Classification Tips

<div>From <a href="http://forums.thebrain.com/post?id=3684208" rel="nofollow">this forum post</a>:</div>

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<div>Several things that come to mind immediately:</div>

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<li>I usually don't worry about classification until I have enough "stuff" to warrant a system.</li>

<li>Prior to developing a system, I try to make some decisions ahead of time (it invariably saves me a lot of time later).

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<li>How do I use the information?</li>

<li>What is the first thing that comes to mind when I go about finding this information? Do I look by date, by alpha. by area, by something else? What's the primary method I would use to go about finding something specific?</li>

<li>If my first option for searching for the topic doesn't work, what would I fall back to?</li>

<li>If that doesn't work, what then?</li>

<li>Will other people be using this (can it be a strictly personal classification system, or do other people have to understand it too?)</li>

<li>Will I need to find groupings of the stuff, or is it always just individual items?</li>

<li>If I think about looking for this stuff in the future, can I think of any other useful methods of sorting it?</li>

<li>Is the main grouping I'm leaning towards scaleable?</li>

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<li>After I've at least thought about some of the above questions, I'll start firming up my ideas around the best use for parents, types, and now tags.</li>

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<div>People with separate brains for different areas and projects will have an easier time with a classification system, because the system is already targeted. In essence, only a classification system that makes sense to the purpose of the brain needs to be created, and it's probably a bit less likely to morph as time goes on.</div>

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<div>For better or worse, I've taken the single brain approach. Because of this, I have a general classification system for the entire brain, and then within projects or certain areas I have sub-systems which I have to tie in some way to the main classification system, and also make sure the main system is not subverted. This mainly applies to types, but has started to encompass tags as my implementation of them has grown throughout my brain (especially with the new filtering capabilities). What I mean by subversion is that I don't want types standing for one thing in my main classification system, and then creating other types for a sub-classification area that will mess up reporting or searching capabilities on my main classification types.</div>

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<div>There's really two main pieces of advice I can give from my experience on this:</div>

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<li>Keep your system as simple as possible, <b>while still allowing you to find what you need to quickly</b>. More classification methods mean more maintenance and things to remember when creating new thoughts.</li>

<li>When creating a system, search for existing classification systems, take what you like and leave what you don't. For example, <a href="http://forums.thebrain.com/post?id=3388608" rel="nofollow">this thread</a> where greenwood pointed to wiki categories. </li>

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I'll be interested to read what others come up with. <img src="/05882029-67e0-55de-8161-b465dbf01f49.gif"/></div>

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