PARA
Projects, areas, resources, archive.
If you squint, it's a simplification of GTD that stays under the magic number 4. Whenever you think of how to classify a thing, you just need this 4-word sentence.
They come in order of actionability.
Must take care to keep a crisp difference between Projects and Areas [of responsibility]. Hash out any confusion, look it up online if need be.
Projects:
- Have a deadline
Areas:
- A standard to be maintained
- Don't have a deadline
An exercise is to make your projects list and goals list, then see which projects you can connect to a goal.
- Projects without goals are hobbies.
- Goals without projects are dreams.
You should be able to see all your projects at once.
It doesn’t make sense to have to drill down through a bunch of non-actionable information in order to find the actionable stuff.
[…]The second reason is visual clutter. Using areas as the top level of the hierarchy means that, even if I collapsed all the stacks, I would still be faced with 22 notebooks.
As for areas v. resources:
The key here is to keep in mind that areas are Areas of Responsibility. There is a very clear line between things that you are responsible for, and those that you’re merely interested in.
Areas of Responsibility are the roles you take on in life and the hats you wear (Spouse, Mother/Father, Team Leader, Soccer Coach), the ongoing standards where the buck stops with you (Product Development, Company Newsletter, Legal), and things that take a certain amount of constant attention (Exercise, Finances, Apartment, Pets).
Resources are interests (web design, crowdfunding, woodworking, frisbee golf, bio-hacking), themes (psychology, politics, leadership, integrity), and assets (stock photos, typography links, marketing swipe file, product testimonials, code snippets). I even use lower-case titles with resource notebooks, to remind myself that they are just interests, […]
There is another useful guideline here: put personally relevant information in Areas, and generally useful information in Resources. For example, in my Health (area) notebook, I’ll have blood panels, notes from doctor’s visits, medical bills, and vaccination records (all things relevant only to me personally), whereas in my workouts (resource) notebook, I’ll have exercise research, interesting articles on alternative workouts, and recommended training regimens. This gives me the confidence to share any note in a Resource notebook (or even entire notebooks) on the fly, without having to first comb through it for any personal information. And I can connect the two categories by inserting links in Area notes pointing to Resource notes
It's natural for things to move between all of the four categories – a project to become an area, a resource to become a project etc. For descriptive examples, see manual.
You may be wondering, “WHEN exactly am I supposed to be performing all this work ‘flowing’ information from one notebook to another?” The subtext being: “WHO in the world has time for such fastidious, detailed record-keeping?!”
You could schedule these “re-orgs” on a strict timeline, performing them at set intervals like daily, weekly, and monthly. But I don’t recommend it. I would suggest performing organizational work opportunistically, as opportunities arise, instead of pedantically, or “just because.” I call this approach Just-In-Time Organization. What this looks like is making changes to your organizational structure in small batches, as you go along and happen to notice incremental improvements, not in big batches as part of a dedicated effort.
For all the flows I describe above, don’t worry about flowing notes from one category into another with perfect precision. There is no “done,” thus you don’t have to worry about what “done” looks like! You always have search as a backup tool to find whatever you’ve missed or misplaced.
Some people ask why I break out my Areas of Responsibility into such small buckets. In my case, 22 of them:
This is really a personal decision, but for me it holds a valuable benefit: it makes it easier for me to determine whether or not I’m meeting my personal standard in a given area. If I had only “Work” and “Personal,” it would be difficult for me to identify where I was falling short and what changes I should make. But having my life broken out into 22 areas allows me to evaluate them more objectively.
What links here
- 2024-03-27