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 <i>could have</i> a fixed deadline but <i>shouldn't</i>. To these belong small tasks that are part of a project that can be done whenever one feels in best shape doing it.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
I’ve been very loosely using PARA for a while, and the two (small) factors that have had the biggest benefit for me are:<p>- 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?”)<p>- 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.<p>These both seem somewhat obvious in retrospect, but they’ve been very helpful for me.
This is the mandatory linky to Johnny Decimal, which is another method with a little more detail on how to name your content taxonomy:<p><a href="https://johnnydecimal.com" rel="nofollow">https://johnnydecimal.com</a>
When an article starts by saying that it has found the "perfect way" to do something, the article is usually disappointing.<p>First personal knowledge management is not a new field, it was just called "note taking" before.<p>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<p>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
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.<p>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).
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 ...<p>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.
most people ignore that in our history, in various moments, many have crafted "universal systems" to organize information, few historical examples:<p>- ~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<p>- ~245 BC Callimacus pínakes, another sort of tag-based index for the Alexandria giant library<p>- ~1545 Conrad Gessner libraries of Babel, personal notes closely similar to "modern" ZettelKasten<p>- 1673-94 Leibniz's Scrinium Literatum another far similar to Gessner's one and ZK<p>- 1934 Paul Otlet & Henry La Fontaine Mundaneum, so-called the modern web ancestor<p>- 1960 Niklas Luhmann's ZettelKasten<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <a href="https://youtu.be/RgwnpEBFNUg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RgwnpEBFNUg</a> or Jonny Decimal.
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?
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.<p>Was able to use it in both profesional and personal environments.
I guess you also stumbled upon this after reading <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30903940" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30903940</a> :D<p>Google already indexed this page 59 minutes after posting (that's how I ended up here)
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.<p>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.
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?
I found Maggie Appleton’s visual notes on PARA/Building a Second Brain really helpful for understanding and reference: <a href="https://maggieappleton.com/basb" rel="nofollow">https://maggieappleton.com/basb</a>
What is interesting with this method is that it <i>seems</i> 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.