Camp Kubrick. Various camp events should be listed in the guide; for each of them is the instruction to come to the camp and “ask for Spartacus.” When someone drops by the members one by one shout “I’m Spartacus” and reenact that scene. Newcomers are invited to stay and join the Sparticians.

The past year I’ve become a convert to the Johnny Decimal system, an organizational system that makes it easy to organize hundreds of different little documents, projects, and records. At first, I just used it as a way to declutter and organize. Then came the epiphany where I realized I could use it to revolutionize the way I organize my time, and my life.

The basic logic of JD is to assign a unique number – a “johnny decimal” – to each of your projects or documents. For instance in my JD system “45.09” is the JD number for my notes about campgrounds in the area around New York City. Each document has one of these four digit unique keys. The number is structured: the first digit is an “area” – a high-level division of your concerns. I decided “4” would be the “Friends+Family” area. The next digit defines a category – for me “45” is “Travel+Camping” all my notes and documents about countries I’d like to visit, road trips, camping pack lists, and so on.

The second part of this JD number, “45.09” is “09” and this is just a unique key for that document within the folder. So, 45.01, 45.02, 45.03 are all documents or projects associated with travel and camping, but there’s no particular order within the category. Why two digits? Well, certainly one isn’t enough; two is the shortest it could be. But is two digits enough? One of the most liberating aspects of JD is the author’s brunt assertion: “You’ll never get to 99.” Which is true! 100 categories of 100 items is more than enough room for everything – it’s as compact as it can be.

So now at last all the myriad interests of my dilletante brain found a logical home. A random idea for a Burning Man project? Check. A python learning project to write a sudoku solver? Check. Research notes on ADHD? Check. A records of my progress through the 1001 movies to see before you die list? Check.

This little citadel of order, a bulwark against the surging chaos of fathering two small boys in a tiny apartment, was satisfaction enough. But soon I realized how much more the system made possible.