I also hate it. My hatred stems from the fact that it's very much a tech bro ideology. They get it into their head that THEIR system is 'the one'. It's the same way that tech bro weirdos running startups get it in THEIR head that THEIR product is some sort of life changing piece of technology that every human on the planet is going to ultimately adopt once they just "understand it". And god forbid if the product does catch on, because then it's a horrific confirmation bias to them. So instead of luck and market coercion, the product's success is evidence of their brilliance.

I know that seems like a weird conclusion to get to from this, but having read a LOT of these types of articles over the years and seeing people's convictions and deep seated beliefs about their categorization systems, it really underscores a lot of how humans get it in their heads about their POV of the world is the 'right one' that the rest of the world should get on board with.

Johnny here.

This isn't how I feel. I wonder which part of the website gives you the idea that I believe that it is 'the one' and only system?

I mean I could surround every statement on there with "please only do this if you feel that it's for you" but that might get tedious.

I have an idea. I present it. I personally like it. If you don't, that's okay. Go find something else that works for you.

Please don’t call people you know literally nothing about ‘tech bro’. That’s not nice.

I think from my side the problem could be expressed in a more nuanced way: it's usually not the originator of some idea to be the annoying techbro trying to evangelize everyone. In most cases the culprits are early adopters thinking they found the silver bullet solving all of their (and everyone else's!) problems and being very vocal about it

I agree with most of your sentiment. I also came to associate the proponents of these system with a a set of other traits: - obsession with tools and methods over outcomes - busywork - insistence with their approach being the only right one It seems these trait could be quite adjacent with tech bro behaviour

I too hate seeing other people excited about things they are interested in

I don't mind content marketing with real value, but this is obvious "digital products" spam designed to get readers into a sales funnel for the workbook.

Johnny here.

This website has existed in some form or other for over a decade. I've poured thousands of hours of my spare time in to it, and to helping people on the forum or by email. For a decade.

The workbook went up literally six weeks ago because I quit my full time job in May this year, hoping to make some sort of a living from this hobby of mine. Feedback has been universally positive. It helps people.

My site has no ads, no tracking, no garbage of any kind. Hell, I rebuilt it in Astro so that it doesn't even have JS! And so I spent hundreds of hours writing a thing, which I'm selling. A basic transaction, which you are free to ignore.

Shoot me for trying to pay the rent. I hope you never try to sell anything.

Care to elaborate ?

I mean, there's a _lot_ to dislike, but it mostly boils down to this being a physical object system applied to digital objects, and I disagree with every single premise in the list of reasons they give for having created it in the first place. For instance, there's a whole section on how "Search doesn’t help" which ends with "You can search for things, but the results are garbage." - the author hasn't considered that maybe search is garbage for them precisely because they're trying to apply physical object system to digital objects. I don't know about you, but Spotlight on my Mac finds exactly what I'm looking for every single time, because we use simple naming conventions.

I also hate the absolute waste of human cognition this system causes making people try to memorise which number is at the start of a folder name they're looking for. From their own examples, a folder called `22 Contracts` is going to be sorted into a different position in a list than it would if it were just named `Contracts` - without the number, I both know exactly what the name of the folder I want is, and where it will appear in a directory listing. With someone else's choice of number at the front, I know neither of these things.

Basically, every single thing this claims to solve is either not a problem in the first place, is trivially solved without making people learn a stranger's personal numbering preferences, or is made considerably worse by this system.