Top level categories in my notes: writingslowly.com

@writingslowly How would you characterize the Johnny.Decimal system? It seems to blend both top-down and bottom-up approaches.

@writingslowly hi there! fun to see my translation of that Johannes Schmidt lecture being referenced :)

@roy thanks very much for making it available

@drjlwells in what way is Johnny Decimal bottom-up? I’m not seeing that.

@billseitz everything about your site has been inspirational for my TiddlyWiki notebook. To cite just one inspiring post of many: Notice patterns and garden your own private wiki notebook. Thanks!

@writingslowly Top level (area), once defined, is fixed, but within those, there’s no hierarchy. It seems like a relatively organic approach (to me, at least).

@drjlwells I see what you mean - the top level areas are defined, but they’re what you make them. Johnny Decimal seems a bit like PARA - they’re both ways of organising all your digital/written stuff, and your notes (Zettelkasten or whatever) can sit within that framework (or not).

@writingslowly i used to PARA-everything and got stuck in the categorization step itself. now i email-to-self first, dump the thought raw, then sort during weekly review. categories grow from patterns once you can see a month of them, not the other way around.