[HN Gopher] The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing D...
___________________________________________________________________
The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital
Information
Author : lorenzfx
Score : 186 points
Date : 2022-04-05 07:32 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortelabs.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortelabs.co)
| algorias wrote:
| been using PARA for a few years, I can vouch for it to be a very
| natural way of organizing information once you get used to it.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I did try "PARA" but found it a little bulky.. I've been
| working with Johnny decimal, have you read about it ? what are
| your thoughts on decimal ( https://johnnydecimal.com/ )? Do you
| think its worth switching and enduring the change for an
| information worker ?
| algorias wrote:
| I hadn't heard of it, but it's straightforward enough. Johnny
| decimal seems to work best for communication between multiple
| people, it's like a lightweight way of having human-
| implementable URLs.
|
| The thing with PARA is that information falls into different
| buckets according to their _use_ , not their _topic_. You 're
| in a completely different mindset when you're looking up old
| stuff for reference (archives), remembering that bash command
| you use once a month (resources), etc.
|
| On a first impression / hunch, your decimal system seems to
| have the failure mode that your old finances live right next
| to your current finances. Thus, the size of your context /
| working window just grows and grows without bounds, becoming
| unwieldy over time. With PARA, the idea is that a project
| folder contains data if _and only if_ you need it to work on
| that project.
|
| A very low-cost way of trying it out is to just implement the
| 2nd A (archives). That's by far the most important.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| Thank you for your valuable insight, I will start with that
| and see if I can implement any of the other groupings with
| minimal damage.
| [deleted]
| Arubis wrote:
| I found Maggie Appleton's visual notes on PARA/Building a Second
| Brain really helpful for understanding and reference:
| https://maggieappleton.com/basb
| Ambolia wrote:
| I've never been convinced by very structured digital information
| systems. I usually have reference documents for projects, but
| they end up looking very different for each project. Lists of
| TODOs, a directory with images and documents, random ideas an
| small notes, more structured text, source code, source code with
| data, a notebook with random notes and thought ...
|
| For task and calendar management GTD has everything I need, and
| try to keep the system as simple as possible, usually in paper
| and just moving a few things to digital if it really adds value.
| Then the project reference material itself can be more messy and
| be used to generate new next actions and other GTD items, as long
| as GTD itself is kept tidy the chaos in the reference material
| doesn't have much impact in the general planning.
| justusthane wrote:
| I've been very loosely using PARA for a while, and the two
| (small) factors that have had the biggest benefit for me are:
|
| - Every "project", no matter how small, gets its own folder. This
| means I'm no longer hunting for files ("Did I save that to my
| desktop? Is it in my email?")
|
| - Replicate and manually "sync" the folder structure between
| programs (in my case, OneNote for notes, OneDrive for files, and
| Microsoft Tasks for...tasks). This gives the freedom to use the
| best tool for the job, rather than trying to find one tool that
| does everything, but means you still have a consistent
| organization structure.
|
| These both seem somewhat obvious in retrospect, but they've been
| very helpful for me.
| kkfx wrote:
| most people ignore that in our history, in various moments, many
| have crafted "universal systems" to organize information, few
| historical examples:
|
| - ~612 BC Ashurbanipal di Nineveh tablets, sort of structured
| tag-based library with more than 30k tags found, mostly used to
| note transactions and other daily life activities
|
| - ~245 BC Callimacus pinakes, another sort of tag-based index for
| the Alexandria giant library
|
| - ~1545 Conrad Gessner libraries of Babel, personal notes closely
| similar to "modern" ZettelKasten
|
| - 1673-94 Leibniz's Scrinium Literatum another far similar to
| Gessner's one and ZK
|
| - 1934 Paul Otlet & Henry La Fontaine Mundaneum, so-called the
| modern web ancestor
|
| - 1960 Niklas Luhmann's ZettelKasten
|
| Those are just few I remember but there are many others and
| surely many more not lost in the history. All claim to be
| universal and all have an ultimate goal: store&retrieve
| information as easily as possible to produce new one, to evolve.
| All are closely similar in principles (usage of meta-information,
| cataloguing techniques of various kind, keep individual "entries"
| small for easy isolation and composing etc). The web (1.0 so
| called) is the first general and global example of those systems.
| All fails though at a certain point.
|
| Long story short: there is no universal method to be followed
| slavishly expecting magic results, there are common needs,
| normally solved in closely similar ways with the tools of the
| time for millennia, the best option is understand the problem and
| the principle behind all those solutions tailoring one on our
| needs.
|
| Personally I use Emacs/org-mode/org-roam and various other
| related package to manage my personal information, suffering a
| bit by the lack of a more flexible storage than files and
| filesystems, but still enough to manage almost anything so
| effectively that I can't use modern desktops/sw anymore, it's not
| PARA, ZK etc but just another systems, without strict rules,
| tailored on my needs following the similar principles of all
| others. Popular modern one are LYT https://youtu.be/RgwnpEBFNUg
| or Jonny Decimal.
| devnull255 wrote:
| You can read about many of these historical methods of
| organization in Judith Flanders' A Place for Everything: The
| Curious history of Alphabetical Order -
| https://www.amazon.com/Place-Everything-Curious-History-
| Alph..., and The Library of Alexander: Center of Learning in
| the Ancient World by Roy MacLeod -
| https://www.amazon.com/Library-Alexandria-Learning-Ancient-R...
| kkfx wrote:
| Thanks :-)
|
| I'll add Cataloging the World, by Alex Wright and Paper
| Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 by Markus
| Krajewski plus few relatively recent articles:
|
| - Note Taking as an Art of Transmission
| http://doi.org/10.1086/427303
|
| - From Note-Taking to Data Banks
| https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492615
|
| - Facing Interfaces: Paul Otlet's Visualizations of Data
| Integration https://www.mondotheque.be/wiki/images/e/e2/Heuve
| l_Rayward_F...
|
| There are surely many others and following those we arrive to
| classic PIM publications, witch is "the system to organize
| personal digital information" in the end!
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I kind of expected all kinds of digital information... not just
| "todo" lists and projects for your life... where does
| knowledge/ideas/CRM/"artifacts"/bookmarks/emails+communications
| and all sorts of other digital information go?
| replygirl wrote:
| those are mostly resources
|
| for crm, bookmarks, and comms, i imagine you'd present the
| inboxes as projects, with a task or project associated with
| each resource
| SN76477 wrote:
| PARA isn't for me. It may not be for you either, but it can set
| you on a path of being better organized with you files and
| systems.
| koonsolo wrote:
| I find it strange that projects have their own directory, and are
| not a subcategory of 'areas of responsibility'.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| That's explained in part 2: https://fortelabs.co/blog/p-a-r-a-
| ii-operations-manual/
| account-5 wrote:
| I was thinking this too. What's the point in areas if the
| projects aren't in them. Maybe I need to reread or read on.
| justusthane wrote:
| "Areas" is for material that outlives specific projects and
| might be useful again later. The idea is that when you finish
| a project, you go through the project folder and move
| relevant materials into Areas or Resources for later
| reference.
| pantulis wrote:
| This is the mandatory linky to Johnny Decimal, which is another
| method with a little more detail on how to name your content
| taxonomy:
|
| https://johnnydecimal.com
| Takizawamura wrote:
| We use a modified version of this system for my six-person
| team. For the first two folder levels, we use numeric folder
| notation with a max of 10 folders for each level. We do allow
| for deeper levels as needed. For example, we often need a bunch
| of folders for data.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Maybe this system works in a business environment where
| everything can be measured in terms of effectiveness such as
| achievements over time, but it doesn't work for me. It insists
| that projects need to have a fixed deadline. This is not true for
| creative professionals like me. If I'm writing a book, article,
| or a long-term software project setting a fixed deadline would be
| highly counter-productive. Some things are only finished when
| they are finished. Of course, this requires a certain amount of
| self-discipline, but that's something that no artificial deadline
| can give you anyway. Areas of responsibility are too unspecific
| to replace projects without a fixed deadline. Other activities
| _could have_ a fixed deadline but _shouldn 't_. To these belong
| small tasks that are part of a project that can be done whenever
| one feels in best shape doing it.
|
| GTD recommends to set as few deadlines and calendar dates as
| possible, and I still think that's the right way to go. If you
| can, you should work items on your todo list in the order that
| best suits the context and current abilities.
| joekrill wrote:
| I don't see anywhere that the author is suggesting that
| deadline must be explicitly defined up-front, or even be fixed.
| If you're writing something, it _will_ be done at some point
| (or is expected to be).
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| His other writings on the topic are very explicit about
| setting deadlines on every project and goal. Though, I don't
| fully agree with the GP. Thiago also advocates freely
| changing deadlines as desired, so the deadlines become more a
| scheduling and prioritization helper than a typical
| deadlines.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > Some things are only finished when they are finished.
|
| That's how you end with never ending and dying projects.
| Projects which are dragging for years and decades because the
| creator just does not "feel it" and at the end abandon them and
| never releases them. Thinking about the end goal is especially
| in creative work highly relevant. And a deadline is a good tool
| for this, as it forces you to think about. And a deadline can
| be changed, if done with good reasoning.
|
| > GTD recommends to set as few deadlines and calendar dates as
| possible
|
| GTD also makes a great point about reviewing and analyzing. And
| a deadline is a tool to force one to review and analyze a
| project, it's state and goals.
| jknecht wrote:
| A deadline is not the defining factor of a project; a clear
| definition of "done" is the defining factor. I have dozens of
| projects that have no specific deadline, but I know for sure
| when they will be done, because I will have achieved what I
| intended to do.
| saidajigumi wrote:
| Agreed. Thiago's introductory PARA writings do seem to imply
| a strict deadline, but like the parent, I use a concrete
| definition of completion ("completability") as the defining
| characteristic of a project. If I can't do this, then it's a
| major red flag and there's some deeper problem and the thing
| either isn't a project (e.g. it's an "Area" - something you
| to want to maintain a standard on over time) or it's not well
| defined enough yet and there's prior work needed.
|
| Case study: Frederico Vittici of MacStories recently wrote
| about revising his own system to eliminate deadline _times_
| from his system as unnecessary overhead that he 'd picked up
| long ago. It was a case of an item from "someone else's
| system" which was adding stress for no benefit.
|
| All organizational systems are really custom-fit jobs. Look
| at others' systems and understand the individual techniques
| and how they fit together. Then apply those to your
| situation. This is a bit like the advice to not just take
| someone's complicated dotfile setup (vim, shell, etc.) and
| add it to your own wholesale. Instead to learn and apply
| piece-by-piece, understanding that sometimes several pieces
| must "go in together" to make everything work as intended.
| (this also applies 100% to every single software team's
| process in my entire career, btw.)
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| (2017)
| yeatrst wrote:
| smk_ wrote:
| This is unlikely to work. Why? Whenever you impose a stringent
| system of categorization on top of information that eludes easy
| categorization, you will likely fail. "I'll handle the edge
| cases" -- that's not an easy task. The edge cases add up, until
| all you are left with is edge handling. This reminds me of
| someone who lives in a theoretical, platonic plane without
| consideration for real world problems.
|
| A system that has a higher success of working is developed
| organically, from the bottom up. I'd say Zettelkasten is one such
| example, though its primary beneficiaries are researchers in
| text-heavy fields (e.g. sociology).
| thenerdhead wrote:
| While new acronyms are born every year for the
| productivity/organizational world, I personally believe it all is
| the same thing that is taught by the greats like Peter Drucker &
| Orison Swett Marden. You have people like Brian Tracy, David
| Allen, Kop Kopmeyer, Zig Ziglar, and many more that expose you to
| these success principles. Some through organizational method,
| some through mindset.
|
| The most important principle? You find an expert who will take
| you by the hand and give you the success formulas. You can do
| that through reading in many cases in which you then add your own
| special tweaks to improve it. If you read a number of books in
| the topic of information organization, you'll realize that these
| people who are "experts" are really just in the same position as
| the people before them with their own special tweaks to improve
| the previous generation's work.
| codemac wrote:
| How do you see this different from "systems thinking"?
|
| My current thinking about how this works is:
|
| - Identify that there is a system
|
| - Learn, document or describe the system
|
| - Align your behaviors as an individual to use or change the
| system
|
| The hardest part for me is the last, actually getting my
| behaviors to change to take advantage of an identified system.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| This is the trap of productivity. You find a system and fail
| to figure out how to change your behavior to take advantage
| of it. Instead, think in systems and deconstruct what makes
| said system great and apply that slowly to your life. For
| example a great concept is having a "information capture
| system" of some sort. Now go figure out your own unique
| version of that.
| polote wrote:
| When an article starts by saying that it has found the "perfect
| way" to do something, the article is usually disappointing.
|
| First personal knowledge management is not a new field, it was
| just called "note taking" before.
|
| Second the place where you really need to manage knowledge is at
| your job. Using a system that requires discipline at work is
| usually a bad idea as most people are not disciplined. Also at
| work information is spread around different applications which
| makes sorting all information about everything into folders
| difficult
|
| Finally if that method works for the author then good, but I also
| have also method that works for me which is : try to take notes
| of almost nothing
| jrm4 wrote:
| "When an article starts by saying that it has found the
| 'perfect way' to do something, the article is usually
| disappointing."
|
| That sounds like a "you" problem?
|
| Apologies if this sounds like an attack, but I see enough of it
| here that I think it's worth commenting on. It should be
| obvious that 'perfect way' means "way that the author really
| likes and is very confident in, and therefore wants to share
| it."
|
| And not "scientifically proven" or some silliness.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > First personal knowledge management is not a new field, it
| was just called "note taking" before.
|
| That's not really the same. Note-taking is simply the act of
| recording something. While knowledge management aims for the
| systematic approach and is an established academic discipline
| with a very long history. Though, of course not every random
| system some guru wants to sell has this level of research and
| quality. And I wouldn't put PARA there either.
|
| > Second the place where you really need to manage knowledge is
| at your job.
|
| Depends on your job and live. Most people use PKM for their own
| hobbies and daily stuff. Work-Knowledge is of course also a big
| area, but not the only one, often not even the dominating one.
|
| > Using a system that requires discipline at work is usually a
| bad idea as most people are not disciplined.
|
| Which is the point where a system can help.
|
| > Finally if that method works for the author then good, but I
| also have also method that works for me which is : try to take
| notes of almost nothing
|
| So what? Can't the author wrote about their methods just
| because you have yours?
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| Stop being so pernickety of course it's meant subjective and
| not for everyone. There just isn't a system for everyone.
| bnj wrote:
| Honestly it doesn't seem pernickety to evaluate the article
| on its claims. The system is presented as "universal", and
| the opening sentence asks us to enumerate the qualities of a
| perfect system that would work for everyone.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Oh, come on. One should readily be able to understand that
| the author's goals are obviously technically aspirational
| despite being rhetorically lofty.
| lmpdev wrote:
| I'd argue it's not pernickety to highlight the
| underhandedness of branding something as a "universal system"
| if that system applies to an indeterminable but likely small
| percentage of readers.
| 0wis wrote:
| What is interesting with this method is that it _seems_ to work
| effortlessly even on the personal side. I always found easy to
| maintain an organization when it is shared ; it is the only way
| to keep the communication easy. Much harder for personal files
| and projects, which always end up in a big mess... I may give it
| a try, but I wonder if it is not just another method that will
| add to the existing mess.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I can't say I use the PARA system totally, but I do use the
| naming structure. I have a projects and archives folder in my
| personal google drive, and in Roam, and in my work google drive
| and I make sure follow a naming convention for all of them, so
| that I generally know where to find things.
|
| The Reference vs Areas I've never really understood though. So
| that part works less well for me.
|
| I've found it to be pretty helpful, though I don't use it for
| code. That simplification is worth the price of admission for
| me.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| So, PARA or no, the thing that has worked really well for me (14
| months so far) is Thiago's idea for weekly/monthly/annual
| reviews. This has really been the important gem for me, and while
| PARA helps define a framework for that, it would work with any
| organization method.
|
| Basically, weekly reviews are tactical, where you can mostly
| mechanically prioritize the upcoming week and clear out your
| inboxes. Monthly are more strategic, where you take a wider look
| at the status of all projects, consider modifying, canceling, or
| reprioritizing them. And annual reviews are the same thing but
| addressed at the highest level of your life; you might think of
| it as a formalization of New Years Resolutions.
|
| Since adopting a schedule of these reviews I have felt much more
| in control of my projects and work, and the time investment is
| about 1 hour a month to do.
| tra3 wrote:
| I first read about regular reviews in David Allen's "Getting
| things Done", I think.
|
| I agree though, a periodic project review is a must.
|
| I also find scheduled "brain dump" check list super helpful.
| Basically, a bunch of questions amounting to "what am I
| forgetting", by listing all the generic categories I'm
| responsible for (like "Am I forgetting to pay a bill", "are
| there any house maintenance items outstanding"). Allows me to
| unload anything that I'm unconsciously holding on to in my
| working memory.
| notuger wrote:
| I got curious, is this the one? https://fortelabs.co/blog/the-
| one-touch-guide-to-doing-a-wee...
| perelin wrote:
| The main PIM challenge for me, besides naming things, is
| discoverability. If I have a system where I put stuff in, how do
| I find it again? After a few years I certainly have forgotten
| that I had a link to this one article a friend showed me about
| obscureTopicX in there?
| koonsolo wrote:
| I guess you also stumbled upon this after reading
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30903940 :D
|
| Google already indexed this page 59 minutes after posting (that's
| how I ended up here)
| polote wrote:
| Google almost instantly index posts that appear on the front
| page. And it even gives them a high ranking so if you go in
| Google search console you will see a peak traffic from Google
| search at the time the post is on the front
| boxfoxdox1 wrote:
| GTD + Trello has been working wonders to me, especially after the
| initial obsesive compulsive phase and a few itterations on the
| flow that fit me.
|
| Was able to use it in both profesional and personal environments.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-05 23:02 UTC)