Comment by morning-coffee

Similar age, slightly different experience.

I haven't tried a bunch of different systems, but I admit to liking the principles behind this Johnny.Decimal system and might give it a whirl.

I used to get frustrated that all of the information I'd carted along over the years wasn't "organized". I realized a couple things:

  - I really didn't need most of the stuff I thought I did. So I cull/delete and generally try to minimize what is kept from the start.
  - For the stuff I do want forever, I use "Archive" for mail and a similar concept for files. One folder per year and the entirety of that year's activities dumped there. I'll use search over this when needed.
  - Each year I start somewhat fresh, carrying over current areas still active from the previous year while archiving the rest. I then re-evaluate and try to simplify the current "working index" for the current year and its generally easy to find thing within that narrowed context.

My analogy is that life is an immutable log of records ongoing in chronological order... so a folder for each chronological year. Then index in each year as you see fit... the index/categories/areas for each year don't have to be the same as prior years... they likely won't if life is interesting and changing!