Johnny Decimal System
Trying the Johnny Decimal System showed me what works and what doesn’t. A hybrid of JDS, hierarchy, and creative chaos is what keeps me sane.
I discovered the Johnny Decimal System a short while ago, thanks to a great write-up I stumbled across by Kristof Zerbe.
The title "Emerging from the Abyss" resonated to me, as my digital life has always been a "Where did I put that?", split across local and cloud drives, and random folders.
Johnny describes his system as
a system to organise your life.
Find things, quickly, with more confidence, and less stress.
I stupidly assumed adopting it would be a simple "flip the switch" thing. Just create some directories, assign some numbers, and voilà, I become an organized human being. Reality: I got lost for a couple of days wondering how I acquired so much digital junk.
Long story short, I couldn’t go fully Johnny Decimal in every area of my digital life.
Here’s what didn’t work well:
- The mental overhead at the beginning was a real pain in the ass to me. "Is this category too broad? Too narrow? What if I run out of numbers? What if I regret this later?".
- Some projects - especially long-term ones - naturally have subfolders within subfolders. I tried flattening them to match the Johnny Decimal structure, and it became harder, not easier, to navigate. Same goes for my old image library that I haven't had time to move to Immich yet, or for my "Bridge" folder, where I place things that will be moved to a definitive directory or to the trash in a given moment.
Final Thoughts
Although I wasn't able to implement it like it was supposed to, there was a big change in the way I organize my files.
Today, I run a hybrid:
- Johnny Decimal for top-level organization;
- Normal hierarchies for deeply structured projects;
- Free-flow (or messy) spaces for creativity.
Surprisingly, they coexist beautifully. I mean, way better than it was before.