The PARA Method
Organise everything into four buckets—Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives—so what you need is one click from action.
Author
Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain)
Model type
About
PARA is a simple, universal filing system for notes, files and tasks. Instead of sorting by apps or departments, you sort by actionability: short-term Projects, ongoing Areas of responsibility, useful Resources, and long-term Archives. It keeps your working set small and makes retrieval effortless.
How it works
P — Projects: time-bound outcomes with a deadline (e.g., “Launch v1 website”). Lives here while active.
A — Areas: ongoing standards you must maintain (finance, hiring, health, compliance). No end date.
R — Resources: topics of interest or reusable references (LLMs, pricing playbooks, meeting templates).
A — Archives: closed or dormant items from any of the above (finished projects, retired areas/resources).
Routing rule: anything new lands in P if it supports an active outcome; otherwise in A (responsibility), R (reference), or A (cold storage). When a project ends, archive it—don’t delete.
Use-cases
Personal knowledge management and team wikis.
Project documentation, briefs, decisions, assets.
Research libraries and learning notes.
SOPs and templates for recurring work.
Email/file chaos consolidation across tools.
Step-by-step
Create the four top-level folders/stacks in every tool you use (notes, cloud drive, task app, bookmarks).
List current Projects (P) – 5–15 active only; name with a verb + outcome + date.
Define your Areas (A) – the responsibilities you must keep within a standard; add a simple KPI for each.
Seed Resources (R) – topics/playbooks you often consult; keep loose and discoverable.
Archive (A) relentlessly – when a project finishes or a resource goes cold, move it to Archives.
Link tasks ↔ notes – each project should have a home note and a task list referencing it.
Progressive summarisation – bold, headers, executive summaries on revisit; make the signal pop.
Weekly review – prune Projects, promote/demote between P/A/R/A, and capture new links or decisions.
Pitfalls & Cautions
Too many “Projects” – cap the active list; everything else waits in Archives or Resources.
Vague Areas – name the standard (e.g., “Customer uptime ≥ 99.9 percent”), not a catch-all.
Topic hoarding – Resources should be useful, not sentimental; review quarterly.
App-based structure – PARA works across apps; mirror the four buckets everywhere.
No review cadence – without a weekly pass, Projects bloat and Archives rot.
Unlinked tasks – to-dos without a Project/Area home turn into orphaned lists.
Related Mental Models
Click below to learn other mental models
COPE Framework
Create once, publish everywhere by structuring content and separating it from presentation so one source feeds many channels.
Bottlenecks
Flow moves at the pace of its constraint—improve the bottleneck to improve the whole.
Pareto Principle (80/20)
A minority of inputs often drives a majority of outcomes. Find the vital few, focus there first.