Comment by pendingU
1 day ago
I'm always impressed by systems like this, but I've personally never understood the point.
I'd be curious to learn from others what the benefits of this kind of archiving are for them? And if the time cost is worth it.
For me, I feel like I treat most of my documents as very temporal things. I need them for a certain period of time, but then after that, they can be list to the ether. I have never really had a need to reference old content, plans, documents, etc.
The only old things I ever need to reference are old code projects and writings. But even that I can usually manage with just a single folder for the project.
Everytime I get a new computer, I just start fresh. Keeping only a very small amount of files backed up in cloud services. Which as I mentioned are just a very small collection of code projects and writings. Am I crazy? Haha.
You will understand when you get into your 50-60s.
Because of the volume of documents, or because of some cognitive change at that age?
Volume is a factor but it’s more about melancholia and being able to recall the years of your life.
Both, for me. Memory not as sharp as it used to be, and more to be organized.
My parents are way older than that and never worried about such things.
I have a cloud folder where I store pretty much all data I care about, both for work and personal life (with exceptions like photos and videos, for space reasons). It used to be a huge mess and I often had a hard time finding a specific thing. I switched to J.D a few years ago - or rather to a modification of it, it's not strict: I do have a few "out of category" folders that were difficult to neatly categorize, for example - but the principles are there. And now I find it much easier to locate stuff.
In my case, though, looking for specific documents from several years ago is very common. Maybe if you don't have that need and can find things just fine with your current setup, J.D would do nothing for you.