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PARA Method
Table of Contents
PARA sorts notes into Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives - four buckets by life responsibility, not topic soup.
Key Concept
- Sort by who owns it and when it ends - not by topic alphabet soup.
- Projects carry deadlines; Areas carry ongoing responsibility; Resources wait unclaimed; Archives hold finished work.
- Enough structure to find things, archive when done.
Level 1 - Recognize
PARA sorts notes into Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives - owner and deadline beat topic headings.
Level 2 - Explain
Like school homework in one pile and hobbies in another - action and responsibility, not A-to-Z subject soup.
Level 3 - Use
When filing, ask who acts on this and when it closes - if neither applies, it is reference or archive.
Level 4 - Connect
PARA stays useful only while buckets follow action and responsibility - too many Resources recreate topic soup, and stale Projects should become Archives.
Level 5 - Create
Build a four-bucket filing rule that keeps tasks in Getting Things Done, knowledge in PARA, and Metadata Strategy light enough to maintain.
Examples
- Tournament folder on the bench with a deadline; off-season conditioning notes in the filing cabinet with no end date.
- I once filed immunization records under ‘health' and could not find them at enrollment - owner and deadline beat topic tags.
Note Relationships
| Relationship | Wikilink | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| contradicts | Linking by Meaning | when life buckets beat waiting for links to find each other |
| extends | Building a Second Brain | PARA sorts notes by life responsibility - CODE's organize step |
| extends | Getting Things Done | Action-first capture Forte built PARA on top of |
