Comment

Comment on A system to organise your life • Johnny.Decimal

idk, it seems I’ll have a similar set of problems I already have with organizing files. If I have health expense documents, is that “health”, “me”, or “money”? What about travel expense receipts? Or [pick any two categories that may overlap]?

That’s why I prefer using tags or labels: they don’t force you to make a choice.

I like the “no more than ten” principle though; when organizing a file tree I try to aim for up to 5 or 6 items in a given directory, as I tend to notice the friction when choosing among more than a handful.

source

Sort:hotnew top

QuarterSwede@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Bingo. I really wish Explorer,OneDrive, and Microsoft’s office stuff would support tags. It would actually help me in the workplace u like the CoPilot initiative.

source
- Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Don’t have an agenda and already mentioned it here but consider looking at “Tagspaces” newer versions got a little enshittified, I forget right now what version I parked at, but I think you can still find older builds that have almost all the best features for free. Your files / tagging infrastructure will not fall apart if you switch OS or ditch the app which I think is really important for longevity. It would be really easy to code something new that’s compatible with the tagging structure if you ever wanted too.
  
  source
heavydust@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s obviously not for every body but I hate tags because they are so random and I would forget what I used. I’ve been successfully using the Johnny decimal guide for a few years because it’s intuitive for me. Your examples are obvious for me: health expense goes into “Receipts > Health” and travel expense goes into “Receipts > Travel.” If I had to use tags I would think of “health, personal, money, receipts, bank, medication, etc.” and it would be a real mental struggle to categorize everything.

The “no more than ten” principles forces me to put everything in the most generic category I can think of. And if I need more than 10, it’s a new project or a new something. But I agree it’s not for everyone, it just happens to be suited with how I’m organized.

source
- Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  This is why you need a tagging system that limits your choices and can easily sort across folders by tags. I prefer Tagspaces because it just adds the tags directly to the end of filenames so I never lose the tags and if I am on a system where it’s not installed I do always have the option of just manually adding a tag. I keep things in folders too and 8/10 times the folder structure does the trick, but boy it’s nice to have those tags when I’m either looking for something or need to see a lot of similar things all at once. Never more applicable than tax time. Can pull up receipts w2s, loan stuff, medical stuff all by just pulling the (tax) tag.
  
  source