The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
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Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#2I 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)
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#3been 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.
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#4been 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.
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 ?
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#5I 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?
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#6I find it strange that projects have their own directory, and are not a subcategory of 'areas of responsibility'.
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#7been 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.
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 ?
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.
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#8When 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
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#9What 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.
Re: The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information
#10I 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)
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