What's Your Fingerboard Paradigm?

 

Playing guitar, bass, or any other multiple stringed instrument is difficult. The multiple strings make the the same note available in multiple positions on the instrument. This is the blessing and the curse of those instruments. The blessing is the note you want might be very close to your hand position. The curse is that you have to figure out which string to play that note on. And, there is more than one choice!

To simplify this complexity, I have noticed that the good players eventually a develop a paradigm to help them better understand the instrument and music theory. One of the most well know approaches is the CAGED method. Other approaches I have heard of:

• Basing everything you do on 1 or 2 chord shapes - This is an extreme simplification but works for some folks. An example of this would be to only use G and C chord shape patterns of the CAGED method. As you play, you would constantly shift to find a position to match those shape for what you are playing. 
• 5 fingers positions by Jimmy Bruno - In Jimmy Bruno's approach, each position is named after the relative note it starts on. For instance, 5th position  6th position, etc.
• Triangles and rectangles - As far as I can figure out, this visual approach uses triangles to describe triads and rectangles to describe pentatonic scales.

What paradigm do you use to understand the fingerboard?