Organize Your Ideas and Activities with PARA
How you organize your information, and how you work, is a largely personal preference. However, the options are vast and without a framework or even ideas from others, it can be impossible to know what it could be. I do not believe that I would be as organized as I am without the years of research that I have done on the subject. Since productivity, especially personal productivity, has been a subject of increasing popularity over the last decade or so, there are no shortage of systems and ideas available to review. As I mentioned in the previous article on CODE for Productivity, setting yourself up for better productivity is a personal choice. Using an organization system like PARA (and I’ll even share a variation of it here at the end) is another way of systematizing how you work. PARA is a component of CODE. It is the framework for the ‘O’ in CODE, organize.
What is PARA
PARA is an acronym (because, of course, it is), that stands for: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive. The PARA system has been developed by Tiago Forte, as was CODE, as a method for organizing the information you capture, and will eventually need to act on. These are four basic categories to build your organizational framework from. As you read through what each of these mean, they will seem both simple (year, that makes perfect sense), and feel like there is a lot of overlap (which area does this go into). The most important element I can tell you before you dive in, it's still your system, PARA can be very flexible, so make it work for you while still trying to embrace the structure it provides.
Projects
Projects is where you will keep all of your information related to specific projects that you are working on. These are generally temporary and have a defined end date. Updating your kitchen at home is a project. Putting together a business review for the second quarter is a project. We’ll discuss where you keep these things further down in the article, but you’ll structure your system to group all the information by project together, so you can easily find it when you need it.
Areas
This is really short for Areas of Responsibility. Here, you’ll break up parts of your life based on your roles. That is probably the easiest way to think of this. Everyone’s Areas will look a little different. Some common items might be, ‘home’, ‘family’, ‘work or career’, ‘health’, ‘finances’. Again, what makes the most sense to you is how you should structure it. There are plenty of resources available on the web when defining life domains. I think the idea of thinking about the roles you play in life is a good place to start for this. Then you can sub-categorize further as you build out your system.
As an example, for ‘work’ I break that into both the role I play (as a leader of others), and the support areas I work with. I am also debating whether I break ‘work’ into its own PARA system. I could have projects, areas, resources, and archive buckets just for work subjects. That is very doable, it just requires managing two sets of PARA places, one for work and one for the rest of life. With technology today, I think trying to keep it as simple as possible matters. The use of tags and search probably will be what keeps me aligned to NOT separating work out completely.
There can be some confusion as to why projects and areas are separate. Typically, a project will be part of an area. That can be true, but as I noted in the Projects description, projects have a defined end date. Areas are ongoing roles you play. It would be entirely possible, as you wrap up a project, that some of the information you used for the project would move to the Areas category of your organization system. More on that below as well.
Resources
The Resources area is like a library of useful, active items that you can refer to for your interests. This is where the cross-over continues. It would be easy to confuse using the Resources bucket for things you are working on in projects. However, think of Resources as interests. For example, I use the Resources category for storing things like articles, videos, quotes, notes I take on a book etc. They are useful in multiple ways, not necessarily to a specific project. If I were working on a series of articles that I was writing, and needed to gather all of my research together, I would keep that with the project. Then, once the project was complete, I would move any research materials that may have usefulness beyond that project to the Resources category, while moving the rest (with the project) to the Archive category.
Archive
This is just like it sounds. When something is no longer active, it moves to the Archive category. Once you complete a project, you would move that to the Archive. As noted above, if there are elements from the project that remain ongoing, those pieces may move to the Area category, and you continue to manage it. Perhaps you are assigned to a special project within your district or region. You gather all your information for that project while you are working on it. Then, when the project is completed, you are promoted to a role that now manages that specific area. Now, many of the items that were associated with the project are part of your everyday role and set of responsibilities. Anything that doesn’t carry forward would move to the Archive.
The other option would be, as I mentioned in the resources section, items that have value outside the project itself could also get moved to the Resources category for reference in other areas of interest.
Movement of ongoing and bidirectional
The PARA system is not a stagnant organization system. It is meant to keep things moving and where they can offer the most value to you. This can mean that items move up or down within the system. Something that is just an interest today might move from Resources to Project if you decided to take specific action on that interest. As an example, you may gather several articles and videos on a productivity system that is of interest to you. Later, you decide you would like to write a series of articles on personal productivity systems. That collection of interesting articles now becomes part of a project for writing those articles. When the project is complete, some information will return to the Resources area, and other items would move to the Archive.
Managing the system
As with any system, you could find yourself spending more time trying to manage your system instead of letting it work for you. As mentioned above, there is a lot of potential movement of information within the PARA system. You do not need to define time to move things around or organize your organization system. Do it opportunistically. Address it when you need to, not just because you feel you have to. That will keep from making organizing a task that has to be done, and it will become part of your system and process for working productively.
Where do I keep my information?
There is an abundance of options here. And there is no one option or answer for this. Things like Evernote, Apple Notes, OneNote, or Notion are common places to build the foundation of your PARA system. I believe that for most people, you will want a few different elements to your system that you can align. I would also recommend keeping it as simple as possible for how you like to work. Something like Apple Notes or OneNote are built into most operating systems – if you are an Apple user, Apple Notes makes a lot of sense. It is built into all the devices you have. If you are a Windows user, or use the Microsoft suite of products, OneNote may be the best answer. Both are also available as web based or cross-platform options. (All of these have cross-platform options.)
The notes applications allow you to store multiple types of information. Any of those I mentioned above will allow you to save regular note, web pages, web links, videos, PDFs, or images. You can usually drop and drag right into them. It becomes easy to capture (from CODE) into your organizing system.
You will also want to establish your task manager to align with PARA also. It can be a good way to keep the two in sync, so you can move easily between the day-to-day actions you define in your task management system with your organizational system. I am working on setting up my Todoist structure to match my PARA set up I have in Apple Notes.
Finally, there may be some additional applications or elements you use with your PARA system. If you tend to save a lot of information as files on your computer's hard drive, set up your file structure to match your PARA system in your notes application. (This is good for extremely large files that do not do well in notes applications.) If you capture many articles, you may choose to link something like InstaPaper to your ‘resources’ category. You can then use the tools within that application to manage your collection of articles better than you can in a notes app.
As you can see, there is a lot to PARA, yet it can be a simple way to set up your organizational system for your capture information. My advice is to begin in pieces. This is what I have been doing. Instead of trying to make a big, sweeping change in how you manage your information and projects, begin with a few items or areas that are easy to transfer. Then, begin building PARA to work for you and your unique needs. I would also recommend spending time getting to know more about PARA. Tiago Forte’s site is a wealth of knowledge and for PARA specifically, you can use these resources to help you gather more information on the topic.
How will you begin to incorporate PARA into your personal productivity system?
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