Your principles mirror my own, which have been developed and refined over the last ten years (I'm 34 now). There have been periods of overcomplicating things, but they've mostly reached a natural state that works for me.
Maybe interesting is the evolution of my system:
• 2015 and prior: Sticky notes, calendars, notebooks, sheets of paper, chaos
• 2016-2019: I found the bullet journal method and implemented the most basic form found here: https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq (collections, future log, monthly log, daily log) and never really evolved from that utilitarian mode.
• 2019-2025: I signed up for Notion and ported my bullet journal system there. I miss the physical version, but prefer the easy access and easy editing in the online version. In addition to Notion, I heavily use Google Calendar, and also Google Keep as a quicker-access and catch-all of smaller notes. I use Notion for life admin and Obsidian for work notes and files.
OP's Johnny.Decimal system caught my attention since I've been interested in a consistent and proven way to organize the files on my laptop, SSDs, Drive, as well as all my physical docs. I could also see it being a nice way to organize my Notion and Obsidian, but I also tend to rely on search and backlinking as others have commented about for their own systems.
I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this, but you asked!
What you are building is essentially what Tiago Forte calls a "Second Brain". He has an entire book around Second Brain, as well as the one on PARA.
Ironically, I've found myself using Second Brain less since using PARA because PARA ends up solving my needs without it.
As an example, this week I received a letter from the tax authority where I live. I took the letter, scanned it, and placed it in my PARA/2 Areas/TAXES/2023 folder (since it was in relation to my 2023 taxes). I used a descriptive filename that included what the letter was about and the date.
I didn't need second brain to process the tax letter- what was important is that it was stored quickly and easily, and that I can retrieve it later if need be. I also don't need any complex tagging or keyword systems- the folder and filename help me find the relevant documents, and it takes no more time than adding lots of keywords. I know because I've tried more complex systems, and they ended up being more trouble than they were worth.
But more importantly, I'm not tied to any specific service or software. I'd never use a program that requires me to upload my most sensitive data to a third party service. It would put my data at risk and it would also mean that if the company were to change its business model (like Notion did) or had a breakin, or went out of business, my data would be at risk.
That's why I don't advocate for Second Brain services that do this, even ones with lots of cool features.
I would love automated integrated voice notes (vs what I do now which requires a bit of cut and paste) but the benefits don't outweigh the extremely high cost to me.
I agree with you, but just for kicks I'd like to go through your examples.
First, blogging is alive and well in the outdoor sports space. "Trip reports" serve as incredibly helpful tools for research. In climbing, [Steph Abegg](https://www.stephabegg.com/tripreports/chronology) has one of the most useful sites cataloging, detailing, and photo logging all of her ascents. The late Marc-Andre Leclerc was a beautiful human, and while there are films and memories about him, it's his [blog](https://marcleclerc.blogspot.com/) that allows the world to get a truer sense for who he was.
I'm probably in the minority, but I prefer blogs over YouTube for their ability to parse the info more easily. TikTok takes most of the control in how it presents any info you might find and tops it off with immeasurable distraction.
ChatGPT can be great for quickly gathering relevant knowledge, but it still needs cross-referencing, and lacks the creative and novel elements that comes from a valuable human blog post.
Mainstream news articles tend to lack personality and voice.
"If you build it they will come" seems to still hold true for the posts and trip reports I've written. I've been pleasantly surprised by the email I've receive in my inbox asking esoteric follow-up questions, wondering how they even found my posts in the first place.
Overall traffic is admittedly mostly non-existent, and that's fine as I'd be glad to help or inform the few that do come across my posts. Though more to your point, I do wonder how many potential (younger?) readers will never come across a blog post because it's not ingrained as a place to look for info, as opposed to YouTube/TikTok etc.
Imagine being a non-tech savvy user or someone who understands the world more literally than figuratively. That sort of message could be pretty confusing for them.
It depends on the type of user, even among the non-tech savvy.
A message as simple as "Sorry, reddit is receiving too much traffic right now and can't handle your request. Try loading this page later.", 99% of people will understand.
But there's that 1% of people that aren't just non-savvy, they're willfully non-savvy to the point where words stop having meaning to them just because they're referring to something related to a computer. The type where if you ask them something as simple as "Is the computer turned on?", they say they don't know. Meanwhile, the screen is showing their desktop.
Attempting this to be more of a discussion prompt than speculation, but as an advertiser or other consumer analytics customer of reddit, would this sort of protest and the potential fallout be concerning? I'm not sure if all this is a drop in the bucket for those customers or if it's significant. If it was significant, would reddit be scrambling to save face for these advertising customers? An outage like this would certainly skew the difference in their analytics for today's relative traffic.
To expand on this, part of ADHD is a disorder in "executive function". Attention, focus, impulse control, working memory, and flexibility are all part of that. Those are also all the things that make someone a worker with reliable output. (Or in different contexts: a competent student, parent, or partner)
And like you mentioned, it's not that folks with ADHD don't want to be reliable, it's that their brains are fundamentally different. They might not be informed about any of this either, and are then left to wonder why they can't do the things they want to do.
There are things that help though, similar to the way insulin helps those with diabetes, or how glasses help those with bad vision. There are medications, therapy, and mental tools.
I'd recommend those that may suspect something like this in themselves to talk to a doctor about it. A diagnosis and treatment could change your life. It changed mine.
My outdoor hobby is limited by rain (rock climbing), so I've gone through most of the weather apps. Dark Sky was by far the best, both for accuracy and visualization.
I'm in this thread to hopefully find an alternative, and wunderground.com looks like it might be the ticket.
Thanks for sharing. It's been wild for me to read through this thread and finding so much shared experience. For your comment, it could have been written exactly by me, just with the book and media subjects replaced with my own.
I'm undiagnosed, but have already made an appointment after reading a similar topic on reddit earlier this month [1]
For those that can't play it but would still like to experience the joys of its flavor of generative art, there's a YT channel that interprets it and puts a story and illustration to his playthroughs:
I spent much of my 20's struggling with finding purpose in life, similar to the OP, and this is the only comment here that matched with what I landed on. I'm now about to begin my 30's with many of these things either done or in progress.
The biggest one has been taking up climbing as a sport. Climbing has a clear path to improvement, has a wonderful social element, takes you to amazing places around the world, and can be as safe or risky as you're willing to push.
The other big component in life that I've taken up is art. Writing, painting, music, poetry, you name it. There is something innate about producing art that I think every human can benefit from. On that note, I think it's also easy for us to dismiss ourselves as untalented in any of these arts, but they're like any other skill and they'll become more fulfilling with time.
Maybe interesting is the evolution of my system:
• 2015 and prior: Sticky notes, calendars, notebooks, sheets of paper, chaos
• 2016-2019: I found the bullet journal method and implemented the most basic form found here: https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq (collections, future log, monthly log, daily log) and never really evolved from that utilitarian mode.
• 2019-2025: I signed up for Notion and ported my bullet journal system there. I miss the physical version, but prefer the easy access and easy editing in the online version. In addition to Notion, I heavily use Google Calendar, and also Google Keep as a quicker-access and catch-all of smaller notes. I use Notion for life admin and Obsidian for work notes and files.
OP's Johnny.Decimal system caught my attention since I've been interested in a consistent and proven way to organize the files on my laptop, SSDs, Drive, as well as all my physical docs. I could also see it being a nice way to organize my Notion and Obsidian, but I also tend to rely on search and backlinking as others have commented about for their own systems.