The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information | Praxis

Imagine for a moment the perfect organizational system. One that supported and enhanced the work you do, telling you exactly where to put a piece of information, and exactly where to find it when you needed it...

P.A.R.A. stands for Projects — Areas — Resources — Archives, the four top-level categories that encompass every type of information you might encounter in your work and life...

Projects require you to be laser-focused... Areas... require mindfulness, balance, flow, and human connection... realm of habits, routines, rituals, and intentional communities... introspection and self-awareness...

best of both worlds: the consistency of centralization, with the adaptability of decentralization... entire hierarchy is four categories wide (projects, areas, resources, archives)... four levels deep (using Evernote as an example...: application > stacks > notebooks > notes)... number four ... the natural limit of all sorts of cognitive processes...

enhances ... distinction ... between actionable and non-actionable information... allows you to set aside 95% of the information ... to focus on the 5% necessary for the task at hand... actionability is ... a gradient... follows ... progressive disclosure — only show the user as much information as they need in the moment... minimize cognitive load...

Day to day... you might focus on ... the active projects... while doing a weekly review... expand ... to Areas of Responsibility... a deeper level of introspection... monthly review could expand ... to include Resources...

The Resources stack is also where “research” lives... the most objectively valuable information... to access when looking for material to use in a blog post, to recommend to someone, or for a work project...

the Archives are your portfolio of completed projects... potentially useful material to reuse and recycle ... saves me tremendous amounts of time...easiest to recall where an asset is located based on when it was created and which project it was associated...also be used for ... where you need to “show your work.”