PARAM

The PARA method by Tiago Forte¹ stands for "Projects," "Areas," "Resources," and "Archives." In keeping with the [[zetelkasten]] system which also supports index cards, I suggest a fifth character: "Meta."

• Projects. These are short term efforts with clearly defined terminal goals.
• Areas: These are long-term responsibilities that require ongoing attention.
• Resources: These are topics of interest, useful bits of knowledge
• Archives: This is everything dumped into the Archive directory.
• Meta: These are notes that just group together other related notes.

Meta and Resources can seem very similar. A concept to keep in mind is: meta is about internally linking different cards together whereas a resource is merely informational, even if it is just a list or a list that heavily links to other cards. A shopping list is a resource. But a shopping list of shopping lists is meta.

Notes from "The PARA Method"

• I can't help but remark that someone has made an entire business around peddling a way to organize your documents directory.
• PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives.
• Projects are short term efforts with defined end goals.
• Areas are long term responsibilities. They require ongoing attention like work, finances, chores etc.
• Resources are topics of interest for study or exploration.
• Archives are for everything not currently being worked on.

In reflection. My own documents already roughly align with these thoughts:

• I have my PDFs and notes directories which focus largely on either primary source texts or summaries of primary source texts cover topics of my interest
• The planning directory contains two types of files (1) project files that contains project descriptions, goals, and action lists and (2) texts describing ongoing areas of concern such as checklists, retrospectives, ongoing financial planning, and routines.

External References

1. Forte, Tiago. The Para Method: The Simple System for Organizing Your Digital Life in Seconds <https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/>. Forte Labs. Retrieved 23H1.

Linked References

• personal-productivity-practices
  
  • [[PARAM]]
• review-pythefnos
  
  • Fill in the highlights from each [[area]] this pythefnos
• review-pythefnos
  
  • Review each [[area]] note (time permitting)
• review-quarterly
  
  • Bullet point each [[area]] identifying any major projects, progress, or events from the quarter.
• review-quarterly
  
  • Start with a mind map with each of our [[area]]s.
• review-quarterly
  
  • Compose a vision document that outlines projects and goal in each [[area]] for the quarter.
• todotxt
  

  [[PARAM]], which stands for Project, Area, Resource, and Meta. All of my todo items are organized around Projects. If they are an atomic task and not part of a larger project then their project is the area or resource that they best fit into.

• todotxt
  

  We should not confuse Context with [[PARAM]]'s area. A context is best understood as the space containing the tools where we would complete a task. However, a space can be multiple contexts: the home office is both my @office where work is done and the @lab where [[home lab]] projects are usually worked on. I have a @phone context for phone calls, but with modern cell phones, this could be almost anywhere.