Introduction

While the LIFT principle provides a clear set of principles to avoid feeling overwhelmed and quickly find what we need, the Johnny decimal provides a “framework” for better organizing our information.

Here I’ll describe the system and how it works. As we will see, just like the PARA method, the Johnny Decimal system can be used across tools and platforms, which makes it another excellent tool to add to your information/knowledge management toolbox.

As I’ll explain, the Obsidian Starter Kit uses this system to structure your personal knowledge base.

Table of contents

How the Johnny Decimal system works

The Johnny Decimal system is a simple three-step process to organize information:

1. Divide everything you want to organize into 10 areas (at most!)
   1. Make sure that every area is really different (you don’t want any overlap between those!)
   2. Choose a name for each area
2. Within each area, divide your content into 10 categories (at most!)
3. Assign a unique number to each area and category

One of the core ideas of this system is to group related information together.

With the Johnny Decimal system, you can create at most 10 areas (i.e., top-level folders) with 10 categories each. That’s it. The reason for this limitation is to keep things simple.

The first step of the process aims to force you to broadly organize your content. The limit on the number of areas is there to force you to keep things simple. The fewer folders you have, the easier it will be to identify and locate (see LIFT principle) what you are looking for or want to store.

The second step is key. Categories are where your content actually lives. Each category should hold very specific information/content.

Finally, the last step has multiple purposes:

• First, it makes it easier to identify what you’re looking at, which means that you gain time when going through the structure, either to find or file information. Once you recognize the numbers, you don’t even need to read the names anymore
• Second, it allows you to organize categories logically, rather than alphabetically, which allows you to put what you need most often/what makes most sense on top
• Third, it makes it easy to see where information is NOT supposed to be

Note that Johnny Decimal “areas” are not the same as PARA areas, even if they’re somewhat related. If you observe the Folder structure of the Obsidian Starter Kit, you’ll see that there are the 4 basic areas of PARA (projects, areas, resources and archives), as well as additional ones. But all of those are numbered using the Johnny Decimal system.