"Eleven dot oh-one"
A future of file structures?
In recent weeks, I've given thought to finding a better organization structure for files on both my personal and work computers. It's become all too easy to have files floating around with no traceability. Whether downloading something from the internet, receiving a file in an email, or plugging in external storage, tracing files down becomes harder and harder as you get more and more files and devices.
Let's get one thing straight, there is no "one size fits all" for this predicament, but I believe there's a protocol all can use to build a file structure that offers forward and backward traceability, and that is the Johnny.Decimal system.
The Johnny.Decimal system is a framework, not a template.
A theme of 10s
The Johnny.Decimal system is built on 10s. The thought process behind 10 is that it should force the user to think broadly and decisively about the groupings.
1. Defining Buckets
In short, the Johnny.Decimal system forces users to divide folder structures into groups of 10. Each of these 10 groups (or buckets) contains a specific type of document (eg. "Finances", "Media", "Projects", etc). Since you can only choose 10, it's important to think about what is most important to you as a user. The system is designed to prevent 100s of folders in one structure, so this should be a challenging task.
2. Defining Subcategories
Now that the bucket is defined, let's say Finance, for example, you can break the bucketinto categories. Categories, for example could be "Taxes", "Bank Statements", or "Payroll".
There can be 99 subcategories in a bucket (eg. 01, 02, 03....98, 99) which should provide enough detail to remain organized.
Each of the buckets has a number assigned to it. Taxes, under the Finances branch, would be assigned "11 Taxes". And beneath taxes would be the Fiscal Year which is assigned "11.01 FY2016". The pattern continues on as you can see below.
├── 00-00 UNFILED
├── 10-19 Finances
│ ├── 11 Taxes
│ │ ├── 11.01 FY2016
│ │ │ ├── 11.01.01 Tax Forms
│ │ │ │ ├── W2-2016.pdf
│ │ │ ├── 11.01.02 Documents
│ │ │ │ ├── Donations.docx
│ │ │ │ ├── Deductions.xlsx
│ │ ├── 11.02 FY2017
│ │ ├── 11.03 FY2018
│ │ ├── 11.04 FY2019
├── 20-29 Media
│ │ ├── 21.01 Movies
│ │ ├── 21.02 Photos
│ │ ├── 21.03 Music
The Power of the Numbers
The reason this system is so powerful is because now every folder has it's very own unique identifier. For FY2016 Tax Supporting Documents in the example above, the UID is 11.01.02.
Indexing in file system:
These UIDs can be used in a variety of ways, but the way I have found it most useful is when searching through folders in my file explorer. Searching the UID immediately finds a match and there is no guesswork.
Searching with a generic description does not bring up the result immediately:
Referencing documents in emails:
Imagine you're on a team using a share drive, and you want email James instructions to open up a document in a certain folder. With the current way most teams work, you would say: "James, go to the following file path and open the spreadsheet with Jarod's tax information "ShareDrive -> Documents -> Finance -> Clients -> Jarod -> Tax Forms" whereas with the Johnny.Decimal system, you could simply say "James, go to 11.01 and open Jarod's tax information.
And since "11.01" is embedded in the email, you can easily categorize emails that relate to certain tasks / folders.
Nothing is more than a couple clicks away
As you can see, the Johnny.Decimal system has several merits. The ability to not get lost in folders, and to ensure everything is easily trackable is very attractive. I hope this gives you a new outlook on storing files, and maybe soon enough, we'll all be saying Eleven Dot Oh-One
See more at the Johnny.Decimal homepage: johnnydecimal.com