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ryanstormon Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

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.

ryanstormon Blog Writing for Developers (2023)

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.

ryanstormon Reddit.com appears to be having an outage

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.

ryanstormon Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

To add to this, the app downloads a significant chunk of data because of its inefficiencies. Not ideal for tight budget data plans.

ryanstormon Reddit.com appears to be having an outage

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.

ryanstormon Incompetent but Nice

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.

ryanstormon A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

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.

ryanstormon The silent struggles of workers with ADHD

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]

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/z1usgt/advi...

ryanstormon Dwarf Fortress’ graphical upgrade provides a new way into a wildly wonky game

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:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXX7Rp0iXj0nPwER_CwBD...

ryanstormon Ask HN: I implemented the life I designed: perfect but I feel lost. What now?

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.

ryanstormon Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

Anecdotal disagree here. I have a system that would probably be deemed complicated by anyone that would look at it (even more so than the OP article).

While I wouldn't consider myself the most successful person, I've got a lot done, and I attribute a lot of it to my system, notes, and organization. The system wasn't immediately complicated either, it has been developed and refined over 10 years to suit my needs. And for me in particular, it alleviates a lot of mental overhead and allows me to just focus on whatever it is I'm working on.

But that's just me, I think you do have a point to some extent. It depends on the person, YMMV.

Here's an article that goes into more about these concepts, the author calls it a "Second Brain": https://fortelabs.co/blog/basboverview/

ryanstormon Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?

I lasted about two weeks without climbing before I built myself free-standing backyard climbing wall:

https://www.westby.io/woody/

I had to pick up all the tools for it, and with those I'm on a kick for other craft projects. I have plans for some wooden climbing holds, a raised planter box, a little free library for the neighborhood, a bench.

Woodworking is such a fun hobby I didn't know I liked. I think it's because it's so tangential to tech.

ryanstormon Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?

https://www.westby.io/blog/

I do a bit of traveling and a lot of climbing and have been posting some trip reports recently. I've also been doing book reviews if you're into the fantasy genre!

ryanstormon Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

There's this blog post:

Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence

https://blog.stephsmith.io/learning-to-write-with-confidence...

ryanstormon Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible

Great idea. This also sounds a lot like it falls in with the "ritual" concept from Deep Work by Cal Newport.

ryanstormon Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

Here's a small tip for others that might help this problem:

Don't use the application versions of any of your apps. Instead, open up the web version of all of them and keep all their tabs in one browser window.

For example, my "notification window" includes my gmail, slack, outlook, and the web client for my mobile texts. I keep the window minimized until I have a need for it, and keep the vibration off on my phone during work hours.

ryanstormon YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

There's a concept called Parasocial interaction that describes the relationship between an audience and a media personality (originally observed for tv personalities, but more recently YouTube and internet ones apply too).

"Viewers or listeners come to feel and consider media personalities almost as friends."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction

ryanstormon Yale's online class on “The Science of Well-Being”

I recall reading some research on the effects of gratitude. Here's an example:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-...

ryanstormon Have a personal web site

Agreed. I try to frame my posts to have helpful information first and foremost, for others in the same situations or even for my future self. Or for trip report type posts, for any others that were on the trip with me.

ryanstormon It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

Your href.cool project is rad, and has inspired me to make my own! Thanks for sharing.

ryanstormon My Salary Progression in Tech

Here's mine. I graduated school in 2013 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, but at the time of graduation I already knew I wanted to actually work in software.

Year - Age - Total Income - Role

2014 - 23 - 36k - Test Technician in Santa Barbara, CA

2015 - 24 - 40k - Test Technician in Santa Barbara, CA

2016 - 25 - 46k - Finally made the switch to software, worked for a couple different startups in Portland, OR.

2017 - 26 - 38k - Full-stack Developer for couple more startups while I honed my skills

2018 - 27 - 87k - Landed a contract with a large apparel company

2019 - 28 - 111k - Converted to full-time with large apparel company. Senior Software Engineer.

ryanstormon Ask HN: Show Us Your Personal Website/Blog?

http://westby.io/

I just have a few posts right now, mostly related to climbing. Hoping to update the site and write more this year.

ryanstormon If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

Your comment aligns with an old HN comment that I have saved that resonated with me:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16402387

I'd also recommend people feeling this way to read The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. It helped me.

ryanstormon Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?

I have a post at my blog here: http://westby.io/5-books-ive-read-2018-1/

Some other books I read that I'd recommend: - Anathem - Deep Work - A Canticle for Leibowitz - Into Thin Air - Shoe Dog - Happiness Hypothesis

ryanstormon The cold start problem: how to build your machine learning portfolio

Here's a collection of project ideas:

http://nifty.stanford.edu/

ryanstormon Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

It's funny reading this, because I just implemented these exact strategies recently and have been seeing great success with it. I could have written this comment myself.

ryanstormon Just Read the Book Already

Yep. I knock out 30-40 books a year through audiobooks. I rotate between NF, sci-fi, and fantasy, and literature.

Audiobooks are perfect while commuting, working out, and doing chores. During the times I'd have time to read a physical book, I read a technical one, a comic book, or a video game instead.

ryanstormon ‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI wrong

I started reading The Economist last year for this reason. Their Special Reports are similar to what you're looking for. The New Yorker also puts out minibook-length articles.

Nautilus is another mag that I've been happy with for more science-oriented stuff. They put out monthly issues with a cohesive theme.

ryanstormon Ask HN: How do you organize/track your personal goals?

Another +1 for journal here. Specifically, the bullet journal: http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/

It's very modular, so you can do whatever you want with it. But I write a daily to-do list and also use it to keep track of longer term tasks and goals.

I have used it for 3 years now, have filled up two moleskin-type journals, and my SO and I are convinced that this is the single best thing we've done to improve ourselves.

ryanstormon The rich world needs higher real wage growth

The Economist just went through a month-long series on the faults of economists and the field. I'm sure they'd be able to go into more detail, but this seems to be one of their more simplified articles.