The Johnny.Decimal Workbook is free
Sign up for a free account then find it at JDU / Workbook. Its licence is now CC BY-NC 4.0 meaning you're free to share and adapt it, but not for commercial purposes.
An ode to the workbook
When I quit my job in May 2023, we didn't know what we were going to do. In hindsight, we should have planned it a bit better. And saved more money. Story of my life.
We'd already booked a month-long holiday for August that year. Around the start of July, we realised that we should create this document: the best, most comprehensive guide to building your own system. So, in a flurry that ended two days before we flew overseas, we did that.
It was a lot of work. 20,000 words. 100-ish pages. Everything I knew about taking a bunch of disorganised stuff and turning it in to a Johnny.Decimal system. Lovingly edited and laid out by Lucy. We were really happy with it. We still are. It stood the test of time.
The first sale
I put it up for sale on Gumroad, not having any clue what would happen. Then I emailed my mailing list. Then I went outside to see Lucy, who was with the chickens. I remember it vividly.
Minutes later, the Gumroad app popped a notification on my phone. A sale. Then another. And another. Four, almost immediately. I showed Lucy. We couldn't believe it – this was the first validation that this thing, this dumb idea that I quit a proper job for, might keep us alive.
Giddy with excitement, we spent more on hotels that holiday than we had any right to.
You can't protect a PDF
I always knew this would happen, but it still stings when it does. The workbook has been available to download for free for ages now. Just Google it. Which is fine – there's only so long one should expect to eke a living from a PDF.
In fact, we uploaded it to the National Library of Australia ourselves last year. That feels really good. To have our work there. That'll outlast me. Mad.
Don't always be so obvious
See 'Update', below.
Of course the 'natural' instinct when giving a thing away is to get something for it. So I just spent the morning faffing about with my email list, thinking I'd do the thing where you sign up, you get the link to the workbook, you get those onboarding emails that nobody reads. Email address as currency.
To my credit, the time it's taking me to go from implementing The Thing That Everyone Does to realising that I Cannot Be Bothered Doing That is getting shorter. So, no email required. Just the workbook, if you want it.
We hope you find it useful. You can support us by signing up for something at JDHQ.
Update 2026-04-19
With the 2026 rebuild of the site – which you're reading – we've put the workbook behind a free account. But that account really is free: no obligations, no secretly signing you up to a mailing list.
Our hope, frankly, is that you'll find this whole place useful enough that you give us money for something. This is how we make our living, after all. 🙂