The PARA Method: Simplify, Organize, and Master Your Digital Life
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Read between September 2 - September 4, 2023
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The only reward from reading a book like this one comes from putting what you learn into practice, and you can do that after you’ve read just the first five chapters.
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You will stop wasting time looking for information: You will know exactly where your most important notes and documents live, and how to find them in seconds.
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You will gain greater focus on what matters most: You will have greater clarity about what’s important so you can intentionally move your life into
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alignment with your interests and goals.
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PROMISE #3: You will make things happen: You will consistently finish what you start, beating procrastination and tapping into your past learning to make progress fast.
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PROMISE #4: Your creativity and productivity will soar: You will have access to a playground of your own ideas to finally do the creative work that’s been locked up inside you.
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PROMISE #5: You will beat information overload and FOMO: The fear of missing out on a key piece of information will disappear and be replaced with the confidence that you
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have everything you need to get started.
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the ultimate system for organizing your life is one that is actionable.
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It’s called PARA—a simple, comprehensive, yet flexible system for organizing any type of information across any digital platform.3
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Four Categories to Encompass Your Entire Life PARA is based on a simple observation: there are only four categories that encompass all the information in your life.4
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You have projects you’re actively working on—short-term efforts (whether in your work or personal life) that you take on with a certain goal in mind.
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You have areas of responsibility—important parts of your work and life that require ongoing attention more broadly.
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Then you have resources5 on a range of topics you’re interested in and learning about,
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Finally, you have archives, which include anything from the previous three categories that is no longer active but you might want to save for future reference:
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Four top-level folders6—Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives—each containing subfolders dedicated to each specific project, area of responsibility, resource, and archive in your life.
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The system you use to organize information has to be so simple that it frees up your attention, instead of taking more of it. Your system must give you time, not take time.
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The Key Principle—Organizing Information by Your Projects and Goals
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What you do have, both at work and in life, are outcomes you are trying to achieve.
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Instead of organizing information according to broad subjects like in school, I advise you to organize it according to the projects and goals you are committed to right now.
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“organize for action,”
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When you sit down to work on a graphic design project, for example, you will need all the notes, documents, assets, and other material related to that project all in one place and ready to go.
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Your goals are that much closer to being achieved when all the information you need to execute your vision is right at hand.
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Projects are “short-term efforts,” which means
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they need a clear end date.
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I’ve learned that no matter how smart or driven you are, there are two critical things you cannot do until you break down your areas of responsibility into specific, concrete projects.
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OBSTACLE #1: You Can’t Truly Know the Extent of Your Commitments
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But as long as you view your work through the lens of areas, you’ll never quite know just how much is on your plate.
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OBSTACLE #2: You Can’t Connect Your Current Efforts to Your Long-Term Goals
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without a list of individual projects, you can’t connect your current efforts to your long-term goals.
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When you break down your responsibilities into bite-size projects, you ensure that your project list is constantly turning over. This turnover creates a cadence of regular victories that you get to celebrate every time you successfully complete a project.
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No matter how wide-ranging your responsibilities are, you can always break them down into smaller projects…
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Robert Anthony
I have missed this distiction in my life. I tend to make respnsibiltes into projects! It should be responsibilties, then projects within the responsibilties. Projects have a defined start and finish.
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and you must, if you want to know whether you’re actually making progress toward your goals.
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PARA is not just about creating a bunch of folders to put things in. It is about identifying the structure of your work and life—what you are committed to, what you want to change, and where you want to go. It is about organizing information in such a way that it supports and calls into being the future life you want to lead.
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The Sixty-Second PARA Setup Guide
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I’ll walk you through the three steps I recommend you take to adopt PARA on any digital platform: Step 1: Archive existing files Step 2: Create project folders Step 3: Create additional folders as needed
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STEP 1: Archive Existing Files
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You can keep everything, but you can’t keep it front and center in your attention. It needs a place to go for safekeeping—one that is secure but completely “out of sight, out of mind” until you need it. That place is the Archives.
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all the existing files, documents, folders, notes, etc. in your Documents folder (which may number in the hundreds or even thousands or more) and move them all at once into a new folder called “Archive [Today’s date].”
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Then, place this new dated archive folder inside another, larger folder titled simply “Archives,” which will be the official home of all your archives going forward.
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STEP 2: Create Project Folders
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For the second step, start by creating a new folder called “Projects.” This will be the official home of all your information related to projects (short-term efforts with a clear end goal) going forward. Inside that new folder, create a subfolder for each one of your active projects and title them with the name of each project.
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STEP 3: Create Additional Folders as Needed
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new rule: never create an empty folder (or tag, or directory, or other container) before you have something to put in it.
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Therefore, for your areas and resources, I recommend you hold off on creating any “speculative” folders until you’re sure what you want to put in them.
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When you’re ready, follow the same three steps above with your cloud storage drive, notetaking app, and anywhere else you store information, and your digital world will become a paradise (get it?) of simplicity and efficiency.7 You now have a fully functional PARA system!
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I recommend taking this opportunity to reflect on how you want to change your attitude toward information going forward. Don’t dump new stuff willy-nilly into your shiny new PARA folders, or
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you’ll quickly find yourself right back in the chaos you had ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
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This is your chance to wipe the slate clean and reboot your digital life based on timeless principles of organization.
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