is designed to help you find things quickly, with more confidence, and less stress.

You assign a unique ID to everything in your life.

These IDs help you stay organised. They impose constraints that make it harder to get lost. And you create your own index to link everything in your life together.

The system is free to use and the concepts are the same at home, work, or that club you manage.

The problem

In real life, if you stored your stuff in piles of badly-labelled boxes you'd never find anything again.

If you put those boxes in boxes, in boxes, you'd never know which box to open to find the next box. It would be chaos. But this is how you save your computer files.

FIGURE 11.01B. A CHAOTIC FILE SYSTEM WITH MANY LEVELS OF FOLDERS.

The solution

Here's one way to think about how a Johnny.Decimal system works. In this simple analogy, an area is a shelf, a category is a box, and an ID is a manila folder.

Step 1: Buy ten shelves

Imagine a computer is a garage. We can't put everything on the floor, so we buy ten shelves. Then we dedicate each one to an area of our life -- life admin, home business, and tennis club.¹

FIGURE 11.01C. A SHELF FOR EACH MAJOR AREA OF OUR LIFE.

Step 2: Add some boxes

Each shelf has space for ten boxes, so we categorise what we want to store. In life admin we decide on five and label them: me, house, money, online, and travel. Our boxes have space for a number, so we add that too.²

FIGURE 11.01D: OUR LIFE ADMIN SHELF ENDS UP WITH FIVE BOXES.

Step 3: File your stuff in folders

We put our documents in manila folders. Each folder gets a number starting at .11 so we can track them. In this case, we've put some insurance policies in 15.23 Travel insurance. Then put the folder in a box.

FIGURE 11.01E. WE PUT OUR DOCUMENTS IN NUMBERED FOLDERS AND STORE THEM IN THE RELEVANT BOX.

This is how we structure our file system

Let's return to our computer. The shelves have become our area folders. The boxes are category folders. And the manila folders are the IDs where we save our files.

FIGURE 11.01F. A NEAT FILE STRUCTURE WITH AREAS, CATEGORIES, AND IDS.

Benefits of the Johnny.Decimal ID

Each of our storage folders now has a number, the ID. It always has two digits, a decimal, and two digits. For example, 15.23 22.11 31.17. This number is really useful.

It provides structure

The ID tells us exactly where a thing is. The numbers before the decimal are the item's category, and they define the structure of your system.

At a glance, you know what sort of thing the item contains. You'll be astonished at how many of your category numbers you remember.

They're easy to communicate

They're short, memorable, and can be spoken out loud. Say it like "sixteen oh-two" or "thirty-one dot seventeen".

This is really handy when you want to tell someone (including your future self) where a thing is.

Things stay where they are

If you use the alphabet to name folders, they move when a new one is created. So you never get a chance to develop muscle memory.

Numbers solve this problem. In the example above, 11 Me comes before 12 House because the folders sort by number. If we made a new folder, 16 Aardvark collection, nothing would move.

It imposes limits

The 'no more than ten' concept is at the heart of Johnny.Decimal.

When you start looking for something, you have no more than ten area folders to choose from. Select one and ignore the rest. Now you have no more than ten category folders to choose from. Repeat the process.

You then arrive in a folder with no more than one hundred IDs. If the ID was created recently it will have a higher number. If not, lower. And things created together, stick together. The alphabet isn't around to ruin the party.

I like it! What next?

Welcome to the Johnny.Decimal family, there's plenty to go on with:

Explore the site to learn more about the system.
Get organised fast with our pre-built systems. In 10 minutes you'll be more organised than you've ever been.
- We have systems for your Life Admin and your Small Business. They're what I use to manage my own life and business.
If you want to build your own system, and learn everything that I know about being more organised, Johnny.Decimal University has 10+ hours of video.
The Johnny.Decimal Workbook is now free. Click here to download it.
Follow the blog (just point your RSS reader at the site), and subscribe to the YouTube channel.
Ask for help in the friendly forum or Discord, or email me (I answer every message).
Sign up to the mailing list for an email every couple of weeks. Plain text, no trackers.
- To prevent spam, solve the puzzle.
- You have two pet chickens. You get one more pet chicken. How many chickens do you now have?

We don't try to use all ten shelves -- there's room to grow. ↩
I'll explain later why the first box isn't number 01 or 10. ↩

22.00.0072 6.0.0

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 01:54:59 GMT

6.0.0

The website has a new version. We re-wrote everything.

Version six. Where six is more of a hunch than any sort of science. (I'll do a brief history of the site in another post.)

Why?

The old content was a few years old, and it was showing its age. This system evolves: with me, with time, and as you -- my community -- discover new stuff.

That sounds schmaltzy but it's true. Especially in the past year, since I've had more time to spend on this thing, the forum and Discord have taken off. Your ideas all make their way back in to the system. Thanks.

Then we wrote a workbook, recorded a workshop, and created the first Quick Start pack -- in that order -- and they all subtly changed how I think about this thing.

So everything needed to be brought in to alignment, which is what we've done. We've drawn all the examples from the 'life admin' pack, so it's a cohesive story.

Lucy wrote much of it

I write a lot of words. Then Lucy -- a professional editor in a previous life -- tells me to delete most of them. This hurts, but she's right.

This time round, she wrote much of the new content.

Like I said last time, I consider the 10-19 Concepts section of this site to be the canonical Johnny.Decimal user guide. I love how focused this version is.

We agonised over every paragraph. 'Kill the widow' is Lucy's favourite game: if there's one word on its own line, you need to find another to delete to bring it up.¹

(Blog posts are where I'm let loose to ramble. Don't blame her for any of this.)

The index is now your JDex

This is big. I've been looking for inspiration for a while, and obsidian_starcaller called it.

JDex is brilliant. It recalls Rolodex, starts with 'JD', works as a noun and a verb, and basically doesn't exist as a term online. It's genius.

Berkeley Mono all the way

In line with this feeling like a manual, we replaced the old body serif font -- IBM Plex Serif -- with Berkeley Mono. It's now the only font we use.

I adore it. Lucy's idea. Why didn't I think of it?

We draw constant inspiration from the Berkeley site. When we wonder how to make something look more like a 1970s NASA manual, we go there and stare for a while.

Berkeley is really reasonably priced. Fonts can cost a lot more than this. We love Neil and his work: please support him if you can.

Dark mode is first-class

The site's dark mode is really sweet now. There's no toggle on the site: it honours your system setting.

With v6, all (new) images have proper dark mode versions. If the source app has a native dark mode, that's where the image comes from. If it doesn't, I've applied a colour filter and brought the luminosity down.

I don't use dark mode myself so feedback on this 'hack' is welcome. I know the contrast suffers; there's not much I can do about this. I'll fix up the old images, all of which are in blog posts, over time.

Layout tweaks

The 'Location' box above the main content was cute, but it didn't work very hard. That's been replaced with a new box that shows a table of contents for the page. Nice.

Behind the scenes

You know when you go to the dentist and they give you a full scrape and you come out and your teeth feel sharper?

That's what I did to all of the back-end code. So it's now much nicer to work with. This will allow me to make more changes more quickly in the future.

Should I read it all?

I think you should. It won't take long, and it'll bring you up to speed.

And when I find a typo?...

There's got to be one, right? It'll kill us but hey, we'd rather know about it.

First accepted typo gets a Johnny.Decimal sticker.² :-)

Thank you

Thanks for being here. Without you, there's no point. As always, we're here to help. Let us know what you need.

-- johnny & lucy, aka 'jucy'

Turns out this is called a runt. ↩
On the main site only; not blog posts. We haven't edited those. ↩

01.04 Version

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 01:04:00 GMT

6.5.0

Version: 2026-04-09 6.5.0.
Released: Thu Apr 09 2026 02:28:10 GMT+0000.

Stay up to date: refer to the communications plan.

Release notes

6.5.0
- Updated 01.01, 01.02, 01.03 with release of JDHQ.
6.3.0
- Content: added 13.12 & 13.32.
6.2.0
- Style: re-architected the site so that it displays properly when zoomed. It was a bit of a mess before.
6.1.0
- Content: re-written category 13 System expansion.
6.0.11
- Style: tried to improve the experience when you increase the font size. Previously, my fixed-width blocks (e.g. navigation) would grow, causing the viewport to scroll horizontally. It didn't handle this well.
  - Now, the font size on these fixed-width elements doesn't increase. You can still pinch-to-zoom if you need them larger. As a result they don't overflow, and the body text is free to grow.
  - Feedback on this and any other accessibility issues is always welcome. I'll prioritise fixing any a11y issues.
- Content: the first 'further reading' section has been added to the bottom of 12.03.
6.0.4
- Code: much improved the image loader, so it now handles dark/light and desktop/mobile images 'properly'. Thanks to Houssam.
- Style: replaced the ▷ in call-out boxes with » so it doesn't look like a click-to-expand reveal button.
6.0.0
- Content: site-wide rewrite to align with current thinking.
- Every page has had a refresh, or has a note to say that it will get one soon.
- Style: replaced body serif with Berkeley Mono. It's now the only font we use. :-)

For the SemVer nerds

I'll add release notes for MAJOR and MINOR updates. This indicates that content was changed.

PATCH updates are typos, visual tweaks, and other back-end 'fixes', and might not receive release notes.

01.02 Licence

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 01:02:00 GMT

Licence

Definition

The content published at www.johnnydecimal.com forms the Johnny.Decimal system.

Purchased content at jdhq.johnnydecimal.com is separate and does not form part of the system.

Use of the Johnny.Decimal system

You are hereby granted a permanent and irrevocable right to use the Johnny.Decimal system to organise your files and information for any purpose, personal or commercial. No restrictions apply.

Note the optional commercial licence, below.

Reuse or redistribution of content

For reuse, redistribution, or similar, the Johnny.Decimal system is licenced under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

You are free to:

Share -- copy and redistribute the material on this website in any medium or format.
Adapt -- remix, transform, and build upon the material.

Under the following terms:

Attribution -- You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial -- You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
ShareAlike -- If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same licence as the original.
No additional restrictions -- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the licence permits.

Use of JDHQ systems & content

A single-user licence is granted to the individual who holds an account on the JDHQ website at jdhq.johnnydecimal.com. This grants access to the pre-built systems, downloads, course material, and support centre. The content may be used by the purchaser as many times as required for any purpose, personal or commercial. No restrictions apply.

The purchased content and downloads are not for use by any other individual or entity. If you know someone who would like this, please ask them to make their own purchase.

If you need multiple user accounts

If you require multiple user accounts, e.g. for the Small Business System, please get in touch to discuss purchasing additional licences at a discount.

Thank you for doing the right thing

It took Johnny and Lucy thousands of hours to create the pre-built systems, course materials, support centre, and websites. It took Johnny over a decade to build this system and acquire this knowledge.

Johnny quit his job to be able to do this. This is our family's only income. Please do the right thing. Thank you.

Commercial licence

The Johnny.Decimal system is free for everyone, including commercial use. However, companies are encouraged to obtain a commercial licence to support ongoing development and ensure continued availability and development of the system.

Three tiers are available. They are based on the total number of employees at your organisation. For larger organisations please ensure that your organisation has not already purchased a licence. Payments are final.

All prices are in USD. This is an annual subscription that you may cancel at any time using the link in your payment receipt.

10-100 employees: $1,000/year
100-1000 employees: $5,000/year
1000+ employees: $10,000/year

Licence holders receive an official certificate confirming authorised commercial use, and:

$1,000/year: one (1) JDHQ account.
$5,000/year: five (5) JDHQ accounts.
$10,000/year: ten (10) JDHQ accounts.

Each account has access to the Life Admin System, Small Business System, and Johnny.Decimal University. They are valued at US$422.

Special requests

Feel free to email me if you need custom licensing arrangements -- whether it's adjusting the pricing to fit your budget approval process, or anything else.

01.01 About us

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 01:01:00 GMT

About us

This website and everything on it was created by Johnny Noble and Lucy Butcher. If you buy something from us, the legal entity you're purchasing from is:

Coruscade Pty Ltd, a registered company in Australia.
ABN: 53 145 180 721.
Address: PO Box 60, Cessnock, NSW 2325.

Why isn't everything free?

A lot of our content is free -- the system is extensively documented on this site, and you can use it without restriction. I give as much of my time as possible to answering questions on the forum and Discord.

In May 2023 I quit my job to 'be' Johnny.Decimal. This is what we do for a living. It pays our rent. This allows us to spend a lot more time thinking and making useful stuff.

Before, I only had an hour or so on weekends. Now, you get Johnny and Lucy working at least 6 days a week. So that's why we sell things, and why everything isn't free.

Thanks for supporting us. It means the world.

00.00 Index

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Index

This page has a link to every page on the site. They use the standard link colouring and unread pages have an unread indicator • in the first column.

It mirrors the site navigation dingus, but that does not indicate which pages you have visited.

Note that there is a separate index for blog posts at 22.02 All posts.

22.00.0071 Bear Pro subscription prize draw

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:52:00 GMT

Bear Pro subscription prize draw

Since we launched the Quick Start: 'Life admin' pack I've been running a prize draw for 1 year of Bear Pro, worth US$30.

The kind folks at Bear gave me 5 App Store codes. Another reason why it's my favourite notes app. :-)

Here's how I did it. I won't show full working as it might leak customer data.

Export all orders from Shopify.
Extract orders for the workshop and paste them in to Excel 5x.
Extract orders for the workbook/quick start bundle and paste them in 2x.
Extract orders for the quick start pack and paste them in 1x.
Add a column, =RAND(). This gives me a random number between 0 and 1.
Copy/paste values on this column otherwise it changes on every edit or file open.
Sort the column descending.
Pick the top 5.

I just emailed those 5 people. They might not need the code, in which case I'll mail the next people on the list until they're all gone.

22.00.0070 Site refresh

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:33:32 GMT

Site refresh

Programming notice, 29th July: we're giving the site its annual service.

Content

The content here evolves over time. This idea isn't static: as the world changes, so do our ideas. Some of the stuff we've produced recently clashes with the advice on this site, which isn't ideal.

I consider the main pages of the site to be like the Johnny.Decimal user manual. So when we change them, we do it with great consideration. Which takes time. I don't like to just jump in and make edits.

Fortunately I have an actual editor sitting next to me: Lucy. She's going to review all of our content, and we'll do an update to make sure everything is consistent with our current thinking.

This will take a few weeks, but it'll be worth it. So please bear with us.

Style

You may also notice that some of the styling is a little wonky. This is because I am a very poor web developer. I need to separate some things out so that when I tweak one thing over there it doesn't have unintended consequences over here.

This will happen at the same time as the content update. Don't worry, no big changes. Just a spit 'n polish.

Control

I'll start to track these changes more rigorously. So I've added a version number to the site, directly under the list of pages.

I consider this the 5th major version (since 2013) so I've labelled it 5.0.0.

01.04 Version will contain a summary of every change.

Using Semantic Versioning, the numbers will increment as follows.

Third digit: 'PATCH' change.
- 5.0.0 → 5.0.1
- Fixing a typo or otherwise a minor tweak that doesn't fundamentally affect the structure of the system.
- Any update to the style of the site that doesn't change the content.
- You don't need to care about these changes.
Second digit: 'MINOR' change.
- 5.0.0 → 5.1.0
- A new page on the main site, i.e. not including blog posts.
- Significant changes to content on a single/few page(s).
- You should familiarise yourself with this change.
First digit: 'MAJOR' change.
- 5.0.0 → 6.0.0
- Significant changes to content on many pages.
- You should familiarise yourself with this change.

Stay informed

Subscribe to The Quarterly for exactly 4 updates a year. Or point your RSS reader at the site. All pages are included in the feed.

22.00.0069 What is an ID?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 09:04:59 GMT

What is an ID?

On the forum, user cobblepot raises the question of how much a Johnny.Decimal ID should contain, and whether it should contain subfolders, and if so how many.

My thinking on this has changed significantly over the years. The site needs a proper refresh, which will take time. It's next on my list.

Until then, this short video hopefully clarifies my thinking, and answers some of cobblepot's questions directly.

22.00.0068 Standard 'life admin' pack

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 22:14:53 GMT

Standard 'life admin' pack

We've been spending the last few weeks developing a standard 'life admin' pack. The idea is that it'll handle 95% of what 95% of people need to run their daily lives.

It's been an interesting process. We did it by the book, starting by 'discovering' all of the things that people tell us they need to organise on the forum, email, workshop comments, and looking back at our own lives.

Then to design a structure we cracked open MindNode and we spent a few days just talking it all over. Looking at every decision, questioning it, refining it, moving things around.

And then I moved my entire personal life in to it, which caused us to refine it even further. So I'm proof that this works.

Who's it for?

At JDHQ we've been calling this the 'JD quick-start' pack. We've designed it for everyone: the idea is that you don't need deep background -- any background, really -- in Johnny.Decimal to jump in and use it.

And you shouldn't have to spend a week 'getting organised' to, well, be organised. Everyone needs this stuff.

We've spent a hundred hours figuring it out so that you don't have to.

One area, five categories

I knew I wanted this to be a single area.

The more I do this the more I'm convinced that broader -- much broader -- categories and IDs are the way to go. And that my advice from a decade ago to 'not create subfolders' is no longer relevant: see below for the secret to subfolders.

(I think it was good advice at the time. But the landscape has changed; the amount of stuff we all store has grown. That changes how you should think about storing it.)

And we've compressed everything in to just five categories.

Dates solve so many problems

You can compress an amazing amount in to a single ID when the first thing you see inside that ID is a list of dates, formatted yyyy-mm-dd so that they sort nicely.¹

For instance, we've designed a single ID:

10-19Life admin

15 Travel, events, & entertainment ✈️

15.41All short trips

We realised that a 'short trip' -- one that you don't really need to plan, you just book and go -- doesn't need its own ID. We all make these trips all the time.

So a single ID is enough, as long as its subfolders look like this:

10-19Life admin

15 Travel, events, & entertainment ✈️

15.41All short trips

2024-02-04 Melbourne

2024-04-18 Sydney

2024-05-28 Brisbane

2024-07-13 Adelaide

And in each of those, for a short trip you might just have a flight confirmation and a hotel booking. Simple.

Subheaders

An idea I've toyed with over the years, and one that I usually avoid because of its unpredictability.

But in this highly-designed system, it's really useful: subheaders.

10-19Life admin

13 Money earned, saved, owed, & spent 💰

13.10■ Earned 🤑

13.11Payslips, invoices, & remittance

13.12Expenses & claims

13.13Government services

13.14Gifts, prizes, inheritance, & windfalls

13.15Selling my stuff

13.20■ Saved 📈

13.21Budgets & planning

13.22Bank accounts

13.23Investments & assets

13.24Pension

We picked the 'black square' symbol because it looks nice in macOS' Finder.

This works really well in breaking up a long list of IDs.

The emoji really help 😛

We've sprinkled emoji throughout, and they're really useful. They give your brain something else to anchor on to.

(When we release the pack there'll be a version without emoji if you're the sort of person who takes yourself really seriously.)

The pack

The pack will contain this folder structure as a download, and links to shared folders on all of the usual cloud platforms.

It will contain an index, either as downloadable text files that you can import in to your notes app of choice, or as a shared Apple Notes link.

And there'll be a version that you can import in to Bear, which uses its unique nested-tag feature to build a really nice sidebar.

It'll include a PDF manual which details every ID, explains the sorts of things that should (and shouldn't) go there, and points out any obvious exceptions.

Eventually -- not in the first release -- we're going to have a short series of videos which explain the structure and our thinking in more detail.

Money

Its full list price will be US$20. It'll go on sale for US$10 as it won't be 100% finished. Obviously if you get it early you'll get all updates.

If you're reading this, ~~you can get on pre-sale now for just US$8.~~ it's launched: see 14.11 for the current deal.

Sneak peek

This looks really great in your file system. Honestly, I love it.

Feedback?

I'd love to know what you think of this. Is this the thing you want more of? If not this, what?

We sit here and try to work out what people want. It's much simpler if you just tell us! :-)

Drop me an email and let me know.

And I recommend the dash as a separator, vs. yyyymmdd, as it really improves readability. I also use the full yyyy, otherwise 24-01-23 is confusing. The extra characters are worth it in both instances. ↩

22.00.0067 File system folders from text, via Excel

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 01:18:54 GMT

File system folders from text, via Excel

On the forum, Kelso asks:

How do I change my MindNode into a folder structure onto my computer?

Great question, best answered with a video.

Excel sheet

You can download the sheet from the video here.

Formulas

Fill the column

=IF(C5<>"", C5, D4)

Create a file path, 'escaping' spaces with a backslash

=IF(G7="", "", SUBSTITUTE(CONCAT(D7, "/", F7, "/", G7), " ", "\ "))

Create the mkdir -p command

=IF(H7="", "", CONCAT("mkdir -p ", H7))

Create the echo command to create text files

=IF(G7="", "", CONCAT("echo # ", G7, " > ", SUBSTITUTE(G7, " ", "\ "), ".txt"))

22.00.0066 The classes of to-do, pt. 2

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 23:15:21 GMT

The classes of to-do, pt. 2

This was written as a reply to a forum post but it got long and felt useful enough to cross-post here.

Maybe you can invent a complementary system for tasks as well?
-- osau

I spent most of yesterday thinking about this. I'll type out some thoughts here as it might help them crystallise in my mind.

We start with the classes of to-do [22.00.0034]. Read that if you haven't.

In my mind I'm still using this P1–P4 idea. How do we feel about that, generally? It makes an internal monologue really quick! But if you didn't once run helpdesks for a living it might not be so obvious.

P4: not really a thing to-do (yet)

So P4s are easy. They're not actually things 'to-do', or if they are, you haven't decided that you really want to do them yet. You might, in the future. For now they're ideas, thoughts, lists, hopes, dreams, notes, something you just don't want to lose.

@LucyDecimal system was ~90% P4s. She loves a list. Here's a selection of mine from my re-grouping exercise yesterday:

Re-think your iOS device home screens. Align with macOS desktop widgets?
Tidy up your Airtable bases. Rename them, consolidate icon colours, and archive some old stuff.
Gift idea: buy [someone] [thing].
Make a trout & bean salad in summer.

The key with P4s is that there is absolutely no consequence whatsoever if they don't get done. If they all burned in a fire you'd be sad, but nothing bad would happen.

I am therefore convinced that P4s MUST NOT live in your task system. They're a bullet point in a note.

P1s: critically time sensitive

I'll jump straight to P1s because they're also easy. These are things that absolutely must happen and usually before a certain time.

That time is usually quite soon – pick Jemima up from saxophone practice – or regularly – pay the rent.

I only have one P1 and it is to check the account we use to pay our rent and bills, which is not our primary account, to make sure that there's enough in it. We keep it at or near that amount as it doesn't earn interest etc. So each month, on the last day of the month, Due goes off and tells me to do this.

So I think P1s MUST live in their own little world. You have so few. If you have five that's probably too many. Unless you have six kids and they all love learning brass instruments and none of them can catch the bus. But you get the idea. Use sparingly.

Because when I see Due, I never ignore Due.¹ Past me has sent me a message: this one is really important. Drop everything else.

P2s & P3s: the difficult part in the middle

Here's where it gets harder.

First, one class of to-do that we can safely handle.

Project tasks

A project task is a task in service of getting a project done. Step 89 of 121 things. It's not some isolated thing like pick Jemima up.

As a broad rule, I think these tasks can be lumped together. When you sit down to get Project Shoehorn done, you look at your list of tasks and you work through it. Perhaps some of those tasks need to be pushed out to the future and so we need to handle them differently, but a lot of them do not.

Don't clutter your P2/P3 task system with project tasks. They can probably be bullet points in a note.

Criteria for P2/P3

So the criteria for something to be a P2/P3 is that if you do not do it, there is a consequence.

That consequence might not be grave. It might just be that you feel worse about yourself. But, in your estimation, it exists.

So the question then is, what gets to interrupt you? I say only a P2 is allowed to do that: to put a notification somewhere in your life.

Because it is these notifications that are the curse. As soon as they exceed some very low threshold, they cease to be useful. Worse: they're harmful because there is something you really should do in there, but it's drowned in a sea of other stuff.

My stuff from yesterday

Yesterday -- I wish I'd taken a screenshot, damn -- I checked off 6 or 7 items that had been sitting as past-due to-dos in my system.² Not one of them had a genuine reason to be there.

Some of them were things that I should periodically do: update the forum software. If I leave that too long, it becomes harder or breaks. There is a consequence to my forum not working.

Some of them were things that I wanted to remember while I was out on a walk, and I just asked Siri to remind me this afternoon to… and that action was still there days later.

Back to notifications

Let's pretend notifications didn't exist. What would we do?

We'd write down the things we had to-do.
We'd try to group these to-dos in to sensible buckets of similar stuff.
- Maybe on different pages of a notebook?
We'd remember, on some sort of cycle, to look at each of the pages.
We might either:
- Just do all the stuff from one page on one day, or
- Pull important things from different pages to a new page, and focus on that stuff.

Now substitute:

'sensible buckets of similar stuff' for 'your Johnny.Decimal categories', and
'pages of a notebook' for 'folders in your to-do system', and
'remember, on some sort of cycle' for 'scheduling time in your calendar',

and we have the beginnings of a system.

Should anything get to interrupt you?

What I'm struggling with here is, is there actually a difference between P2 & P3? My first thought was that P2s should be allowed to interrupt you. But the more I think on it, the more I doubt this approach.

Here's a P2 that I have: check my credit card before the 15th of the month and, if there's anything to pay, pay it.

I consider that a P2 because if I don't pay, that affects my credit rating, which is a long-term thing that I can't easily undo. Compared to a P3 which is to check that some company processed a refund as promised and I got the $50 back. If I don't do that and they forget, I stand to lose $50. But I consider that a lower consequence than a bad credit rating.

But back to interruptions. If I'm organised, and things are in neat buckets, and I trust myself to look at them regularly, why would any of them need to interrupt me?

Do categories of stuff at the same time

I need to pay my credit card at some point before the 15th. Not on the 15th. So do it every month on the 10th. And while I'm there, check all the other financial related stuff.

It's all boring, you might as well just get in a zone and do it all at once.

Now, the problem comes when you decided you'd do this on Friday at 14:00, like I did last week, then this time rolls round and you were doing something else, and you didn't actually do it.

But I wonder: could I make life simpler, calmer, more reliable, if instead of considering that as 5 things 'to-do' -- credit card, rent, etc. -- could it just be 1 thing, which is monthly financial processing.

Don't just do things randomly

Because here's another consideration. (Sorry, I know this is long. I don't mind if you've given up.)

I had a task: print your iCloud account recovery kit. I wrote that on a piece of paper on my desk.

Yesterday, I found that piece of paper. But, damned if I wasn't sure I'd done that thing. But did I? I didn't crumple the paper up, it's still here in the list. Ugh. So I get out the locked box and check and, yeah, I did it. What a waste of mental energy that was.

So don't just do things as they occur to you. No! Write them down, or check whether you already have them written down.

Put them in their categories with their friends. You know they can wait: there was no urgency whatsoever to me printing that thing.

And get to them in the cycle.

So are P2s just higher in the (same) list than P3s?

I wonder then if P2/P3 isn't just one list -- as in, one list per category -- that needs to be looked at on a cycle.

And if the P2s aren't just higher on that list than the P3s. You do them first, because they're more important.

Check the rent account. Then if you've still got time/energy, you get to the lower stuff. Did you get that $50 refund?

When I was thinking about this yesterday, I couldn't think of a situation where a P2 should be allowed to interrupt you.

Work in progress

There's more to think about here, but I'd appreciate any thoughts.

And the reason I use Due for this is because it makes it impossible to ignore. Its standout feature is that it reminds you over and over to do the thing until you dismiss it; unlike most task management apps which remind you once. It's a great app that I've used for over a decade. ↩
And when I say 'checked off', I don't mean 'done'. I just checked them off! ↩

22.00.0065 Ask yourself: why am I saving this thing?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 03:39:39 GMT

Ask yourself: why am I saving this thing?

In re-doing the D85 structure I realised that the hardest part is, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the creation of your areas and categories.

This is the bit where you form the shape of your system: you decide how to categorise your life or project or whatever.

So here's an example. On a recent episode of Cortex, CGP Grey talks about his very granular use of to-dos. (The bit is near the end.)

I found this interesting enough to want to save it. So: where?

This sort of nebulous piece of data is one of the hardest. I realised the key is to ask yourself the question:

Why am I saving it? What is its purpose?

In this case, the answer is that this might influence the Johnny.Decimal system in some way in the future. It might change my thinking; change how I recommend people do things.

This led me to the realisation that D85 needs an area for this: for the thinking about Johnny.Decimal as an idea.

That's a long area title, and thanks to Lucy I now appreciate the value of an interesting title. So I ended up with:

30-39 The institute 🧬

(Yes, I've started to use emoji in my titles. Something else I got from Lucy building her system. It's surprisingly useful in anchoring concepts in your brain.)

As soon as this idea came to me, a bunch of other stuff dropped in to place.

Where do I store my sample Johnny.Decimal systems, the stuff I use as examples and screenshots? In the institute.

Items related to solving the edge-cases like the academic problem or the freelancer problem? The institute.

Academic papers that I find? Institute. It's perfect.

And I'm not sure if it would have occurred to me if I hadn't asked: why am I saving it? what is its purpose?

22.00.0064 D85 system and the 'creative' pattern: progress report

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 01:45:58 GMT

D85 system and the 'creative' pattern: progress report

We finally found the time to get stuck in to the re-organising of system D85 that we use to manage the Johnny.Decimal business.¹

As I've documented previously, our own system grew as a result of me quitting my job last year. When you're figuring out what to do, just getting the job done and trying to earn an income is more important than being perfectly organised.

We were organised enough. It's not like it was chaos over here.

But it did get to the point where we felt it was getting in the way. I didn't have a good place to keep ideas. Important ideas: stuff that affects what we do next.

The old system – not *terrible*

So, we're starting again.

Step 1: follow my own advice

Easy enough: follow the workbook. First up, 10-19 Define your system's scope.

In

So in scope there we have:

All business related activity.
Coruscade finances & admin. This is the legal entity that we trade through, and is currently 30-39 in my personal system.
- Previously, I used it for IT contracting. But as it's now exclusively Johnny.Decimal, it makes sense to bring it over.
Creation of content that might end up on the site.
- For example, videos to accompany blog posts.

Out

Out of scope is anything that is only, exclusively, on the web site.

This blog post, for example. I type it directly in to my code editor. It exists in D01 not D85.

Goals

We realised while recording the workshop that as well as defining what's in/out of scope, it's really good to write down the goals of your system.

What is it you want it to do? How do you want to work? What do you want it to achieve?

These can be intangible. They're your hopes and dreams for this new thing that you're building.

Here's ours.

100% shared system.
- That is, between me and Lucy. There can be nothing that only one of us has access to. This will influence tool choice, later.
Easy inbox/transfer (of, say, URLs).
- So when I want to send Lucy a URL I don't default to iMessage. There's a place that I can drop it that she can pick it up.
Logical like the Life Admin standard area.
- We really like the design of the soon-to-be-made-a-standard Life Admin area. See: diagrams on home page, Lucy's new system in the workshop.
Full implementation of the standard zeros.
- See 12.03 -- we explored this extensively while building Lucy's new system, and came up with some great new ideas.
An index that cross-links all the things.
- So things are where they should be, rather than everything being bunched up near 43.11.
- 43.11 is the ID for the workshop. We found overselves over-loading it with stuff, vs. putting that stuff in its proper home, and using our index to link the two.
DaVinci is special: when you're making a video, assets need to be in a central assets folder, i.e. you're not ...
- wait a minute. I get what Lucy wants. But let's check that this really is the right approach.
- DaVinci is the video editing software we use. It needs access to your files so that you can use them in videos. It has its own concept of a 'media library' that we need to be conscious of.
Uses the new, to-be-designed 'creative template'.
Lucy wants a 'logical library of (creative) outputs'.
- Related to creative template.
Start from scratch: brand-new, all clean.
This should be as perfect and standard an implementation as it's possible to be.
- If I wouldn't recommend it on the site, we're not doing it.

20-29 Discovery

Someone recently reviewed the workbook:

Overall I find it hard to believe any reader will actually write on sticky notes for a week while building the system. ⭐️⭐️

Well I find it hard to believe that someone thinks you can organise your whole life without writing stuff down for a week. What the hell else would you do?! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also who doesn't want to put coloured notes on the wall? When I had a job if they'd said hey we'll pay you to just stick bright paper on the wall I'd have jumped at it.

Anyway. Discovery's fun, don't skimp on discovery.

Write. Everything. Down. Even you, Travis.

30-39 Build your areas & categories

So that gets us to yesterday. Time to start building the structure of this thing.

We started by putting all the post-its in a mind map so we could shuffle them round more easily.

Then me and Lucy each put our headphones on and had a go at building it independently.

🤯

I had no idea how hard this was going to be.

I've never done this

A weird confession, but hey. I'll never lie to you.

I've built easily a dozen systems over the years. But they've all grown organically: I started a job, I just got going, I fixed it up as I went.

When we recorded the workshop, I told Lucy what to do, but she did the work.

This is the first time that I've taken ~100 items and tried to group them like this.

So, if you do yours and you find it difficult, that's okay. And this is why we say to take a week: give it a go, have a rest. Come back and see what you did. Try it another way. Go for a walk, do it again.

Like I always say, this thing will be with you for a while. A week is a tiny fraction of its lifespan.

The 'creative agency' problem

We knew that we needed to use the not-yet-documented 'creative' pattern.

This is for the sort of creative -- individual, team, agency -- who has inputs like artwork, logos, colour palettes -- and then does some work, and as a result ends up with outputs like videos and social media posts.

So before working on the rest of our system -- the business admin side of things -- we thought we'd nut this one out, because that'll clear out a bunch of stuff and we'll know what we're left with.

We started that yesterday with a whiteboard-in-the-garden session. This entry is running a little long, so I'll save the details for the next post.

There's also D01 johnnydecimal.com for any content that exclusively lives on the website, and we each have our own personal systems. ↩

22.00.0063 Why my software will be Apple-only

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 08:00:07 GMT

Why my software will be Apple-only

I've started learning to write Swift, Apple's modern programming language. I'm going to write an app to help you manage your Johnny.Decimal index.

I think I have some pretty cool ideas. 😎

When you do this sort of thing, you have to choose a language and a platform. This choice is all trade-off. There isn't one best-choice-for-everyone.

JavaScript

If there was going to be a common language, it'd be JavaScript. And I already know it! So why am I not using it?

With JavaScript, your desktop option is to build an Electron app. Slack is written in Electron. Discord is Electron. Electron is really popular.

I hate most Electron apps. They're janky, they just don't feel right. They use gigs of your RAM. They take ages to load. You end up with hundreds of dependencies and you've no idea what most of them do.

I know this because I've built web stuff. It's cool to hate on JavaScript but I love it! It's the only language I know.

But I won't be using it to build a desktop-class app.

Native integration

I want to build something that can fully integrate with the thing that I use. I want it to be able to talk to my file system, my reminders, my calendar.

It has to feel right. It has to fit in. When you launch it it should feel familiar.

iCloud

The other massive benefit to developing in Apple World is iCloud.

You know what the very last thing I want to build is? Like the last thing on Earth?

It's a database of users. Oh boy do I not want your data.

As soon as I have it, I have to worry about encryption. There's no way I'm keeping your stuff if it's not end-to-end encrypted. And that's really really difficult to do...

...unless you use the data stores provided, for free, without any additional login, by iCloud. Yes please.

iPhone and iPad compatibility

It doesn't come for free but it's pretty cheap from an effort perspective. Swift mostly just handles it. That's nice.

I've tried Microsoft development

It was one of the first things I did when I quit my job last year: I spent a few months hacking about trying to develop a thing for MS Teams.

I have never been unhappier in front of a computer. Never again.So, there it is. Sorry, FJ! You're going to have to get a Mac, my friend.

22.00.0062 16,337 words

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 31 May 2024 03:09:04 GMT

16,337 words

31/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I just did a word count on the posts from 22.00.0032 through to yesterday. Removing the header text that appears immediately above, it's sixteen thousand, three hundred and thirty seven words.

I certainly wouldn't have written that much without the challenge. But I'm glad it's over! I've had Due nagging me from 07:00 every day and some days I have wanted to throw it out of a window.

That said, I'm going to try to keep some sort of cadence. Writing is good. Being forced to write is good.

16,456. 🫡

22.00.0061 Regional Chinese

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 30 May 2024 06:06:46 GMT

Regional Chinese

30/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Lucy and I spent the night in Goulburn, NSW.

Short review: seems like a lovely town. Neat as a pin. A 'high street' many towns would kill for. You should visit.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about Chinese restaurants.

These regional towns invariably have at least one. And they've become a highlight of our trip. We actively seek out the 'regional Chinese'.

Because they're a blast from the past. The menus are identical: chow mein, prawns in translucent goop, special fried rice.

The decor is invariably a shade of pink.

The wine is ... well, technically it's wine.

The Lotus, Goulburn; we didn't go to this one

There's even an ABC show, Chopsticks or Fork?, celebrating this great Australian institution.

Perhaps our favourite to date is the Jade Garden, Smithton, TAS. I mean have a look at it.

We have this photograph printed and framed on the wall.

We went there two nights in a row because there is literally nothing else to do in Smithton. Do not go to Smithton.

22.00.0060 Ellane learns the command line

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 29 May 2024 03:36:54 GMT

Ellane learns the command line

29/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Exciting news! Which is below. This is just a quick message to say that I'm just copy/pasting the launch announcement from Mastodon as I'm short on time. Message follows! –j.

🚀 LAUNCHING A THING TODAY 🚀

My friend Ellane and I are pleased to launch a new mini-course:

🧑‍💻 Ellane learns the command line 🧑‍💻

She mentioned this to me a while ago, so we're going to do it live on Mastodon. Here, in this thread. We're thinking of it like a correspondence course.

You can't fit that much in a post, and formatting here isn't great, so the full posts will be on our mini blog at:

https://commandline.johnnydecimal.com

We'd love you to follow along.

#LearnCLI

22.00.0059 RSS feed fixed

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 28 May 2024 00:11:19 GMT

RSS feed fixed

28/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I am over the moon to announce that this site's RSS feed is now a first-class, fully-featured, all-singing-all-dancing full-text rich-image over-hyphenated feed!

This hasn't been the case, as those of you who follow the feed will know. I use Astro to create this site, and where I need to do something a little special -- my images, little blocks of JD content, and so on -- I write Astro 'components'.

They're little bits of JavaScript that get built to the final HTML that you see. This is one of the reasons I love Astro¹ -- I can use JavaScript to put it together, but you only get served static HTML.

That's why this page only uses about 500KB of data.² Compare that with Australia's Big W which loads a whopping 9MB: 18x the size!

But, these Astro components didn't render nicely to the RSS feed. I tried to catch most of the jankiness and replace it with a little apology and a link to the reason why, but a) that's still janky, and b) some slipped through.

I hated this. But fixing it myself was implausibly difficult and time consuming. And I knew that if I waited long enough the good folks at Astro would fix it for me (and the thousands others all clamouring for the same solution).

Astro 4.9's Container API

With Astro 4.9, there's now an experimental feature that fixes the issue. Thanks to delucis on GitHub, after some tweaking of their file to suit my site, the feed looks much better.

Images load inline. Footnotes render. And my own components at least display, even if they don't look perfect. It's good enough for now.

This is all free

It's worth noting that Astro is entirely free. For this, I am very grateful.

It shouldn't break your feed

I've tested it, all GUIDs and slugs remain the same, and for me, it's seamless. You shouldn't see a bunch of old stuff suddenly re-appear, or become marked as unread, or whatever.

But, y'know, something will inevitably break for someone. If that's you, I'm sorry.

Prove it works

If you insist.

What's RSS?

If you don't know what RSS is, this page is a great introduction.

Which is but one of a handful of 'static site generators' that have come about in the last few years. 11ty is another that I have my eye on. ↩
On first load. Caching brings subsequent page loads down to about 50KB, depending on the page. That's very tiny indeed. :-) ↩

22.00.0058 Get up early!

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 27 May 2024 06:08:44 GMT

Get up early!

27/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I don't do much in the way of 'life advice', but here's one: get up early!

As in, 05:00 early.

Now, if you'd told 27-year-old Johnny to get up at 05:00 he'd have kicked you in the shins. And rightly so! But now he's 47 and a grown-up adult with a bunch of stuff to do.

Getting up early is transformative. Lucy got me in to it -- it's been a life-hack of hers for years. Because the thing is, by 09:00, you've got most of it done. And the rest of the world is just getting started and you're feeling really good about yourself.

Then by 12:00 you've got all of it and more done, and you've still got a whole day ahead of you.

How to do it

It starts the night before.

I was a nightowl for many years and I always wondered how people could get up early. Turns out the trick is simple: you go to bed at 20:00. Consistently. You need to adjust your body clock.

Then, in the morning, take it easy. It's really early, remember?

Brew a pot of tea and just read your stories for a good half an hour. Or put that tea in a Yeti mug and go for a walk round the block. Morning walks are amazing.

Don't try to start work at 05:00. Don't do yoga. Nobody's watching.

That's it. Aim to start work around 06:00.¹ And these morning hours are precious: don't waste them. If you can knock out 3 hours of quality work before most other people have started, you are going to win.

Just don't try to get your kids to do it. Let them sleep.

This assumes you're working from home. At my last job the office opened at 07:00 and I was often the first in, waving my arms around to turn the lights on. When everyone else strolls in two hours later it's quite surreal. ↩

22.00.0057 Use JD to organise your tags?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 26 May 2024 07:53:46 GMT

Use JD to organise your tags?

26/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Following on from 'thoughts on tags' the other day, my idea -- which I have not tested -- is that you might organise your tags using the Johnny.Decimal system.

The problem was that we had, say, 65 music genres. In a flat list. With many that felt like they overlapped with each other.

So just apply the principles of this system to the tags themselves. And I think you could treat a tag as being analogous to a category; you don't need to go all the way to IDs.

Those music genres might then become:

10-19Rock

11 Hard/metal

12 Progressive

13 Alternative

20-29Electronic

21 Ambient

22 Techno/dance

23 Synthwave

30-39Blues & country

31 Gospel

32 Americana

...or whatever, you get the idea.

The point is that you apply the basic principles to your tags: only two deep, no more than ten, and so on.

Tagging photos

The obvious use-case is photos. I don't bother tagging mine,¹ but many people do. So build a tagging structure that has whatever you need: location, scene, people, mood.

If anyone tries this out, let me know.

My photo library is a hot mess. It's not organised at all. ↩

22.00.0056 Goals × life

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 25 May 2024 08:41:46 GMT

Goals × life

25/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Other than an actual day off -- given that I'm writing this blog mostly in the context of my job -- I've hit every day of #WeblogPoMo2024. And I'm proud of that.

I'm going to miss today. (Although this post threatens to turn in to Quine's paradox.)

This arbitrary target has been an amazing writing tool. I've written far more this month than ever before. And I've enjoyed it.

But this evening, when I'd normally write, intead we spent in our neighbour's front garden.

So rather than writing something for the sake of not breaking a streak, I'm not posting anything today. Other than this post, which I ask you not to count.

Because the message is this: it's okay to skip an arbitrary, inconsequential goal sometimes, if the alternative is spending time in real life. With your neighbours, round a fire, drinking a Negroni, looking at the sky.

22.00.0055 Thoughts on tags

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 24 May 2024 07:39:52 GMT

Thoughts on tags

24/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

A question at r/datacurator once again brings up the topic of tags vs. folders.

I say 'once again' because -- and there's no judgement here, it's just a statement of fact -- the good folks at r/datacurator seem really keen on tags.

Tags: what?

My system says that you should find the category that a thing belongs to -- note my emphasis on the singular -- and put the thing in that category. So your travel is 16 Travel and a trip is 16.37 Uruguay.

As with most things in life, there are two sides to the story. Categories are powerful because they force you to choose. That trip makes a lot of sense in travel, and you're going to find it easily.

On the other hand, not everything fits neatly in a single category. Recipes are a good example, and one that I touched on in 22.00.0014 Categorisation.

Because you might cook Pad Ka-Prao Moo for dinner¹, and you want to store it in your recipe manager. What category is it?

Thai, obviously. Oh and dinner. Aah, and pork. And spicy. And goes with rice, and quick and cheap and impressive yet simple.

We clearly have a problem. See also: music, photographs, your movie collection, and many other things.

Tags allow you to assign multiple tags to a thing. It's how my recipe app does things. It makes a lot of sense.

Sometimes.

The problem with tags

So you've decided to use tags. Great! Prob-lem solved.

Except now you have to organise your tags.

Let's have a look at the list of genres in Apple Music. A quick count tells me that there are about 65 to choose from, and I haven't added any of my own.

There's electronic, electronica, house, IDM/experimental, techno, and trance, all of which could plausibly describe the same track.

And there's no consistency. You might tag one track as electronic and a similar track as electronica on different days just because that's the mood you were in at the time.

Back to r/datacurator

So the crew over on Reddit recommend to people that they use the tagging feature built in to their file system to tag documents:

You can use a single file system, but you should try to use some kind of metadata classification so you can can add additional per unit classification.
NTFS used in windows has space for metadata.

If you didn't read the thread, the person is asking how to organise documents for their small business. And the suggestion is to use metadata per-file to add tags to, what, each document? For real?

And, to be clear, this means that you do not need a folder hierarchy. Because everything's tagged! Just chuck it all in one big bucket.

I think this is really impractical advice.

My experience at work

I've seen this tried at work. SharePoint² lets you set up document libraries controlled by tags.

It is, without exception, total chaos.

The case for tags

I'm not saying that tags are bad. They're great for your recipe app, or your photos.

Tomorrow I'll explain why it might be a good idea to use Johnny.Decimal to organise your tags. 🤯

But now, I have to cook.

Guess what's for dinner. ↩
SharePoint is a horrible Microsoft product that people who work in large organisations have to use. If you've never heard of it I genuinely envy you. ↩

22.00.0054 Rhodia notepads

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 23 May 2024 07:43:07 GMT

Rhodia notepads

23/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

We've established that I'm a pencil guy. What do I write on?

I discovered Rhodia's notepads years ago and I've since come to realise that I can't write on anything else.

It's the ivory paper. This photo doesn't do it justice, so if you've not seen it, go and find one. They're only about $10.

But make sure you get the ivory variant! The paper isn't white. And there's something about it that makes it much easier for my brain to write on. When I go back to white -- alas, Rhodia only makes an A4 dotpad in white -- it's almost blinding.

As well as being ivory, the paper really is lovely. And I love the way the top cover folds over the back. A really nice daily notebook: premium feel without breaking the bank. I've had dozens over the years.

For Post-it notes, I find the branded ones are worth the money. And for the love of all that's good in the world don't get sticky-note yellow! Tizzy it up a bit.

I'm also partial to a really cheap notepad. This one (photo, centre) is from Muji and the paper is really thin and crappy. It's like the toilet paper from high school. There's about 500 sheets on a pad, glued at the top. It was a dollar and I was robbed.

But the cheapness means you don't feel bad about making a ton of quick notes. Most of them don't last overnight -- they're just a place to scratch a thought. Then scrunch and it's in the bin.

(And yeah, the paper is grey not ivory. But I use this paper for quick scribbles, not considered thoughts.)

22.00.0053 Building a winter coop

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 22 May 2024 07:37:38 GMT

Building a winter coop

22/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Canberra winters¹ are beautiful. This is a typical week-ahead forecast.

But those mornings are cold, and Wendy is in a moult. They spend most mornings in 'bush 1', which is a fine bush but not a particularly warm spot.

So on our day off, we built them a winter coop. We started with a frame that we're no longer using.

If you're lucky, the ladies will come and 'help'.

Our local Bunnings -- at Canberra airport -- is spectacular. It's the best hardware store I've ever been in.

British people think that B&Q is a hardware store. I'm sorry, dear motherland, but no. You need to see a proper Bunnings.

I wrapped the frame in 0.5mm clear PVC ($14.59/metre) to make it like a greenhouse.

Wendy, predictably, is the first to have a look. She seems to like it, but tomorrow morning will be the test.

Mealworms will be deployed.

This is Wendy, right. Notice how her feathers, usually so splendid, look all ragged. Belinda, to the left, looks much more healthy. And that's Marie, above.

A lovely day off on a perfect Canberra day.

It's not actually winter yet, I know. But with any luck this will be the weather until September. ↩

22.00.0052 'Projects' vs. 'events'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 21 May 2024 04:29:39 GMT

'Projects' vs. 'events'

21/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Here's another way to think about the granularity of IDs.

Let's arbitrarily divide all of life in to two buckets.

Projects

Projects can be small. I'm engaged in battle with our local shopping centre over a dangerous car park exit. That's a project because it's this well-defined thing.

It started when I got angry at almost being killed, and it'll end when they install a barrier at the car park exit.

They can be whole-of-life things. House insurance isn't a project as such, but it is a defined thing that started (you got old enough to move in to your own place) and it'll end (you'll move in to a nursing home or die).

It's made up of a bunch of events like renew insurance or seek better quote.

In Johnny.Decimal, IDs should line up with your life's projects.

This is why we renamed project to system.

Events

Whereas an event is part of some broader project.

Going to get a scan for that achy knee isn't a project: it's just one event in the life project of being healthy or not aching or whatever.

And so Lucy didn't create an ID for the event which was going to get a scan for the achy knee.

She created a project, 12.20 Doctors and tests, and put it in there. Future events will fill out this project over time.

You can promote things

Let's say that achy knee turns in to some sort of knee replacement surgery and life-long rehabilitation. It might feel like it's outgrown 12.20 Doctors and tests.

Totally cool. Just promote it to its own thing later.

Err on the side of less granular

If in doubt, try to roll things together. Less things is less decisions is less ambiguity.

22.00.0051 Socks

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 20 May 2024 06:56:24 GMT

Socks

20/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

"Are you also neat in real life?", people sometimes ask.

Well, I just folded the socks.

22.00.0050 Granularity of IDs

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 19 May 2024 04:06:16 GMT

Granularity of IDs

19/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

While I was away last week, Lucy recorded herself creating her index. (We're still recording that section of the workshop.)

One of the items she added was a doctor's referral letter. My natural instinct would have been to create a very granular ID, something like:

12.20 Referral for scan for achy knee problem¹

...or maybe broaden it to the subject rather than the specific action:

12.20 Achy knee problem

This is just how I've always done it. But Lucy did this instead:

12.20 Doctors and tests

That's much less granular than I would have done, and I really like it.

Because I don't need a super-specific ID for that scan. In the grand scheme of my life, does every little thing that I do need its own ID? No. I'd be drowning in them.

Lucy's answer fits better with an idea that we came up with while recording the workshop: IDs are like the manila folders that we show on the home page. When you sit down to do 'some work', imagine yourself opening that folder. Ideally, everything you need is in it, and not much more.

And imagine that they cost about a dollar. So you wouldn't create them willy-nilly, but nor should creating one be something you consider too deeply.

Put the date in the scan's filename

The crucial extra step here, which Lucy did, is to name the scan so that it includes the date at the front:

2024-05-19 Referral for achy knee scan.pdf²

This way, folder 12.20 can contain an almost limitless amount of this sort of information without ever feeling cluttered.

If I'm lucky, this one folder will serve me for the rest of my life.

Officially endorsed

I really like this approach. I'll be doing it myself when I rebuild my own systems.

There is a follow-up to this post at 22.00.0052.

Where category 12 Health. ↩
I shouldn't have to tell you by now that yyyy-mm-dd is the only way you should ever write a date. Should I? ↩

22.00.0049 Which apps do I use?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 18 May 2024 06:41:58 GMT

Which apps do I use?

18/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Peter asks on Discord, what apps do you use to organise yourself and your website and your business life?

I'm in-between tools at the moment; part of the 'organisational bankruptcy'. But I'll give a run-down of what I've used in the past, and where I'm leaning for the future.

Notes apps

I've always preferred the really simple style of note-taking app that I think was popularised/invented by the legendary Notational Velocity, which was forked to the also-legendary nvALT. The former dates back to 2009.

They have a list of notes, and a search box. Typing in the search box instantly -- and instantly is really important -- filters the list of notes that you see to only include those that match the search.

That's it. That's the feature. Anything else is a bonus: any sort of folders, tags, whatever. You don't need anything else. You just need text search.

I'm not kidding – this is the whole app

This works amazingly well with Johnny.Decimal because your numbers provide a really powerful built-in filtering feature. Want to search for melbourne but only inside your category 16 Travel? Well then search for 16. melbourne.

ResophNotes

There was a clone for Windows: ResophNotes. Slightly different layout, exactly the same features. Which is to say, no features.

Alas as of last month (April '24), the website is offline. It had a good run.

RIP nvALT

Nothing good lasts forever, and nvALT is also no longer maintained. It's tough being a notes app.

Bear

Enter Bear. By now I guess a decade old,¹ it's one of the most respected Mac notes apps.

It has a ton of features but what I love about it is that most of them stay out of the way until you need them. This is important because...

I seek simplicity

This is my job now, and people look to me for recommendations. So part of my new thinking is that I want to be using the simplest apps that anyone can use.

If you're reading this you've probably heard of Obsidian. I don't use it. Because the first time I opened it I thought, whoa, this is complex, and I closed it immediately.

There is no way that your average person is going to use Obsidian. I'd be bad at my job if I suggested that they do so.

And I believe that my system will be better, more focused, more deeply considered, if I'm not leaning on some obscure Obsidian plug-in to get something done. No. You can do everything you need to do with nvALT. And if you want to write yourself a plug-in, go nuts. I'm not going to discourage you.

Currently, Bear is in that sweet-spot. It has an amazing sync service and native, beautiful apps for every Apple platform. It's very reasonably priced. It's well supported and has a secure future. It doesn't lock you in: you can export all of your stuff whenever you want.²

You should probably use Bear.

To-do apps

For a long time I used OmniFocus. And really heavily: I replicated my Johnny.Decimal structure entirely in the app, every ID having its own project.

This works really well. But I don't do it any more.

I'm not sure why. I think I just got sick of having so many 'to-dos' that were never getting done. It was making me feel bad.

I think my job was really hectic at the time. So I'd come home and have all of these tasks and maybe I just rejected it.

I don't actually enjoy being task-list driven. I usually have a sense of what needs to be done. Maybe I'll plan a thing out on paper.

Due

One app that I can't live without is Due.

It has one killer feature: it nags you, forever, until you tell it to stop. Over and over. This makes it basically impossible to forget to do a thing.

I use it sparingly, for what I call P1 tasks in this post.

Apple Reminders

We're a HomePod house. The kitchen has a stereo pair of the big ones, and the office and bedroom have a mini each.

This makes shouting 'hey Siri, remind me to do a thing' really convenient. Mostly for this reason -- I think the app is garbage -- I use Reminders.

Also see above re: simplest tools. But this is not a recommendation at this point. I need to consider this and get back to you.

Fantastical

I almost forgot Fantastical! I use this to interact with my reminders more than I do Reminders. Great app, indispensable, worth every penny of the subscription. It's how I use my calendar, 100%. Never open Apple's Calendar ever.

This is all up in the air

That'll do for now, because 10% of my daily thinking currently goes towards this problem. I'll have properly thought out recommendations and strategies for each of these classes of app later this year.

I'm not going to research all of this data, this is just off the top of my head. ↩
Some will say that the fact that Bear even uses its own proprietary database of notes -- vs. storing your stuff as hand-written parchment in your underground bunker -- is a deal-breaker. I think those people have perhaps strayed too far over in to idealism. ↩

22.00.0048 Learning Swift

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 17 May 2024 05:09:25 GMT

Learning Swift

17/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I've spent the day diving in to the Swift programming language that runs all modern Apple apps.

So far it's really similar to JavaScript which is great. Computer languages are a lot like spoken languages: if you already speak Italian, Spanish isn't far away. But Hungarian or Finnish are totally different.

Fortunately JavaScript and Swift feel like Mediterranean cousins.

I'm using Hacking with macOS: SwiftUI Edition by Paul Hudson and really enjoying it.

I'm looking forward to the bit where we start to build a UI; so far we're just in text-function mode. One step at a time.

I haven't given this deep thought...

This might be a rash decision. To write an app. But watching Lucy create her index in Apple Notes the other day really made me realise how much I could do if I had my own thing.

I think this deserves its own thing. And yes, this means yet another app. In the crowded PKM market.

But actually I'm not trying to compete with the Obsidians or the Notions. I made a decision a while ago to focus my efforts on the tools that anyone can use. Not just the PKM nerds. Obsidian isn't that.

I want my app to sit in this space; where someone who has no idea what 'PKM' is, but has a bunch of files on their desktop, could start to use it and have it be immediately useful, familiar, comforting.

That probably means design over features. Simple to start.

But let's see what SwiftUI can do first, and then think about app design.

22.00.0047 Request for help: how do I learn Mac software development?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 16 May 2024 05:41:16 GMT

Request for help: how do I learn Mac software development?

16/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Chatting to a friend yesterday made me realise that I really want to write software to help you manage your Johnny.Decimal system.

It'll be Mac initially, and iPad/iPhone maybe later. It can't be web -- not enough system integration -- and I'm sorry if you use Linux or Windows but I'm just one guy and Apple is what I know.

I can already code to a meh standard. I know JavaScript. So I don't need to learn the fundamentals of programming.

I listen to ATP, so I have a good high level understanding of the state of Mac development. I'd like to learn whatever's as default and future-proof as possible. So I guess that means Swift UI? (I know this might come with some trade-offs.)

So! What I'm looking for is a list of the best resources. Including but not limited to:

YouTube channels.
Courses, paid included.
Blogs or other personal sites that will tell me what to do.
Podcasts? Though I don't see audio as the ideal medium here.

Who's the Wes Bos of Swift? Who will mainline me information as fast as I can absorb it?

What's my fastest path to getting a minimally functional Mac app working?

Throw me suggestions via email or on the forum post associated with this entry, or on Mastodon.

Thanks! 🙏

22.00.0046 On holiday

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 15 May 2024 09:19:29 GMT

On holiday

15/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Today's a day off. I had lunch with a friend and a lovely walk back in to the city through my old neighbourhood.

See you all tomorrow. Heading back to Lucy and the chickens.

22.00.0045 I cycled to the airport

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 13 May 2024 22:22:01 GMT

I cycled to the airport

14/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I'm heading to Melbourne to see an old friend. Just a short trip, so a tiny bag, enabling me to fulfil a life's dream: I'm going to cycle to the airport.

Marie saw me off.

A strange dream, you might think. It's just a small thing, but I love the idea of being able to do something so big -- fly to Melbourne -- without having to get in the car.

Also I don't own a car, so it'll save me at least $50 on Uber rides.

There aren't many cities you could do this, and there certainly aren't many capital cities. But Canberra's a funny little place. A lot of people don't even realise it's the capital -- they assume that's Sydney.

At the top of our street you hit Anzac Parade. That's the Australian War Memorial at the left/north, then you look down the parade and over Old Parliament House to Parliament House at the right/south.

A tiny panorama doesn't really do it justice. It's better on street view.

At the bottom of the parade you do a left, turn in past ASIO (our FBI), and you hit Lake Burley Griffin.

Over the lake there is the Parliamentary Triangle. It's a delightful part of the world; whenever we're there we can't quite believe that it's where we live. It's like a scene from the original Star Trek, one of those episodes where they land on some utopian world and everyone is young and beautiful and they're all exercising with a big smile and they're rolling hoops and wearing lilac leotards and then later you realise actually it's really sinister because actually everyone's a lizard and they eat the old people but on the surface it's an idyllic paradise.

That's what it feels like when you cycle round Lake Burley Griffin.

Over the way there you've got the National Gallery of Australia, the High Court of Australia, Questacon (the science museum), and the National Library of Australia. We work in the library sometimes, it's lovely and the Wi-Fi is epic.

So then you ride along the lake for a bit...

...and you get to the airport. By now my hands and toes are a touch cold -- it's about 7°C -- but not too bad.

The bike gets parked.

And I'm in one of the loveliest airports you've ever been in.

The flight was on time (actually we're running early), I'm in 5A on a lovely QantasLink A220 which feels like it's been recently renovated. Seating is 2+3 so there's loads of room.

Whenever we fly Qantas we wonder what Americans would think of Australian domestic flights. No offence, America, but I've done a cross-country economy flight on one of your main carriers. We do it better.

Oh and this is cool! I'll publish this from the plane, which has Wi-Fi. Better hurry up, we're coming in to land.

22.00.0044 Howcome Johnny is disorganised?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 12 May 2024 22:40:36 GMT

Howcome Johnny is disorganised?

13/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Yesterday I repeated something that I first said at the start of the year: some of my own systems are disorganised.

So here I am, this guy with a site and a blog, and my stuff's a mess. Seems odd. Why should you trust anything I say?

I didn't take my own advice

The simplest explanation is that, in this instance, I didn't take my own advice.

I quit my job a year ago and that's when this system, D85 Johnny.Decimal business, started.

I didn't really know what I was doing; there was no plan for the business. I just quit one day! So I knocked something together out of necessity, as I went. The system just evolved.

And, to be clear, it's not a bad system. It works. We're here, working, and we can find things. I just know that it can be a lot better.

I hadn't written my own advice

It would have been hard to follow the step-by-step procedures that I outline in the workbook because I hadn't written it yet!

So that's not a bad excuse.

Also, working it out is instructive

I don't pretend to have a perfect solution to all of this. My thoughts are evolving; the Johnny.Decimal system evolves; and the very nature of the work that we do evolves.

I'm just listening to Cal Newport's latest podcast. He's giving a rundown of the state of productivity advice since the '90s.

There's the 'sage advice and optimism' era of Stephen Covey, then the 'productivity pr0n' era, defined by David Allen's Getting Things Done® and Merlin Mann's site 43 Folders.

Then in the late 2000s we got sick of working so much and we move in to the era of 'lifestyle design', defined by Tim Ferris' The 4-hour Workweek.

And that's where I'm up to. The point is, this stuff shifts. Whether it needs to or not, who knows. Is it all a fad? To some extent. Is it generational? Probably a bit of that.

So I'm trying to think about the type of system that I want Johnny.Decimal to be. I don't actually see myself as a 'PKM' nerd. I'd like to help normal people -- who have no idea what that acronym means and don't care -- to be more organised.

Because we have no option these days. In the late 2000s you could plausibly get by without using a computer all day. Then they invented the iPhone and everything changed.

So now you have to use a computer, for essentially everything, whether you want to or not. I'd like to find a way to navigate that fact without burdening the world with yet more procedures; without it having to be your hobby.

Most people don't have a deep passion for knowledge management. They just want to know where they saved that receipt when the thing breaks.

Anyway. A work in progress.

22.00.0043 Started re-organising system D85

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 12 May 2024 05:16:04 GMT

Started re-organising system D85

12/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

At the start of the year I declared 'organisational bankruptcy'.¹ I haven't had time to do anything about it since then (recording the workshop is a full-time job), but I started today.

My scope statement is up.

In scope

Anything to do with the running of Johnny.Decimal as a business.
Specifically I'm going to bring 30-39 Coruscade over from my personal system. That's the company that the business operates under.

Out of scope

Anything that is 100% website related. I have a separate system for that, D01 johnnydecimal.com.
- You're looking at that system: it's what gives structure to the site.
- But if we create non-text content that then gets published on the site -- a video, say -- that's not in D01. That's part of D85.

And here's the first bunch of Post-its. These have come from the things I've done over the last week, which I've been writing down.

Next up I'll go through our file system and get everything represented there on the wall.

Note that I'm doing 20-29 Discovery (ref. workbook/workshop) by myself, but when it comes to 30-39 Build your areas & categories I'll do that with Lucy as this is a system that we both use.

Of course if she also discovers some stuff and sticks it on the wall, that's cool.

It'll all be documented

Here at the very least, and I expect we'll do some videos for the YouTube channel.

Which, to be explicit, means 'my own system is a mess and needs to be started over'. Financially we're okay, though we'd be better if you gave us money okthx. ;-) ↩

22.00.0042 Two (easy) recipes

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 11 May 2024 04:01:43 GMT

Two (easy) recipes

11/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

Saturday feels like the day I talk about stuff that I do round the house, so here are a couple of really easy recipes.

They both come from my mam. I've been cooking them both for about 30 years; or, she has, and I used to hang around and help.

I love cooking. It keeps you busy: gives your hands something to do but allows your brain to wander a bit. It's great thinking time.

Anyway, neither of these will tax your skills (or wallet) too much.

Vegetable soup

It's getting cold, and that means soup. This is so easy anyone can make it.

Ingredients

50g knob of butter.¹
One large leek.
One large head of broccoli.
Two large carrots.
Three large potatoes.
Black pepper.
Powdered vegetable stock.

Instructions

In a really big pan (mine might be 5 litres?), heat the butter.
Chop the leek in to 1cm rounds and fry until soft. Don't brown.
Chop the carrot, broccoli including stalk, and peeled potatoes in to chunks. It doesn't really matter how big. Add to pan.
Add 2 litres of boiling water.
Add a really good amount of freshly ground black pepper. I do about 1tbsp of peppercorns but I like it spicy.
Add 3tsp of the vegetable stock, or adjust to taste (it's mostly salt).
Boil gently for at least an hour.

Eat with fresh bread slathered in really good butter.

The rest will keep in the fridge for a few days, or it freezes really well.

Corned beef and potato pie

This has been a favourite as long as I can remember. When I was in my early 20s I had cool jobs where I'd fly all over the world. Mam used to make a pie to take with me. It'd be in my luggage, wrapped in silver foil.

So I'd land in Nigeria, check in, and eat a slice of pie.

One of the first web pages I ever made was this recipe. It would have been at http://york.ac.uk/~jen101/pie.html or similar. 1995! Lost like tears in rain, alas.

Ingredients

2 frozen puff pastry sheets. If you can find the stuff made with butter vs. vegetable oil, obviously it's better.
One 340g tin of corned beef. (The 'lite' variety works great.)
One medium onion.
Three potatoes.
Black pepper.
An egg.

Instructions

In an 8" shallow pie dish, blind bake the pastry base at 180C for about 15 minutes.²
Boil the peeled, chopped potato. Drain.
Chop the onion: half quite fine, half a little larger.
Add the chopped onion, corned beef, and a good helping of black pepper to the pan with the boiled potatoes. Mash roughly.
Add the beefy-potato-mush to the pie. Top with the other pastry sheet.
Bake at 180C for about half an hour. I find turning the top oven element on at the beginning puffs the pastry a little better; then I switch back to regular fan oven.
Near the end, beat the egg and brush over the top.

It'll be thermonuclear so let it cool a touch before eating. Best with mushy peas and gravy.

I think I prefer this cold the next day. But I've always been a cold-savoury person. I like the way that everything congeals. I could eat a kilo of this for lunch the day after (with a bit of hot English mustard).

At least, that's how much Lucy thinks I put in. Let's just say I'm liberal with my weights when it comes to butter. ↩
I don't have ceramic weights or anything. I find covering the pastry in baking paper -- really flatten it on, get a good seal -- does the job well enough. I remove it half way through the blind bake. ↩

22.00.0040 I went to a regional expo

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 09 May 2024 05:15:30 GMT

I went to a regional expo

9/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I cycled up to the inaugural ~~Canberra~~ CBR Small Business Expo today.¹ Here is my report.

I got lucky: crystal show!

Who doesn't love sharing a conference centre with a bunch of pseudo-scientific woo.

And it turns out that the 'Canberra Crystal Show' was just a guy selling a bunch of crystals. So, a shop.

It's a shame that the people who think crystals "...can help one attain 'Lemurian awareness' -- the balancing, nurturing, loving, spiritual and sensuous consciousness..." have ruined what would otherwise be a perfectly lovely rock.

It's all pretty 'regional'

Lucy and I have this term for things that are a bit, well ... regional. You know. Not quite big-city-lights. Like, you're not going to stumble across David Letterman at this thing.

We find 'regional' things tremendously endearing. The whole of Canberra -- the capital of Australia, I will remind you -- is pretty regional. This expo was super regional.

I met the Minister for Something

May I present Mick Gentleman, Minister for something to do with business, they said. It's not really clear what?

Anyway, he was available, so he gave a little welcome speech and I asked him for a selfie. He was very obliging.

That's the Grease Monkey chicken van over my shoulder. When I first started travelling to Canberra (as a weekly FIFO from Melbourne) we'd go to Grease Monkey every week.

Every subsequent week we'd say, shall we try somewhere else tonight? And we'd say, yeah. Then we'd finish work and go to Grease Monkey.

I got sushi today because if I got Grease Monkey for lunch Lucy would have given me the stink-eye when I got home.²

Conflicting advice

I saw a talk given by Emily of Ivy Social. I went in to the session thinking, I'd already cancelled my Facebook account by the time Emily started high school, there's nothing Emily can teach me about social media.

I was wrong. It was a great session and I wrote a bunch of stuff down.

One of her key messages was: be authentic. I really liked Emily.

The next guy's talk was about how small business can use AI tools. He explained how you could just give Meta AI a web page and ask it to write you a month's worth of blog posts and social media.

I wasn't sure how authentic that was. I wanted to shout "nobody will read this turgid dross!" from the back of the room but I was eating ~~a fried chicken burger~~ my sushi.

He was one of these older blokes who can't actually explain anything very well. "Yeah then we just load up AI and tell her what we want", he said, and yes he called the AI "her".

I don't know who invited him. Maybe I'll have a word with Mick.

He said that 'prompt engineers' get paid $300k. I really don't think they do.

Anyway. I really liked Emily.

I feel sorry for cities that don't have a natural three-letter acronym. For example, I'm from Sunderland. What do you do with that? ↩
Lucy loves Grease Monkey. I'd never get it without her. ↩

22.00.0041 How I feel about AI

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 09 May 2024 05:15:30 GMT

How I feel about AI

10/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

The phone rings.
Hello, this is John Noble from the late 1980s.

Hi John, it's you in 2024. They call us Johnny now. What are you up to?

Oh hi. I'm just messing about with ELIZA on my Amiga 500. It's an AI, you can ask it questions and stuff!

Cool. Honestly I thought you'd be a bit more surprised that I called you.

Anyway, I remember ELIZA. Hey I've got news. We have actual AI now!

No way! Real AI?

Well, kinda. They call it 'AI' but there's nothing intelligent about it. Setting that technicality aside, it's pretty amazing.

You can talk to it and it's basically indistinguishable from a human. You can ask it almost anything and it'll give you a pretty good answer. It can translate language essentially flawlessly, instantaneously, and you can speak that text out loud and have the translation read back to you. Some studies have shown that it's as good as your GP in diagnosing medical issues. It's being used to design new antibacterials, which we really need. It can make therapy more accessible. It can enhance education by personalizing learning experiences for students. It's revolutionizing customer service with chatbots that offer instant assistance. In fields like agriculture, AI-driven solutions optimize crop yields and reduce resource usage. It's also contributing to environmental conservation through predictive analytics to combat climate change. Additionally, AI-driven robotics are advancing manufacturing efficiency and safety standards.

It's so good, I wrote the first half of that paragraph myself and I asked ChatGPT to finish it off with 'more very positive things that AI can do' and it did that, instantly, for free.

Wow! That is amazing. So how does everybody feel about it?

We all hate it.

Oh. That doesn't make sense. The technology sounds extraordinary.

Yeah the technology is. But it's been rammed down our throats and we're all sick of it already.

I use this platform called Thinkific to host my course videos. I spend hours and hours thinking about how to teach people these skills that I have; meticulously crafting these lessons so that each flows cohesively from the next; so that the message is clear, so that the viewer is taken on a journey from concept to concept.

But now there's this massive button that you can't turn off that wants to create your course for you 'with AI'. As if you, the cretin, have signed up for this teaching platform but actually you've no idea how or what to teach. It's demeaning. And so the internet is being filled with this dreck, this tedious, banal slop, to the point where real human content is becoming hard to find.

Right. That seems like a sha-- And then you've got these companies that basically steal all of your data to make these new AIs. Because they need to be trained on actual human data.

The problem is that we've structured society so that in order to make anything, you eventually need it to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. So rather than having normal companies that pay normal prices for things and treat people like humans, you've got these absurd structures whose only purpose is to pay back their investors, at all costs. So they'll just shaft their users in service of these billions of dollars.

I can sense your frust-- So the whole world has been taken over by these assholes and what should have been an amazing, transformational technology -- I haven't even mentioned the internet yet have I? that's a whole other thing -- anyway so it feels like what should have been transformational is just being ruined because a bunch of dudes have to be absurdly, offensively rich at everyone else's expense. It's not like they can even spend the money, they just want it so they can say that they have it. And so everything's screwed and it's only getting worse.

...

Sorry. Are you still there?

Yeah. Look, is there anything I can do from the late 1980s?

Yeah. There are these thing called emoji. In October 2010 with the release of Unicode 6.0 there's a new one: it's called 'sparkles'.

I need you to find whoever designed that emoji and...

22.00.0039 One star

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 08 May 2024 04:33:38 GMT

One star

8/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

The workbook received a one-star review today. One star means that you couldn't like a thing less. You couldn't imagine it being worse.

The review?

Your templates won't download with Mac Safari

Our reviewer -- let's call him Robert¹ -- purchased the 120-page book at 11:09 and had one-starred it by 11:20 because he couldn't download the templates. Which are at the back of the book.

He hasn't even read it.

A better ratings system

Years ago, eBay removed the ability to negatively review a purchase. Then YouTube removed the display of 'thumbs-downs' on a video. (You can still mash the thumbs-down button if it makes you feel better. I hope it doesn't.)

I propose the abolition of the simple 1-5 star system. It serves nobody well.

Instead, you should have to click a link that describes, in words, how you feel. Here's how they translate.

`⭐️`

I could not imagine how this product could possibly be worse. Everything about it is pure crap. It has no redeeming qualities.

I wish a pox on the creator and their family. If I ever meet them I'll spit on their shoe. I hate myself for spending money on it.

`⭐️⭐`

This product is pretty bad, but is nevertheless serviceably useful. I'll use it begrudgingly if I need to, until it breaks, at which point I'll find a better model to replace it.

`⭐️⭐️⭐️`

This product does what I expected it to do. Not much more, not much less.

If every product was like this life would be like living in Zürich: banal, but tolerable.

`⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️️`

This product is pretty good! It's about how I expect most products to be.

If I made a product and it was like this I'd be pretty happy with myself, but I'd strive to do better next time.

`⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️`

The phone rings
"Hello?"
"Hey Alex, it's Johnny. You need to come over here and see this thing. Now."

Because that's his name. ↩

22.00.0038 More than 100 customers?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 07 May 2024 08:36:47 GMT

More than 100 customers?

7/31 daily posts as part of WebvlogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

User PMunch asks on Discord:¹

Basically I'm worried about space

There's more, but you can read it in the Discord thread. In summary: we have more than 100 customers. How does that work?

I never pretend that Johnny.Decimal is perfect, and one of the ways that the standard implementation 'fails' is when you have more than n number of something. More than 10 categories of thing, for example.

Or more than 100 of pretty much anything. One of my design principles is that you don't have more than 100 of anything.

So, we need to adapt. What I'll do eventually is document these patterns formally, so I can give them names and refer to them.

I've done that for the first pattern I talk about: multiple systems [13.01].

Until then, here's me thinking out loud. I'd like to do more of these: maybe one a week? Send me your questions.

Invitation if you need it. ↩

22.00.0037 Perfect albums

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 06 May 2024 06:19:43 GMT

Perfect albums

6/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

On this week's Hemispheric Views the gents once again cause the community to respond. This time: what's the perfect album?

I'll submit two.

Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms (1985)

Links to listen on all the services.

This album arguably got me in to music. I heard Walk of Life on Newcastle's Metro 97.1FM¹ somewhere in the late 80s. I would have been about 14.

I didn't know what it was -- sacrilege! Dire Straits are from Newcastle, total local heroes -- so I called the station. The lady told me, and that was it. Now 14-year-old me likes music.

Yeah yeah so this is dad rock. It's an absolute classic though, nothing wrong from start to end. And it's stood the test of time. We still listen to it, often.

Fun fact: this was the first ever CD with the DDD mastering symbol on the back. The three letters were either A or D for analog & digital and they indicated how the album had been recorded, mixed, and mastered.

Most CDs were AAD, very few were ADD, and this was the first DDD.

If I only listen to one track it should be...

The title track, #9 Brothers in Arms. If it doesn't melt your heart you might not have one.

Destroyer's Kaputt (2011)

Cookie rooftop, Melbourne. 2011 or thereabouts. A sunny afternoon with friends. The DJ plays the track Kaputt, I am instantly in love, I ask them what it is, my life is changed.

And I really mean changed. This album set my musical taste on a whole new trajectory. I discovered a love for, what? Shoegazey-lofi-jazzy-soundscapey-lushness? I dunno, this isn't a Pitchfork review.

Just listen to the album. And if you like it, you should immediately then listen to The Radio Dept.'s Clinging to a Scheme, which could easily be on this page but I have actual work to do so a link's all you're getting.

But really, listen to that as well. The two are partners in my mind. One always follows the other.

If I only listen to one track it should be...

The title track, #6 Kaputt. I am in awe of talent like this.

I see the cretins rebranded to Hits Radio North East, which I refuse to link to. ↩

22.00.0036 Quitaversary

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 05 May 2024 01:20:55 GMT

Quitaversary

5/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

On Sunday 7th May 2023 I went to bed. Lucy was already there. I remember lying silently for a few minutes. Then I asked her a question.

"Can I quit my job tomorrow?"

I Was An IT Consultant

That felt like a confession worthy of title case. All my life I've been an IT Consultant. Not a bad way to make a living, and like Cal Newport says: do what you're good at. I was good at it.

And some of the jobs were great. Maybe I'll write about some of my past jobs one day. But the job I had last May was not great.

Johnny at his old job

It was so not-great, I felt bad taking the money. It was so so not-great, I felt like it was damaging my reputation. And I can't just 'turn up' at work: if you're paying me to do a job, I am going to do a stellar job. On this project, that really just wasn't possible.

The state of modern IT infrastructure projects isn't the point of this post. Let me know if you want to hear me rant about that later, though. I would be hap-py to do that.

At the same time, my little forum was starting to see a bit of action. The sort of thing that makes you think, huh, have I got a thing?

When you're 46(?), and you have a thing, it's time to do something with that thing

46? 47? Honestly when you get to this age you stop counting. Late 40s.

So when you're in your late 40s and all you've ever wanted to do is not work for someone else, and you realise that you've got this thing, then it might be time to do something with that thing.

I've looked for 'the thing' for years. Friends and I have had weekly meetings where we try to come up with 'the thing'. The problem is that I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to be the boss of a big thing. The CEO of some company. Responsibility. Power. Staff. Stress.

I just don't care. I'm not that guy. I want what they sometimes disparagingly call a 'lifestyle business'. Something that pays the bills, probably won't make you rich, but doesn't consume your entire life.

Well here I am with this realisation. This little website that I've kept going for about a decade now¹ is my thing.

Anyway so I say to Lucy, "can I quit my job?"

And after a long chat discussing the pros (I don't go to that place any more) and the cons (food costs money) we decide, yeah, I'll quit.[^notaquitter] To spend time on the thing.

It happened fast.

I told my consulting company² on Monday morning. Two weeks notice.

They told 'the customer' -- whose project was the shambles to be escaped -- on Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday morning my account manager gave me a little shush and come with me wave from down the corridor. We went downstairs.

"Alan is having you offboarded", he tells me. Alan³ was the Program Director. He wasn't there; he hid somewhere else that day. (I never saw him again.)

And sure enough, by midday on Tuesday I had handed back the customer's laptop and access card. So now I find myself at my SmallConsultingCo and we're all wondering what I do for the next 8½ days.

"Rather than me sit here and pretend to work," I say, "why don't you pay me out until the end of this week. And I'll go home now, and we're done."

And they say yes.

So at about 3pm on Tuesday I walk in to the garden. Lucy's there with the chickens. "I'm finished", I say. "I'm done."

Johnny in the garden with chickens

We had no plan and so for a while I used Microsoft Teams

A sentence I hoped never to write.

Given the disaster I had just witnessed, surely, I thought, helping large organisations be more organised is the way.

And so I started looking at developing a Teams app. Now I don't know if you've ever looked at developing a Teams app.

Do not.

The state of Microsoft Teams development isn't the point of this post. Let me know if you want to hear me rant about that later, though. I would be hap-py to do that.

The state of disorganisation inside 'the enterprise' -- the pure raw chaos that is today's workplace, the sheer immensity of the challenge that would be making it sane again, the almost incomprehensible extent to which it's broken and the fact that the people ostensibly in charge of your organisation's data have no idea what to do and have essentially given up -- isn't the point of this post. Let me know if you want to hear me rant about that later, though. I would be hap-py to do that.

This feels like a natural place to end. Because the next part of this story is where we did find a thing to make that was useful, and I'll tell that another day if I run out of more interesting things to write.

Suffice to say, 🥳

It was one of the best decisions of my life.

Thank you. Because we can afford to buy food because of your support. That sounds cheesy but it's totally true. Whether you've bought one of my things or just spread the word or just been a friend online or whatever: you make this possible.

This is my job now. One year ago I couldn't have imagined it.[^notaquitter]: By the way, I've quit very few jobs. I believe that if you say you'll do a thing, you should stay and do the thing. In this case, there was no thing worth completing.

That's the earliest scrape that the archive has, but the site was registered on 2012-01-23. ↩
A really nice little crew; this thing wasn't their fault. ↩
Names have been changed to protect the incompetent. ↩

22.00.0035 Floors chores

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 04 May 2024 04:32:53 GMT

Floors chores

4/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

On Saturday morning, I dust and vacuum the house.

Without fail. Every week. For years now.

We call it the 'floors chores' and it's just one of my jobs. I've come to love it: we eat breakfast,¹ I clean the kitchen, then I put on my noise cancelling AirPods and vacuum while listening to ATP.

Routines are powerful but they're hard to establish. We treasure the floors chores because it means our house is always clean. By now it's effortless.

It would be ideal if we could reach this state with our work. In his latest book Slow Productivity,² Cal Newport advocates for the formation of rituals:

"...form your own personalized rituals around the work you find most important."
– Slow Productivity, p. 163.

So why are they so hard to establish?

Picture your work day

And by 'work' I just mean whatever it is that you want to get done.

If we assign shapes and colours to tasks, where shapes are analagous to categories and colours to areas (in Johnny.Decimal parlance), our days mostly look like this.

The types of work you do flow like words on the page, from left to right, then on to the next row.

Chaos! None the wonder you can't concentrate. Every switch is a switch in mental state; in the knowledge that you're holding in working memory; in the files and apps you need open to perform the task.

This is not the best way to work.

Let's reimagine. Here's the same shapes, rearranged. And let's introduce some line breaks; perhaps they're actual breaks in your day?

Similar shapes have been moved together, and we've moved all of the 'heavy' stuff to the front; maybe it's harder work that you should do while your brain is fresh?

Work in categories

I think we usually behave like the first diagram because we haven't sufficiently categorised our work to enable us to behave like the second.

And this calls back to yesterday's post and my desire to eliminate 'due dates'.

Imagine establishing a routine such that you know, as sure as I know that I'll do the floors chores next Saturday morning, that on the first Sunday morning of the month you tackle all of those heavy blue boxes.

And say they represent all of your home finances: paying your bills, checking account balances, updating your subscriptions, transferring your health insurance, finding a better savings account.

If you knew that you did that every month, you'd never need to be reminded to do it.

And you'd never get that slighly panicked feeling: oh crap, did I forget to pay the credit card this month?

How nice might that be?

Usually (but not always) a boiled egg with soldiers. ↩
Review to follow. ↩

22.00.0034 The classes of to-do

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 03 May 2024 01:15:53 GMT

The classes of to-do

3/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

As in, what types of to-do are there.

Observations

This text should be considered an RFC, v0.1. In non-nerd terms: I'd like your feedback, and this is a very early draft.

I would potentially like to define these 'classes of to-do' as a standard in the context of Johnny.Decimal.

We use terms MUST, SHOULD, etc. as per RFC2119.

We classify these by priority: 4 is lower than 1. This aligns with most service desk ticketing systems: a 'priority 1' is the highest priority incident.

If I say 'we'll discuss this later' I might mean in a later article.

Priority 4 (`P4`): someday/maybe/'tickler file'

These things aren't really 'to-dos' at all. They're ideas of things that you might like to do, maybe, some day.

Sometimes these are unrealistic. The other day I wrote a task, 'buy an old Volvo'. I'm almost certainly never going to buy an old Volvo, and I'm certainly not going to buy one in the next five years.

So why even write this down? Because it forms part of your story. These are the things that tell you who you want to be. Remembering them guides you through life. They keep you on some sort of track.

They're good, in other words; don't stop writing them down. You will actually do some vanishingly small percentage of these things, and it doesn't matter if you don't do the rest.

But you MUST NOT allow these 'tasks' to clutter the things you actually need to do. They MUST, therefore, be in a separate task system.

And I don't mean that they should be somehow tagged-flagged-foldered-filtered away from your actual to-dos while being stored in the same task system. No. They MUST be kept in a separate system.

Definition: a 'task system' is an isolated system where one or more tasks -- i.e. to-do-like items -- is kept. 'Post-it notes' is one task system. 'Apple Reminders' is another. 'A text file' is another.

We use the term 'task system' vs. 'to-do system' to move away from the term 'to-do'. Not everything you write down is something you must, one day, do.

`P3`: Should do/nice to do

You should eat more vegetables. You should floss. You should update your blog software more frequently. You should cancel that subscription that you don't use. You should prepare that recipe that you saved two years ago. You should buy someone flowers when it isn't their birthday.

But if you do not, nothing catastrophic happens. Life goes on -- with inconveniences or minor costs that your inaction has introduced, perhaps -- but, nevertheless.

These things are actions: they are things 'to do'. You should do them. So they SHOULD exist in your primary task system.

However, they MUST NOT ever nag you with an alert or alarm. If a 'should do' task interrupts your focus, your system is broken.

Therefore these tasks MUST NOT have a 'due date'. They're not allowed to make you feel bad if you don't do them. You look at them on your schedule.

So how does this stuff ever get done?

P3 tasks are quality-of-life improvements. If you did more of them, life would be incrementally better.

The problem with our current handling of P3 tasks is that they pop up and interrupt us all the time, while we're really not in the mood to do them. So if we did everything that our task manager told us to do, when it told us to do it, we'd be all over the place. It'd be a productivity shambles.

I think we know this, if only subconsciously. That's why we don't do so many of these things when previous-us decided that we should.

The other problem is that it's easily possible to have hundreds of P3 tasks. They can quickly overwhelm the rest of your system.

The solution is to implement strategies to deal with this problem, which we'll get to later.

Project subtasks

Note that many if not most subtasks that are in service of the completion of a larger project are 'should do' tasks. The vast majority of your work does not deserve the privilege of interrupting you while you are doing something else.

You know it's the job. You know you need to do it: writing it down is more of a memory/planning thing than a reminder/nagging thing.

`P2`: To do

Now we're in to the stuff that you really actually should do. Not kidding.

Pay your rent: you get kicked out, eventually, if you don't. Cancel an annual subscription that will renew for $500. Submit your timesheets before 2pm on Friday or you eventually get a formal warning. Renew your driver's licence or you're catching the bus.¹

These tasks SHOULD live in the same task system as your P3 tasks. Because as we'll see, P1 tasks SHOULD also live in their own system, and if P3 and P2 don't co-exist then we've got 4 task systems and that's obviously silly.

I'll summarise all of this with a table, later.

P2 tasks are essentially P3 tasks but in this case you MAY set a due date. Although with good processes and habits, which we'll discuss later, I think we can mostly avoid due dates.

Because the problem is the same as we described just above: every interruption knocks you off what you were doing. If we can design a system with very few interruptions -- one where we choose what to do, and when to do it, and where we trust ourselves to actually do that -- then I think peace and harmony will prevail.

`P1`: Catastrophic if not done

The highest priority task is that which results in catastrophe if not done.

When next door was on holiday, I fed their cat twice a day. If I don't feed the cat, it dies.

When I put bread in the oven, if I don't take it out approximately 25 minutes later, a day's effort is wasted, the house fills with acrid smoke, and in the worst case it sets on fire.

If you don't buy tickets within an hour of them going on sale, they sell out.

There's a subtle subclass of P1 tasks that might be useful:

Completion-catastrophic: the cat needs to be fed twice a day but it isn't really critical when. Morning and evening will do.
Time-catastrophic: the bread really does have to come out in 25 minutes.

I believe that this class of tasks SHOULD exist in their own task system. We naturally do this anyway: we set a timer on our phone or we ask our home assistant to 'remind me in 20 minutes'. We write something on a sticky note and leave it in a prominent place.

We'd never trust these things to our main task system because we know they'd get lost there.

Also I think having a separate place for these items really drives home their importance. When you see a notification from that app, you know it's time to stop messing around. When your phone alarm goes off and it says 'take bread out of oven' you never dismiss it and keep doing what you were doing. You know it needs to be done now.# Scheduled things

Orthogonal to this -- I'll draw this up as a diagram later -- are things that are scheduled.

It should go without saying that something that is scheduled -- a meeting, an appointment -- must happen at that time.

Here I consider a 'scheduled' task to involve someone else who isn't you. They often require you to be somewhere, even if that somewhere is virtual, e.g. a Zoom meeting.

You'd be an ass if you just didn't turn up to stuff when you said you would.

Scheduling your own time is a separate thing which we will discuss later.These thoughs form the basis of how we'll be re-structuring Lucy's life in the workshop. There'll be more on this topic in future posts.

I'd love your feedback. This forum post is probably the best place.

This one might be a P1 if you live somewhere rural and you absolutely depend on your car for transport. All of these scenarios are situation-dependent. ↩

22.00.0033 I love pencils

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 01 May 2024 23:19:31 GMT

I love pencils

This post is the second of at least 31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I have a gorgeous fountain pen: a Pilot 'Vanishing Point'. Mine's black and has developed a Leica-like patina such that the underlying brass shows through.

I love it. And I never use it. Because I rediscovered pencils.

Pencils are easier. They're more adaptable. They smell better and I think they're prettier. They're cheaper; you can have a collection of pencils. I have at least 30, mostly sourced from the wonderful (Australian) site Pencilly.

I spent a hundred-ish dollars on my ridiculous pencil collection. About the price of one fountain pen.

Pencils are objectively better than pens. Fight me.

A few of my favourites

Here's the daily drivers.

Mitsubishi 9850 HB

If I could only have one, this would be it. The lead is perfect for daily writing, and it has an eraser. It's cheap and available. It's the best all-rounder...

Colleen 2020 Super Drawing

...but not my favourite. That's the discontinued Colleen 2020. This guy doesn't love it but for me it's just a beautiful writing instrument.

These are not readily available, and they're a couple of dollars each. I have a supply that should last me a good few years, but as a result I don't use it every day.

Blackwing Pearl

The pencil snobs just turned up their noses. Blackwing! Isn't that a little common?

I hate snobbery. And I love this pencil. Actually this is the reason I rediscovered pencils. Me and Lucy were on holiday in NYC, staying at the Arlo, and they had these in the cutesy little lobby shop.

I didn't buy any at the time -- we travel light, and aren't souvenir collectors -- but the memory stayed with me, and I ordered a set when we got home. This was the realisation: that pencils aren't dull. Every pencil isn't the cheap thing you were given at school.

Pencils can be beautiful things. Crafted. Designed.

And it turns out the Pearl -- my preferred of their standard range thanks to its slightly-harder-than-the-darker-one lead -- is a terrific daily pencil.

I have them scattered all over the house. I Blu Tack them to the back of notebooks. I use them down to the nub. A+ pencil.

(Also, snobs, I use Global knives and I love my Lodge pan. Up yours.)

Caran d'Ache Swiss Wood

This one's a little fancy and so is the price. But they last forever thanks to their you-must-be-joking-if-you-think-that's-HB-it's-more-like-2H lead.

So they're great for finer work, such as writing on tiny little Post-it notes.

Oh and they're made of Swiss beech wood and they smell amazing. Also I'm a sucker for Swiss iconography.

On doing-one-thing-at-a-time

The index card experiment continues and I'm loving it.

Here's today's story of not doing one thing at a time and having it bite me in the arse. There's an issue with Astro, which I use to build this site. One of its plugins is turning "curly quotes" in to "incorrect" curly quotes.

I'm working round it by running a regex, grep -r '\w>"\w' ./dist, over the built site. If this picks up any bad quotes I just go in and hand-fix them. But when I add this to my build step in package.json, it breaks the Netlify build.

Long story short, I didn't realise this because here's what I did:

Fixed some quotes.
Did a build.
git push to send it to Netlify to build for prod.

...at which point I should have waited and just watched it complete and then checked it. But what did I do instead?

I immediately switched to doing something else. So I come back later, check my site, the quotes aren't fixed (the build failed at Netlify), and now I have to context-switch back to that and figure out why and fix it.

It would have taken less time if I'd stared vacantly at the build process for one minute and seen it fail.

22.00.0032 Index cards to the rescue

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 23:43:30 GMT

Index cards to the rescue

This post is the first of at least 31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

I'm not claiming to have ADHD, but in a way we all suffer from some of the symptoms because of the nature of technology.

I grew up in the late 80s/90s. Changing mental state was a much slower process. If I was watching the telly, to change the show I had to get up. And then there were only three other shows to choose from. Or I could change the movie I was watching,[^robocop] but that involved ejecting a cassette. Or I could change the CD, but I have to go to the shelf and pick a new one. And so on.

Now, I can be on my laptop reconciling the monthly Stripe payments for Johnny.Decimal -- a tedious task that requires deep focus -- and with one keyboard shortcut (Cmd-Tab) I'm in my social media, or Discord, or my news feed, or I have a blank browser tab with literally the entire internet available to me.

No part of my body above the wrist need move for my entire focus to switch and be ruined. Needless to say this is catastrophic for my productivity and sense of calm.In continuing the re-organising of my own life, which has been on hold as we completed the workshop, I realised that I needed to get away from the computer.

My computer notes are a shambles. Wherever I look: Bear, which is my main system; Apple Notes, which I use to share some things with Lucy. The thought of re-planning inside that chaos has put me off even starting.

In planning the workshop I wrote everything I did for about a week on pieces of 4×4cm coloured paper.¹ This is just big enough to write a task; if you can't fit a task on a sheet, the task is too large and needs to be broken up.

Then I used these coloured notes to help myself stay focused. You should know by now that multitasking is a myth. So my paper stack was just that: a single stack. With one thing on top. The thing I'm doing now.

That thing might be mundane -- hang out the laundry -- or complex -- reconcile your Stripe payments. It doesn't matter. The key is to do one thing until it's finished. The paper then went on the spike.

I put these paper squares on my laptop² so they were front-of-mind. There's the thing I'm doing now, written right there.

This worked reasonably well. Obviously it's easy to just ignore the paper and do something else, but I found myself feeling bad when I did this. I know I'm only cheating myself.

And so this is where we are again. But this time I'm slightly tweaking the strategy.

I've cracked out the 5×7" index cards.³

This is all in service of me entirely re-organising two systems:

My personal life.
Johnny.Decimal as a business. (The website is its own system; it's fine.)

Each card has the category of work written at the top. These categories are not deeply considered: this whole thing is a stopgap. They may or may not be categories in the final, designed systems. It doesn't matter: it's crucial not to get stuck in analysis paralysis.

Interlude

We just broke for breakfast: a fried egg on toast with homemade Szechuan chilli sauce and spring onions. So before I got up from the computer I wrote a new note -- Egg -- and stuck it on the Personal, fun card and moved that card to the top of the stack.

As soon as I got to the kitchen I went to pick up my phone to play a podcast! Pure habit; I'm not bored, I prepare a fried egg in about 4 minutes. But that's what it's got to. I can't do something for 4 minutes without some sort of ~~entertainment~~ distraction.

I stopped myself. I spent the time a) making breakfast and b) allowing my mind to linger on this post, which is what I'd interrupted to make the egg. I came up with the idea of typing these paragraphs.

I have to try really hard to do one thing at a time.

Back to the cards

Years ago -- I have a note, 25.04, dated 2013-03-05 -- I had the idea of an iPad app which mimicked the flight progress strips that air traffic controllers use to track aeroplanes. You'd use it to track your daily work.

I've pasted the text of the note at the bottom of this post, if you're morbidly curious. Note how this 11-year-old issue is exactly the one I'm describing here.

The idea is simple: whatever's at the top is what you're doing. It's the flight 'coming in to land'. You use this strip to track the small details of the task; they're not meant be permanent.

This task then either:

completes, or
requires you to wait for a while.

Either way, another task rises to the top. If you need to come back to this task, move its note 'down'. If it's complete, discard it.

So that's what I'm trying with these index cards. I just started two hours ago so I'll refine this over the next few days, but for now here are the rules.

The stack of cards is that: a stack. There is only ever one thing on top: don't fan them out so you can see more than one card.
Each card has a category written at the top-left, e.g. Johnny.Decimal, comms & content. I've put a coloured mark at the top-right to group cards by broader area (just scribbled with a pen).
Each thing to do is written on a tiny sticky note, e.g. Blog this idea.
On each card, the sticky note at the top-left is the thing that I am doing. It is the only thing that I am doing.
The closer a note is to the top-left, the closer it is to becoming active. New notes go at the lower-right.
Completed notes are moved to a Completed card just because it's nice to see what you did.
If it's not on a card, I'm not doing it.
Exception: relaxing. I don't need to track time relaxing.

So that's it for now, I'll run this today and see how it works. More tomorrow!# 25.04 iPad ATC app

This is the contents of this note, copy/pasted as-is. So we're looking back in time 11 years.

Overview

When we're working, we have a bunch of stuff going on. We need to keep track of what we're doing, and need to be able to switch between different tasks without getting "lost".

A lot of people use task management systems - to-do lists of varying complexity, basically - which are great at tracking our high level tasks. What they're not so good for is tracking the "here and now".

Invariably, for this, we switch to sticky notes, or scribbled pages in a notebook. These systems work, but they have their drawbacks. The notes you write aren't searchable, you run out of space on a page, or you lose them in a pile of other crap on your desk. Pages in a notebook can't be re-arranged.

Most importantly, these systems don't really allow us to see, at a glance, what we're working on right now.

"What was that thing I was doing ten minutes ago that I had to stop because I got that important call?... I don't remember... let me leaf through my notebook... ah! Yes. There it is. Now, where did I write the email address of that guy I need to speak to? Aah crap, it's on the notepad I left on the kitchen bench!"

The iPad app I will describe solves these problems.

The app, in a nutshell

The simplest way of describing the app would be to say that it's a bit like a "sticky note" app on steroids.

Boring, right? There are already heaps of sticky note apps! Wait. Listen.

Core features

This is what makes this app different from the rest:

What you're working on now goes at the top, and is bigger

Say you've got five things on the go. You can't really be working on five things at the same time - you're working on one thing, and four things are waiting for your attention.

The thing you're working on should be bigger: centre stage. The app resizes your notes so that, as you drag the thing you're working on now to the top, it gets bigger and the rest get smaller.

When you switch to another task, you drag its note to the top; the topmost note is relegated, slides down, and becomes smaller.

The lower on the screen the note, the less important it is right now, and the smaller it becomes. You can move notes around whenever you like to represent your current priorities.

Inspiration for this app: flight progress strips

It occurred to me that a nice analogy for this app is the old "flight progress strips" that air traffic controllers used to use. (I presume it's all computerised now.)

Flickr image: flight progress strips

They're clean, they only show you exactly what you need to know, you slide them around the board to re-order them according to priority, and when the flight has landed you push it away.

Aah, still in use! From Wikipedia: "While it has been supplemented by more technologically advanced methods of flight tracking since its introduction, it is still used in modern ATC as a quick way to annotate a flight, to keep a legal record of the instructions that were issued, to allow other controllers to see instantly what is happening and to pass this information to other controllers who go on to control the flight."

Think of the notes in my app as flight progress strips. I may even design the app so that it superficially resembles this sort of system.

At a glance "what am I doing today", and "what do I do next?"

I had the idea for this app when I was at work and I finished something important. I knew that I had a bunch of other important stuff to do - that I'd been working on that morning - but because my brain was so busy, I couldn't think what it all was.

I realised that I wanted to be able to glance at a dashboard of my stuff to remind myself what I had to be thinking about.

I think this is why people like sticky notes so much: they're just there.

This app gives you the simplicity of that view, while allowing you much more flexibility than a sticky note.

All the important information, right there

Where sticky notes fail us is in their inability to record multiple pieces of information. They're just too small. That's when we resort to the notebook, but then that doesn't give us the at-a-glance view.

What if you could attach smart bits of information to a sticky note?

My example: working in IT

I work in IT, so for any given task ("install the software on the server", say), I have a bunch of information that I want close to hand:

The server name(s)
The email address of the guy I'm installing the software for
The software license key

Let's say I start to install the software, but it takes ten minutes so while it's doing it I switch to another task. When I come back to the install, it's asking me for the license key. Now, where was that? Did I write it in my notebook, or was it in an email?

You get the idea. In this situation, my app helps me like so:

I finish the other task and think, okay, what now?
I glance at my iPad and see that the "install software on the server" note is in the middle of the screen, and reasonably big - because it was at the top ten minutes ago, but then I switched to another task and dragged it to the top: the "install" note got moved down a bit as a result. (There's probably a bunch of other stuff below it, that I was working on an hour ago.)
I think, ah yes, I'll finish that software install. I drag its note to the top.
I need to log in to the server. What was its name? There it is - right in the note.
I log on and need to enter the license key. Where is it? There it is - right in the note.
I finish the install and want to mail the guy to tell him it's finished. What was his email address? Of course, there it is - right in the note. I tap it and a new mail window appears to allow me to compose the email on my iPad.
I'm done with this task. I drag it off to the side as it's complete and I want it out of my view. More on this later.
The remaining items re-fill the screen; I scan around, pick what to do next, and move it to the top if it isn't already there.

You can only have a few things on the screen

Because this specifically isn't a "to-do" application, and as such isn't meant for tracking what you need to do tomorrow, or next week, you can only have a few things on the screen: the things you're actively working on, now.

I'm thinking five, six, maybe seven max.

Track your to-dos somewhere else. When you start actually doing them, use my app.

Completed stuff disappears, but is still there

One of the enormous benefits of using a computer to do this sort of thing is that the information never really disappears.

When I finish my server install, I drag its note off to the side to indicate that it's complete and I don't need to see it any more. But, of course, if next week I need to install the same software again, or if I need to log on to the server again to check something, or whatever, I can quickly find that old note and the information I need is right there.

You can't do that with a sticky note, because you threw it in the bin.

The app is simple and clean

The idea of the app isn't that it becomes your notebook. We don't want a screen full of prose: we want a quick visual indicator of what we need to be doing, and a place to quickly store short snippets of relevant information.

The main display (mockup below) shows only the "headline" title of each note. If you want to add additional information, there's a special place for that - a pop-out drawer, or whatever.

We use data indicators to try to make the additional data smart. ("Show me all the notes where I had Alex Garner as a contact.")

Design principles

Clean, clean, clean.

No yellow sticky notes. No faux-cork background. No skeuomorphic pins.

Helvetica. White. Square. Sparse. Beautiful.

Mock it up yourself at home!

I ran a version of this system on my Mac for a while. It works really well - try this at home, kids!

Create a new Desktop just for this purpose. Make sure no other apps show on it.
Open TextEdit. Hide as much of the window as you can - get rid of the ruler and ... can't you hide the font toolbar any more? I was sure you used to be able to. Anyway, pretend it isn't there.
You want as plain a white window as you can get.
Set your font to Helvetica. Make it big (48).
Type whatever it is you're working on ("Do the server installation").
Make another one. Type something else. Move them around. Make the text on those you move lower on the screen smaller, and vice versa.
To add bits of information, put them at the bottom in regular sized (12) text.

The note ends here.[^robocop]: Usually Robocop.

I think it's origami paper? I picked up the pack in a stationery store in Singapore just because it looked pretty. ↩
Helpfully, in this unique case, perched on a laptop stand. My monitor is in for repair. ↩
Paging Merlin Mann. ↩

22.00.0031 JD IDs as a shortcut

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

JD IDs as a shortcut

Here's a quick tip that I use all the time.

You're saving (or opening) a file. Up pops the trusty system dialog box. And you're nowhere near the folder you need.

Type the Johnny.Decimal ID of that folder in the 'Search' box there. Make sure 'This Mac' is selected next to 'Search'.

And there you go. Instant navigation to any folder, wherever it happens to be.

22.00.0030 play.jdcm.al shutting down

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sat, 02 Mar 2024 23:45:46 GMT

play.jdcm.al shutting down

A few years ago I set up play.johnnydecimal.com as a 'playground' site. I intended to post less well-formed ideas there.

Well, I never did! Or not much. But it's still hanging around. Until today: I'm taking it down.

I hate breaking links, so the domain will always redirect to this post. And if there was something on that site that you did want to read:

You probably shouldn't, but
it's all at github.com/johnnydecimal/johnnydecimal-2020-play.

Let me know if you can't find what you're looking for.

22.00.0029 People and organisations

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 19:57:47 GMT

People and organisations

Some things are not better sorted by number.

For some things, the alphabet is the best way. 'People and organisations' fit in to this category.Let's say I want to store information related to friends. I keep a list of books we've loaned each other. I save a friend's passport details when we go on a trip together. I write a list of gifts I want to buy them.

So we have a category 12 People. Would this make sense?

10-19 Life admin
   12 People
      12.01 Susan Schuzensutz
      12.02 Barry Barfelschwacker
      12.03 Fred Flopagolopolous
      ...
      12.63 Joe Lunchbox

Quickly, find Kate Krapolodou in the list. Hmm. Not optimal.

Instead, organise these people alphabetically.

You can still give them a number: just append it to their name. We still just start at .01 and go up by sequence:

10-19 Life admin
   12 People
      Barfelschwacker, Barry [12.02]
      Flopagolopolous, Fred [12.03]
      Lunchbox, Joe [12.63]
      Schuzensutz, Susan [12.01]

And now when Krapolodou, Kate is somewhere in the middle of that list, she's easy to find.

You might never use these numbers to refer to your friends. (And if you do, perhaps don't tell them.)

But they're there if you ever need them.The same principle applies to organisations. Your gas company, the electricity company: if your system organises them in a category together, you may find this sort-by-alphabet technique to be more natural.

22.00.0028 'Project' is now 'system'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 01:25:55 GMT

'Project' is now 'system'

Until now, I have used the word 'project' as a term to mean the thing that you're organising and/or the result of doing the organising.

For example, the Workbook's cover sheet reads:

A guide to setting up a single-project system and working the Decimal way

This is imprecise and confusing. What if you're not organising a project? This results in me having to qualify it, for example:

Yours might not feel like 'a project' in the typical sense.

Precision

In defining this system, I believe that precision and clarity matters.

I want to help you to be more organised. If you're confused about what I mean, that's just going to get in the way.

And if we all use different terms when we discuss things on the forum, we're going to be talking across each other.

New definitions

With a lot of community consultation and intense whiteboarding here at JDHQ, we've come up with the following definitions of terms.

The site and Workbook will be updated to reflect these new terms. (This will improve clarity, but nothing fundamental has changed.)

I'll add a new page to the main site with the definitions minus the background contained in this post.

The Johnny.Decimal System

Is a collection of methods, tools, and behaviours as documented at johnnydecimal.com.

Defined terms:

The Johnny.Decimal system
The system (for short)

Your Johnny.Decimal system

Is your implementation of this system, customised to suit whatever it is that you're organising.

Defined terms:

Your Johnny.Decimal system
Your system (for short)

We considered the repeated use of the term system here but it's just too natural a word to ignore.

It's a very 'active' word: a system is a machine, an organism. It has components. It evolves.

And your system is just an implementation of the system. They're the same system.

Your system is shown 'breaking out' of the bottom of the Johnny.Decimal system to indicate that it's customisable.

You don't have to follow my 'rules' to the letter (although I think you should).

Components

Johnny.Decimal systems are made up of components.

Defined terms:

Components or system components

The list of components is not restricted, but the following are all common components:

The index (see below).
File system.
Notes (either an app or on paper).
Tasks, to-dos, and reminders.
Email.
Calendar.
Bookmarks and other saved links.

The index

The index is a specific component of your system; it serves to link all other components together in to a cohesive whole.

Defined terms:

The index or your index

Your stuff

Your stuff is the real-world thing that you're organising with Johnny.Decimal.

I can't specify the thing you're organising -- because you can organise anything you want.

It's your home life, or your job, or a work project, or a community group, or your university study, or anything else.

Defined terms:

Your stuff (yes, really)

Collection of systems

You may need more than one system to manage everything in your life.

We refer to this as your collection of systems.

Defined terms:

Collection of Johnny.Decimal systems
Collection of systems (for short)

Domain

Domains group together systems which have one or more shared components.

For example, when you go to work, everything might be on the company's systems: your index, your file system, your email; everything.

'Work' is its own domain in this situation.

But if you use your personal phone's notes app to keep notes related to the system at work, that app just became a shared component.

'Work' is no longer its own domain; it has merged with your 'home' domain.

Extended naming

This is relevant when we consider the extended naming of your systems.

A system which is the only system in a domain can be uniquely identified by the standard AC.ID notation:

11.01 can only refer to an item in one system.

When a domain contains two or more systems, this is no longer the case:

11.01 could refer to an item in two or more systems.

When a domain contains two or more systems, each system SHOULD¹ use the extended SYS.AC.ID notation.

A note on the word 'project'

I've said it elsewhere, but it bears repeating.

I consider 'a project' to be a very large thing. In the Workbook we use the analogy of painting the kitchen.

People colloquially call painting the kitchen 'a project'.

It is crucial to understand that painting the kitchen can be handled within a single Johnny.Decimal ID.

It is not what we used to call a project; what we now call a system. You don't need ten areas and a hundred categories and ten thousand IDs to paint the kitchen.

So let's remodel the kitchen. Does that need its own system (née project) yet? No. It could still fit in a bunch of IDs; at most, it's its own category.

Let's rebuild the house. Full system? Nope! Definitely a category; potentially an area.

So what does it take to 'fill' an entire system? I say you need to build a farm.

One area builds you the house. Another might deal with connecting your plot to the local infrastructure: a category each for roads, electricity, and water. One more for setting up a working farm, and we're done with room to spare.

Think big

I tell you this to encourage you to think big.

Design broad categories. Design very broad areas.

Your entire life can easily fit in a single Johnny.Decimal system.> Discuss this on the forum.

Internal ID: D85.61.11.

As per RFC2119, I use SHOULD to mean that I recommend that you do, but that it is not strictly necessary. ↩

22.00.0027 Pricing is hard

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 07:15:26 GMT

Pricing is hard

As we record the Johnny.Decimal Workshop, I'm thinking about how to price it. I wanted to record my thoughts somewhere that I could link to them later.Pricing things is hard.

I'm not a salesman. It's the part of my new job that I enjoy the least.

When we released the Workbook I had no idea what it was worth. How could I? What baseline could I possibly have? It's a PDF that we'd written.

It's simultaneously worth nothing (it's a digital good with zero marginal cost) and everything (it's how we pay our rent).

So it's an equation. Basic maths. Price × sales. Higher price, fewer sales, and vice versa. Where's the sweet spot?

Doing it wrong

I treasure my audience. Lucy and I call you 'the Johnny.Decimal family'. We really do.

So when I price a thing high, my best supporters buy it immediately, and then if I lower the price ... that feels bad.

This happened, obviously. There's nothing I can do about it now, other than learn the lesson.

#1: Turn it up, not down.

Unfortunately, discounts work

I hate the bullshit where someone says that some thing is 'worth' some amount and if you get this one thing and this other thing then really the 'value' is $499 but unbelievably you get it for $4.99!

I refuse to play that particular game, but people do love a deal. It's just human nature.

#2: Price it higher, but always have a deal.

This feels a bit sleazy, but I need to get over it. Make the base price higher, but nobody actually pays it: there's always an offer.

And it aligns with #1: you can easily turn it up by adjusting the coupon discount.

Lower price × higher volume = lower stress

When the Workbook was $37, some days I'd wake up to zero sales. (~80% of my sales occur while I'm asleep here in Australia.)

That's terrifying.

So when I dropped it to $19, the overall earnings didn't necessarily go up, but the chance of any given day being disastrous certainly went down.

#3: I prefer volume over price.

This sits nicely with me. I'd prefer to be more affordable, and this means I get to help more people.

(The alternative is to go high-end. The price of entry for some of my competitors starts at multiple-hundreds of dollars. Good on them, but that's not for me.)

Sales are spiky

What are you people doing out there?

If my best day last week was 100%, my worst was 19%. The sales graph is super spiky and as far as I can tell there's no pattern.


 │▓
 │▓
S│▓         ▓
a│▓         ▓
l│▓   ▓     ▓
e│▓   ▓     ▓
s│▓ ▓ ▓ ▓   ▓
 │▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
 │▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
 └────────────
  ThFrSaSuMoTu

(Indulge me my passion for pointless ASCII graphs.)

So you'll have a great week -- the first week of January was a record-breaker -- and you'll think, mad!, we've cracked it.

And then the next week will be crap.

It's been long enough now that I've learned to ignore it.

#4: View sales month-by-month not day-by-day.

#5: Don't respond to yesterday. It was random.

An experiment

This header was going to read 'this isn't science' and then I realised, no -- it's the very definition of science: I don't know the answer, and I'm testing hypotheses with experiments.

And so if you see prices change, or you wonder why he did that, the answer is ... experiment. It's just some guy with no expertise trying to figure it out.

It's not nefarious, and it's certainly not personal.

Discuss this on the forum.

22.00.0026 Just use Buttondown, stupid

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 04:36:51 GMT

Just use Buttondown, stupid

Buttondown¹ is a great email service. It's 'one guy', Justin, though I think he has a small support team now. But it's not the corporate behemoth that is, say, Mailchimp.²

A happy user, I was about to hit a subscriber number threshold and I thought I could save a tiny amount of money.

I also thought it'd be simpler if I managed my email list myself.

Massive LOL

As we say in Australia, "yeah nah".

I started managing the list manually in Airtable. To send mail I have a clunky shell script which calls Amazon's Simple Email Service. Running this script is terrifying: I'm always sure I'm going to send something out twice, or to the wrong group of addresses.

To get on or off the list you fill in my web form and that goes to Netlify Forms: a fine service, but it turns out it costs money over a certain fairly low number of submissions and that the difference is more than I'd just have given Justin for the higher-subscriber-level plan! 🤦

And then I still have to take that submission and manually add it to Airtable, making sure I don't add duplicates,³ that I properly remove unsubscriptions, and so on.

I soon came to a stark realisation: I am an idiot.

2024 is the Year of Simplification

As per my previous posts, I'm starting over. This includes everything: and therefore includes the systems by which I manage my email lists.

It's too early to say for sure but I'm pretty certain that 'simplify where possible' will be a theme for the year.

To that end, I am returning to the warm embrace of Buttondown. I never should have left. I'm sorry, Justin.

Will be adding a bunch of addresses

If you've signed up to the list since the start of December, I'll be adding your address to Buttondown some time in the next day or so.

I've turned off the 'welcome to the list' notifications, so you shouldn't actually notice. But if you do, and you ask, I'll point you here for an explanation.

Update on JD'ing JD

Nothing much has happened since the last post. January in Australia is like August in Italy: everyone is on holiday.

Lucy's family have been here and so we haven't really started work properly yet. They pop in again tomorrow for the last time, so Wednesday might be the day we switch our brains back on.

Discuss this on the forum.

That's a referral link. Per Buttondown: "For every paying customer you refer to us, you get a 25% lifetime commission on their payments to us, and they get $9 off their first month of Buttondown." ↩
Now owned by Intuit, of tax software fame, who bought them for TWELVE THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS for the love of god. I mean when sending email is worth $12bn you need to wonder where your data is going. ↩
A feature curiously missing from Airtable: the ability to show duplicate entries in a table. Trivial in Excel, so I ended up copy-pasting my entire database in and out to do just that. I mean seriously. ↩

22.00.0025 Systems, data, and knowledge

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 03:47:03 GMT

Systems, data, and knowledge

In the previous post I said that I was going to 'list all the things' to consider.

So I went for a walk this morning¹ and realised that doing so would be jumping ahead to Workbook section 20-29 Discovery.

I'm not ready for that yet.

Because there is so much in my life, I would hardly know where to start discovering.

So let's step back.

Where do I even look?

Johnny.Decimal was conceived as a way to organise your files. But as technology progresses, we need to think more broadly.

If you want to organise your digital life, you need to look at systems, data, and knowledge.

Systems

So of course your file system is one system. But here's a bunch of others I can think of, in no particular order:

Email.
Any sort of physical note.
Any other physical artefact.
Digital notes. I bet you have more than one app?
Databases, e.g. Airtable.
Social media. Forum, Discord, Mastodon. At work this might be Teams or Slack. Instagram or TikTok if that's your thing.
To-do/reminders.
Calendar.
Bookmarks and other management of online history. All of your open browser tabs that you don't dare close.
Music, photos, TV, movies (typically managed by another application).
All of your different file systems: your local drives; cloud drives; external drives.
Backups.
Apps that store data in their own sandbox: very common now on Apple's platforms. This includes the per-app folders in your iCloud Drive.
Any other app that has its own data store.
- e.g. my beloved Bear, which manages your notes in an internal database: they're not .txt files in a file-system folder.²
Bookmark-like data in other applications, e.g. Maps.
Contacts.
Private messages and group chats, probably across multiple apps.
Passwords and other security keys, e.g. SSH.
Code repositories, as they're often distributed (e.g. GitHub) and might not live in your base ~/Documents folder.
- I have mine at ~/dev so that it doesn't synchronise up to iCloud.³

That's what I came up with just by looking at the open applications on my Mac right now. There will be more.⁴

If you don't mind me saying so: holy shit! Life got complex.

Data and knowledge

These are similar, and possibly even the same thing: I need to give this more consideration.

But for now we can say that your systems serve to contain data and knowledge.

Here I define data as a large thing that takes work to [re]create. A photograph is data. A PDF is data. An Excel spreadsheet is data.

Knowledge is something that originated in your brain⁵ that you could -- assuming you haven't forgotten it -- recall and write down. It's smaller than data. It's someone's birthday; a recipe; places you'd like to go for dinner; a memory to take the bins out on Thursday.

I don't know what to do with this yet, or whether the data/knowledge split is required or useful.

This is why I can't just tell you what to do

If I wanted to, I could probably prescriptively, definitively tell you how to manage your file system.

It should be clear that I can't do this for 'all of the systems and data and knowledge' in your life. It's just too much. It changes too often.

New systems are introduced all the time. We each use different systems for different reasons.

Instead, I need to give you the tools and techniques to be able to integrate these systems into your life as needed.

My scope

Okay, this is what we came here for. Can I define my scope yet?⁶

I think so. Here's what I plan to discover and organise.

All of the systems and data and knowledge in my life.

🤯

I better get on with it! See you next time.

With Lucy's voice recorder, an Olympus WS-650S, now discontinued. The modern version might be the WS-882. I love walking with this thing: no distractions. You talk, it records. Leave the phone at home. ↩
You can trivially export your notes any time you like, which is why I'm not worried about lock-in. ↩
Otherwise the many many thousands of files in node_modules cause sync headaches. ↩
Over time I will refine and categorise this list. If you can think of others, let me know. ↩
Or someone else's. ↩
Ref. Workbook section 10-19 Define your project. ↩

22.00.0024 Starting the JD'ing process

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 03:51:34 GMT

Starting the JD'ing process

It's the 3rd January. I decided to reset my life yesterday.

I'm exhausted already and I haven't even started. Just the thought of it is exhausting. So let's recognise that -- I see you, fear -- and move on.

Don't just pretend that this feeling doesn't exist. Don't pretend that what you're about to do isn't going to be difficult.

Following the rough theme of the Workbook, I'm going to define my scope first. To help me do that, I'm going to brain-dump everything that I can think of. Here, now.

(Even if I wasn't writing this post, I often write notes to myself in this voice; as in, I type out a note as if I were talking to myself. It's me, talking to me. I find this helps as it's less boring, and allows me to recall things more easily.)

What prompted this?

I was chatting to one of my best friends and he reminded me about a video we made about ~15 years ago. I think I have a copy of it somewhere; I recall seeing it recently. As in, some time this decade. But I couldn't lay my hands on it now.

That's annoying.

I'm not sentimental, but this video is precious. It would be silly to lose it.

So let's fix it by reorganising my entire life.

Think about your goals

This got me thinking. If you're reading this, you want to be better organised.

Why?

Your reason might influence how you do this: how long you take, the methods you use, how well you do it, who else you involve. We're all different: I can give you tools, but I can't tell you what to want.

So, just think about that. Write it down. Why do you want to be organised? What do you want to achieve? What do you care about? What do you not care about?

My goals

I want to be organised because:

It frustrates me when I know that a thing exists and I don't know where it is.
- This frustration can quickly derail my mental state. It's an excuse to give up.
I've applied this system to various jobs and home projects and I've felt the relief that it brings. But my own 'personal life' has barely had any attention, and the worse it's got the less I've cared.
- This has become a vicious cycle.
- So now I'm in a position where I'm Johnny.Decimal and my own personal stuff is a mess. This is silly.
Doing this will teach me more about the system.
- So I should pay attention to the process, and meticulously document my findings. 👋
I need to know what to do next. More on this below. This one's really important.

I don't care about:

Being a digital hoarder. I don't have to keep everything I've ever done.
- I have a feeling for what's important and what isn't. I'm going to listen to this voice and let it guide me.
Being perfect. I know that I can be a perfectionist and that this stops me from doing things. So I will recognise that and not allow it to derail me.
- I like the aphorism 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good.'¹

Decision

I just made a decision:

In this round of organisation, I either organise it, or I delete it.
- There will be no more folders called archive of stuff from 2014 from USB drive.
- I can leave these less-important potentially more-difficult decisions until the end: but they must be made.

What do I do next?

I run my own business now: Johnny.Decimal. So figuring out what to do next is a) daunting and b) life-alteringly important.

Late 2023 was 'easy' from this perspective: finish the Workbook; make sure it's selling enough to pay the rent; make sure people are happy with it and that there are no major issues. ✅

January 2024 is a blank canvas. I have a decade's worth of ideas, and the time to pursue them. But I have to choose, and be focused.

So my new organisational system needs to enable this. Note that I don't have any idea how it's going to do this yet: I'm just stating my intent.

All the things

Okay, so what are all the things? This is just going to be a bullet list of stuff to consider.

In the Workbook I exhort you to go for walks and to give this the consideration it deserves. So here I will commit to myself: for the next 24 hours I will try to think about little else but this.

My job for the next 24h

Until at least 2024-01-04 15:00², and until I think that this list is finished:

I will not check my social media.
I will check my mail once, tomorrow morning.³
I will go for walks or a bike ride.
- I will not listen to podcasts while I do this.
I'll just think about this, as much as I can.

The list will be in a new post

I might as well post this one as-is. See you tomorrow.

Perfect is the enemy of good, Wikipedia ↩
You should have a quick way to insert a date/time. It's so handy. I use Alfred's 'Snippets' feature triggered by ;;jptime. ('jp' because before I knew it as ISO-8601 I knew it as 'the way that Japanese people wrote the time'.) ↩
Sometimes people have account issues with the Workbook and I don't like to leave them waiting. ↩

22.00.0023 Johnny.Decimal'ing Johnny.Decimal

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 03:54:37 GMT

Johnny.Decimal'ing Johnny.Decimal

It's 2024 and I am declaring 'organisational bankruptcy'. Here's the plan.

Hard reset

I'm going to reset my entire life:

All of my files, including my personal stuff and all Johnny.Decimal related projects.
- This includes my archived stuff, all of the 'hard drives in the tin in the garage', anything that I've kept from an old computer. Some of this goes back to 2012.
My 'to-do' system, which currently is a bunch of stuff in a bunch of places: at least 3 different applications, as well as paper scattered all over my desk.
My email, and how I manage it day-to-day.
Everything else.
- I'll discover it as I go: I haven't started, other than to type out this blog post.

In public, less structured

I'm going to do this all 'live': here on the blog, on Mastodon, YouTube, and possibly via podcast.

I'll document as I go, rather than spending too much time thinking through how to present it 'neatly'. So my organisation process will be presented more as a stream-of-consciousness vs. Lucy's more structured approach (see below).

I'm going to record how much time I spend on each of these things so you know how long this sort of thing takes.

If in doubt, I'll over-share. You can always choose to ignore it. Feedback is welcome.

Meanwhile, Lucy is doing the same

Lucy is also organising her life, but she's following the Workbook as if she wasn't one of its co-authors.

While she did edit the Workbook, she has very little practical experience with Johnny.Decimal.

We'll be using Lucy's efforts to record the Johnny.Decimal Workshop. Our hope is that she can be the stand-in for you: we hope that her experience will mirror yours; her questions answer yours.

This will be a video course to accompany the Workbook. As with the Workbook, we'll think hard about how to present this: it'll be neat, concise, well recorded, and structured to help you succeed.

This will be released as a paid course as soon as it's finished, some time in Q1 2024.

Discuss this on the forum.

22.00.0022 Taming Outlook

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 21:08:29 GMT

Taming Outlook

The managing email page ~~has~~ had a screenshot of Outlook under the heading I can fix your email.¹

While I've changed my mind about your email -- I think email is just broken and probably beyond fixing, especially at work -- a few people have asked exactly how I get Outlook looking like that.

I have good news and bad news.

Good news: I've documented it here, in a video.

Bad news: this is all going away, thanks to the "new Outlook". Microsoft are simplifying all of their products for reasons, and my first look at this new Outlook tells me that it basically doesn't have any features.

They've turned Outlook in to Hotmail, because they assume their customers are idiots.

So, with that said, here's the video.

Discuss this on the forum.

Note that this page has been rewritten since this blog post was written. ↩

22.00.0021 Test the Johnny.Decimal GPT

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 20:57:17 GMT

Test the Johnny.Decimal GPT

I've been training a GPT at OpenAI, home of ChatGPT. It's amazing. The structured nature of Johnny.Decimal lends itself to this very well.

You can try it out here.

ChatGPT - Johnny.Decimal Architect chatgpt.com

Johnny.Decimal system generator

Notes

Requires a GPT Plus subscription.
Will disappear at some point: I'm going to turn this in to some sort of a product, honestly.
- But y'all are family so help me test now and I'll sort you out later. ❤️️

Suggested prompts. Works great with 'generate me an area to...'

Generate an area to manage my small business
Generate an area to manage my knitting hobby, and provide a bash prompt that will create the folders in my file system

Example

Prompt: create a simple area for my knitting hobby, and give me a bash script to create folders

Output:

50-59 Knitting Projects
   51 Pattern Library
      51.01 Cardigans
      51.02 Afghans
      51.03 Mittens
   52 Yarn Stock
      52.01 Alpaca
      52.02 Merino
      52.03 Bamboo
   53 Accessories & Tools
      53.01 Circular Needles
      53.02 Crochet Hooks
      53.03 Gauges & Counters

The bash script:

#!/bin/bash

# Directory for knitting projects
baseDir="Knitting_Projects"

# Creating base and subdirectories
mkdir -p "$baseDir/51_Pattern_Library" "$baseDir/52_Yarn_Stock" "$baseDir/53_Accessories_Tools"

# Creating subdirectories for each category
mkdir -p "$baseDir/51_Pattern_Library/51.01_Cardigans" "$baseDir/51_Pattern_Library/51.02_Afghans" "$baseDir/51_Pattern_Library/51.03_Mittens"
mkdir -p "$baseDir/52_Yarn_Stock/52.01_Alpaca" "$baseDir/52_Yarn_Stock/52.02_Merino" "$baseDir/52_Yarn_Stock/52.03_Bamboo"
mkdir -p "$baseDir/53_Accessories_Tools/53.01_Circular_Needles" "$baseDir/53_Accessories_Tools/53.02_Crochet_Hooks" "$baseDir/53_Accessories_Tools/53.03_Gauges_Counters"

echo "Folders for Knitting Projects have been successfully created."

The bash script needs work: as of this post, it insists on replacing spaces with underscores.

Roadmap

This is great for inspiration, but I see the end goal as an app/executable that you point at your file system -- the messy one that you have today -- and it:

Detects the names of your existing files and folders, ignoring all the cruft that isn't actually your stuff.
Generates a new Johnny.Decimal structure for you using the GPT.
Validates the structure, i.e. confirms the numbers are all consistent.
Confirms that you like it, trying again if not.
Creates those folders in your file system.

Although honestly I've given this about half an hour's thought at this point.

Thoughts?

Discuss this on the forum.

22.00.0020 Renaming a category is 'free'

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 02:01:38 GMT

Renaming a category is 'free'

In the process of sending out some stickers, Lucy just had to create a new category in D85 Johnny.Decimal business.

It naturally fits in to our 30-39 Marketing area, but then we need a new category. And in this situation, we don't really know what the future of that category will be.

Because it's not just going to be stickers. That's a really narrow category, which is usually a red flag.

I can't know what else might go in there, because it doesn't exist yet. And I don't want to sit and think about that, because I have better things to do.

So I'm stuck: a mental block. The worst.

But, I realised: renaming a category has no cost!

The category name doesn't appear in any files. You can just ... change it. Expand it. Whenever you want, later.

It doesn't matter. There are no consequences.

So that's interesting and might influence how you create things.

Discuss this on the forum.

22.00.0019 Site content refresh

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 02:03:35 GMT

Site content refresh

A conversation with a reader made me realise that this site had been written for the wrong audience.

As an ex-IT-project-manager myself, I'd always assumed that I should write for people at work. You have to write for someone, and that's what I picked.

Wrong! I think most of you are at home. Or you're starting at home, and taking this to work later.

So I'm in the process of re-writing these pages with that in mind. I want the system to be more relatable to more people.

Nothing about the system changes: it's just how I present it, and the examples that I use.

Until it's finished, accept my apologies if feels a bit disjointed.

Progress

Done ✅

To-do 🚧

Everything else: I'll update the pages in order from 11.04 onwards.

22.00.0018 Defaults

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 19:08:01 GMT

Defaults

The Hemispheric Views podcast that I was on the other week had a fun Duel of the Defaults episode last week.

Do you use the default stuff that comes with the computer, or something else?

I definitely feel like mine has tended more to the default over the last five years. Here it is.

Mail Client: Mail.app.
Mail Server: Migadu. Love Migadu, 💯
Notes: Bear, sorry @canion.
To-Do: Scrap of paper and pencil; Reminders for longer-term, remind-me-on-a-day.
- Though I never use Reminders.app: stuff gets in there via Siri or Fantastical, and Fantastical tells me it's due.
iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera, from the Home Screen button.
- I wish I could turn off the swipe, I only do it by accident and I realise when my phone sets on fire in my pocket.
Photo Management: Photos.
- It's just a decade of chaos in there worth 200GB of my iCloud storage. Mostly photos of whiteboards.
Calendar: Fantastical/iCloud.
Cloud file storage: iCloud, and the Synology under the desk.
RSS: NetNewsWire sync'd with iCloud.
Contacts: Contacts.
- Which I brought to the first iPhone from my Nokia, and have never deleted a single one, and they're all immaculately tagged with the label and the international number format, and I have 1,690 -- the vast, vast majority of which I have no idea who they are any more; but if I've ever met you, you're in there.
Browser: Safari, even for development; I switched to its dev tools last year, they're terrific.
Chat: iMessage/Discord.
Bookmarks: Safari, although I don't really keep bookmarks.
- The trick is to set your history to never expire (Safari > Settings > General > Remove history items: Manually), and then every site you've ever visited will autocomplete, so why bother with bookmarks?
Read It Later: null, don't use; is that -1 points, @canion?
Word Processing: Pages, or VSCode because I need Vim keybindings.
Spreadsheets: Excel.
- Sorry Numbers but nah.
Presentations: iA Presenter. Lush OMG.
- Worth downloading for the video that plays when it launches; the only video in all of history that I ask to play again the next time.

Shopping Lists: A Field Notes notebook and a Mitsubishi 9850 pencil.
Meal Planning: I keep recipes in Mela.app which is amazing.
Budgeting & Personal Finance: null unless you count my bank's iPhone app?
News: after doom-scrolling Covid for the entirety of 2020 I stopped reading all news as of 2021. I haven't been to a news site since then. It's one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health.
- Of course, I get news. I see Lucy's screen; she tells me things; people send me links; we put the radio on. This isn't a religious thing ... I just don't browse it, myself.
Music: Apple Music.
- Typing this listening to Texas' 1989 (?!!?!) - album 'Southside' because it was suggested.
Podcasts: Overcast.
Passwords: 1Password.

There's now 98 99 of these that Robb Knight has collected here.

22.00.0017 Notion template (experiment)

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:17:33 GMT

Notion template (experiment)

I've been experimenting with Notion as a way to keep your index. I love it so far.

If you're interested there's a Discord thread here, I'd love feedback. The templates are linked there along with a couple of overview videos.

All very sketchy at this point. Use at your own risk blah blah.

22.00.0016 The freelancer problem

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 16:20:05 GMT

The freelancer problem

Daan on the forum asked a common question about 'the freelancer system'.

This is the problem where the stuff you produce simply doesn't fit in to a 10 × 10 system. You have more than ten clients, and/or each has more than ten projects or jobs.

In an effort to nut this one out, Lucy and I did the first Johnny.Decimal Q&A video on YouTube. Rather than embed it here, which is currently a bit broken (I have some site back-end work to do), here's the link.

The freelancer problem - YouTube

All feedback and comments welcome. This isn't a solved problem yet. The forum post is the place to go. Thanks.

22.00.0015 Anna at Analog Office

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 10:29:26 GMT

Anna at Analog Office

A great post from Anna Havron at Analog Office about her use of Johnny.Decimal.

Particularly important is the recognition that this thing takes time. Of course it does: it's work that you weren't doing before. But...

Pay now, or pay later.
--Anna

Nailed it.

22.00.0014 Categorisation

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:40:38 GMT

Categorisation

I use Mela -- Recipe Manager on my iPad. It's a great app, I recommend it.

Once I'd saved a dozen or so recipes -- more than fit on a single screen -- I realised that I couldn't find things. It's the old computer science problem: naming things is hard.

Take one of the favourites, chicken shawarma. That's how I saved it, but in my mind I think of it as 'Lebanese chicken'. And so I can never find it.

A trivial problem indeed, but I think it serves as a nice example. Because exactly the same problem occurs whenever we save anything, anywhere. Did we call it 'chicken' or 'shawarma' or 'lebanese' or something else? All are equally valid, and we decide arbitrarily when we do the saving.

The solution, of course, is categorisation. As soon as I realised that I was becoming frustrated because I couldn't find a recipe, I looked for a categorisation feature in Mela and found it.

And so now I don't search for recipes. I browse categories.

22.00.0013 The absolute necessity of an index

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 13:44:47 GMT

The absolute necessity of an index

The more I think about the index the more I come to think that its existence is an absolute necessity.

It hit me watching The Office last week. David Brent is introducing a new work experience girl. This is 2001: everyone still has a massive CRT monitor on their desk.

"Everyone's got email", he tells her. "Have you used email before?"¹

In 2001 the PC was still fairly novel. We certainly didn't all have one at home. We had them at work, but they were slow and clunky. Hard drive space was severely constrained. We weren't creating that much data -- we couldn't if we tried -- so there just wasn't that much to keep track of.

Just over 20 years later and the world couldn't be more different. All of us use computers all day. The amount of data that we are generating has exploded, and we haven't changed our behaviour at all.

None of us have been given any training, and the way we store and retrieve data hasn't changed. We still just make stuff, wonder where to save it, and drop it in some hastily-named folder somewhere expecting to be able to find it later.

Sitting writing this in the garden, I look to the garage for an analogy. It's full of labelled boxes of stuff.² Imagine if nothing was labelled. It'd be chaos. But the analogy breaks down, because at least the garage is finite. At least there are only so many boxes I can put in any given box, or how deep my box nesting can go.

These constraints on sanity do not exist on your file system.

A more appropriate analogy is a large library. Imagine your national library without a catalogue. That's no longer a library: it's just a building full of books.

The action is on you

And so if you run a project or a department and you don't use an index, what exactly are you expecting to happen? Are you hoping that people will just magically know where everything is?

I think we're all deluded. I'm not blaming you; this has crept up on us all. It doesn't feel like 20 years since I first saw The Office. But here we are. You know there's a problem now. Go and do something about it.

Imagine on your first day instead of being given the company org chart, being given access to the index.

Imagine being able to know what exists, and where it is.

The Office, S01E02, 06:56. ↩
My favourite being 'Things that stick': all of the tapes, glues, twines, and other implements of attachment. ↩

22.00.0012 Being disorganised: $4bn

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:57:07 GMT

Being disorganised: $4bn

Originally a LinkedIn post.

We have discovered the cost of being disorganised. It's about $4bn.

Victoria (a state here in Australia) famously just cancelled the Commonwealth Games due to a budget blowout of $4bn. Apparently "the budget had failed to cost security and transport, and having multiple athletes villages was also underquoted".

"It's like we've never done this before", I joked to Lucy. Of course we have done this before: as recently as 2018 in the Gold Coast, and Melbourne in 2006. Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria!

The point of having done it before is that you learned something from the experience. You spent a tremendous amount of money costing security, transport, and athlete villages. So then the next time you do it, you can use what you learned.

But we can't do that, can we? Because we're disorganised. I wonder if the organisers of Victoria 2026 even approached the Gold Coast team. Was there any point?

If you'd asked anyone for the files related to the Games five years ago, could they have given them to you?

Would what you were given have been any use at all? Or would it have been a disorganised medley of folders littered with files called Copy of copy of Transport budget for Gold Coast (001).xlsx?

Disorganisation is costing us billions of dollars a year. Most of it is hidden; this was the rare case where we see it laid bare.

22.00.0011 Naming your areas and categories

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 08:52:39 GMT

Naming your areas and categories

Naming areas and categories can be difficult. I find areas are the hardest: by definition, you're trying to convey a lot of information in a few words.

I seem to strive for single- or double-word area names. But why? Be descriptive: it's a computer. Words are free.

(If you're at work Microsoft will ruin this for you. You'll run in to filename length restrictions sooner rather than later.)

'Spatial' names

Lucy and I had an idea over dinner the other week: name your areas like places. Keeping something creative? Call it The studio. Where does all of your paperwork live? The office, of course. You might keep your research in The library.

Computers are boring: making them interesting in any tiny way helps your brain.

Input vs. output

In the creative bubble that is our studio, we use Johnny.Decimal to track the creation of artefacts for LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

This is a pattern that I'll document when I'm happy with it -- it's a tricky one that I don't think we've nailed yet -- but one thing I've found helps is differentiating between 'inputs' and 'outputs'.

'Inputs' are things you need in order to create a thing. In the creative world this might be your logo and brand colours.

'Outputs' are the things you create: the video that is eventually seen by the world.

So rather than naming the area

Creative material, name it
Creative material (input).

Rather than

Marketing,
Marketing (output) might be clearer.

22.00.0010 Manifesto part 4: Why aren't we given training?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 11:39:28 GMT

When we kept everything on paper, it was someone's job to organise it. This was an occupation: you were trained. You became an expert.

Now we employ Gen Z's who didn't grow up with the concept of 'a file'¹ yet we expect them to navigate the byzantine hierarchy of the company's SharePoint.

You work at a keyboard all day, so we make you sit through a module so you know to bend your knees when you lift a box.

But when it comes to information management: you're on your own.

"File not found". The Verge, 22 September 2021. ↩

22.00.0009 Manifesto part 3: You had to be organised

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 16:29:11 GMT

When we kept everything on paper, you had to be organised. There was no other option.

If you weren't organised, the information was lost. Not lost as in 'it'll take me a while to find it': lost as in 'gone forever'.

Now you can be disorganised, but at what cost? The cost is the time it takes you to find a thing; it is the risk that the thing that you find is a duplicate or an old version. It is the constant frustration that comes from knowing that something exists, but having no idea where it is.

We all feel this every day and we have come to believe that it is normal.

It is not normal.

22.00.0008 Manifesto part 2: Information wasn't always free

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 16:28:11 GMT

Manifesto part 2: Information wasn't always free

When we kept everything on paper, generating information came with a cost.

Paper cost money. Typing out a document took real effort. Duplicating a document meant a trip to the photocopier.

Every document produced was a tangible thing. It was there, on your desk. You couldn't ignore it.

Now anyone can duplicate anything, instantly, invisibly, for free. We assume this is an improvement.

Is it?

22.00.0007 Manifesto part 1: The problem

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 16:26:11 GMT

Manifesto part 1: The problem

When we kept everything on paper, organised people had these things called filing cabinets.

They stored all of their documents in them in a structured way so that they could find them again.

Now those same people store all of their files in arbitrarily named folders on their company's share drive and wonder why they can't find anything.

22.00.0006 RSS duplicate items

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 10:07:00 GMT

RSS duplicate items

The link back to the site from items in the RSS feed has been incorrect.

I've fixed it now, but the thing that makes each entry unique is its URL: so now your RSS reader will probably see a bunch of 'new' articles, which are duplicates of the old articles. You can ignore them.

Sorry! Like I've said, I'm hand-coding this site. Like I might not have said, I'm not actually a web developer by trade...

22.00.0005 An old colleague calls

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 07:58:02 GMT

An old colleague calls

How many conversations with old colleagues -- one of them just called me -- start, "hey do you remember where?.."

In this case he asked "do I remember where that server analysis that I did was stored?" And I said, yeah, it's on our customer's network. Thirty-two-dot-something, I think.

Then I realised that I still have my old index in Bear, so I opened up the phone and within thirty seconds there it was.

Thirty-two dot twelve.

22.00.0004 Like rain on your wedding day...

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 08:43:10 GMT

Like rain on your wedding day...

Isn't it ironic that I thought quitting my job would give me more time to work on the site, and instead I've done essentially nothing.

There's a good reason: money. The site earns none. I need some. :-)

So that's what I've been doing: planning how to make money. The plan is that it'll come from the corporate world. There is a plan, it'll just take a while to enact.

The site will always be free, and my dream is that I have income that allows me to spend a lot more time on it.

Until then, forgive the lack of updates. I need to kick-start the 'job' part of 'this is my job now'. Adding new pages here unfortunately does not do that.

In the mean time there are little threads that pop up on the forum that I try to stay on top of, so if you're hungry for more content, or have a burning question, that's where you should be.

~~And of course -- I won't keep banging this drum, I swear -- if you want to sponsor me, every bit helps.~~

Update 2023-10-26: I've taken down the Patreon link. If you'd like to support me now, buy the Workbook.

22.00.0003 I quit my job

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 28 May 2023 03:00:00 GMT

I quit my job

I didn't love the job, and a late-Sunday-night conversation with my partner Lucy turned in to me resigning the next morning. Hardly spur of the moment -- this has been coming for some time -- but not what either of us had 'planned'.

The turn of events saw me free by Tuesday afternoon. Laptops and badges handed in. Quite surreal.

And so here I am: Johnny.Decimal. My job. (I need to think of something to write in the 'occupation' box; suggestions welcome.)

22.00.0002 Whatever happened to 'Business Knowledge Management'?

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 28 May 2023 02:00:00 GMT

Whatever happened to 'Business Knowledge Management'?

There's this whole corner of the internet dedicated to personal knowledge management ('PKM'). It's massive.

People spend hours of their spare time on this. They hang out in forums. They mail me and ask for guidance. They agonise over this stuff at home...

...and then they go to work and it's like it never happened.

'Knowledge management' doesn't go far enough

It's not like we haven't thought about this. There's a whole job function dedicated to knowledge management.

But whenever I've seen anyone in this role their focus tends to be on the organisation's databases. That SFIA description talks about your 'knowledge management database' but the word 'file' doesn't appear once.

Is it that the file system is just so unglamorous? It is, right, I know it is. (It's one of my fears in trying to make this my job: organising your files is, well ... boring.)

But that's no excuse to neglect it. Your internal knowledge databases may be amazing but that's only part of the picture.¹

Why is this okay?

The cost of being disorganised at home is negligible: you might be frustrated that you can't find your insurance documentation, but it's not costing literally hundreds of dollars an hour.

This is the problem that I intend to solve.

Are they? I've yet to see this either, but that's a separate issue. ↩

22.00.0001 Hello, World!

hello@johnnydecimal.com (Johnny Noble) — Sun, 28 May 2023 01:00:00 GMT

Hello, World!

I thought I'd use this first post to explain the numbering scheme.

As you might expect, each post has an ID. This post's ID is 22.00.0001.

Blog posts are breaking the rules they don't fit in the overall structure.

Imagine if every post had a Johnny.Decimal ID: 22.01, 22.02, and so on. My navigation tree would soon get out of control. And I'd run out of numbers quite quickly.

This is a nice example of why I save the 00 numbers. In this case I'm using 22.00, which is the 'meta' ID for the blog category, as an ID to represent all blog posts.

Each post then gets its own supplementary ID, starting from 0001. (I'm assuming I'll never write more than 10,000 posts.)¹

Accessing the posts

The main site has a couple of IDs dedicated to viewing lists of posts.

There's 22.01 which is an index of all posts but only their titles.

If I add 'tags' to future posts, I might use 22.03 and upwards to show pages that list blog posts with a specific tag.

I'm just having a bit of fun with this

None of this was really necessary. :-)

Let's say I write a post a day. 365 days/year means I could easily hit 1,000 in a couple of years, but at the same rate I'd need to do that until the year 2050 to get close to 10,000. Unlikely. ↩