PARA: four folders for everything you keep

Most filing systems fail for the same reason: they sort by subject. You save something about pricing, and six months later you are hunting through Marketing, Strategy and Finance for a note that could honestly live in any of them. Nothing is lost, exactly. It is just never found in time to be useful.

Tiago Forte's PARA sorts by something else entirely — how soon a thing matters — and it needs exactly four buckets.

Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive

Projects have an end and a date. Launch the newsletter by 30 September. Fix the bike. You can tell you are done, and then you are done.

Areas have no end, but a standard you are holding. Health. Money. The team you manage. Nobody finishes Health. You just keep it above a line you have set for yourself.

Resources are things you may want one day and nobody is waiting on: the reading list, the recipes, the article about tax you saved in a panic.

Archive is everything from the other three that has finished or gone quiet. Not deleted — moved. Archive is what makes the other three lists honest, because it means clearing something out costs you nothing.

The ordering is deliberate: the four buckets run from most actionable to least. Where something goes is answered by one question — how soon does this matter — and never by what subject it belongs to.

Why it survives contact with a real week

The subject-based system asks you to predict, at filing time, how future-you will go looking. You cannot, and that is why it fails.

PARA asks a question you can always answer right now: is anything waiting on this? A note attached to a live project is a note you will see this week, because you will be in that project this week. A note filed under "Marketing" is a note you will see when you go looking for it, which is to say never.

Mapped onto an outline

The four buckets are four top-level bullets, and each project is a branch: notes, links and next steps live inside the project rather than in a parallel folder somewhere. That is most of the benefit right there — the material and the work are in the same place.

Two things an outline does that a folder cannot:

• Zoom. Any project becomes a full page (⌘. / Alt+.), with everything under it and nothing else. When you are in it, it is the only thing you can see.
• Move a branch whole. Finishing a project is one drag into Archive — the notes, the links and the half-finished thoughts travel with it.

What is in the template

The four buckets, with a worked example in each so the shape is obvious, plus a folded "How to run it" branch holding the four rules that keep it working. Delete the examples; keep the four headings.

• PARATiago Forte's four buckets. Sort by how soon something matters, not by what it is about.
  • ProjectsHas an end and a date. If it never finishes, it belongs in Areas.
    • Launch the newsletter — by 30 September
      • Next: write the first issue
      • Notes and links
    • Fix the bike
  • AreasNo end, but a standard you are holding. Health does not get finished.
    • Health
    • Money
    • The team
  • ResourcesThings you may want one day. Nobody is waiting on any of it.
    • Reading list
    • Recipes
  • ArchiveFinished, or gone quiet. Nothing is deleted — it is moved here.
  • How to run it

Folded bullets open with a click; every line is yours to rename or delete. Open it →

How to run it

Review Projects weekly — that is the list that goes stale in days. Areas monthly is plenty. Resources look after themselves, which is the point of them.

When something arrives, ask "which project does this move?" before you ask what it is about. If the answer is none, it is a Resource, and Resources are allowed to be a mess.

When a project ends, move the whole branch to Archive the same day. The temptation to tidy it first is the temptation that stops you doing it at all.

Where people go wrong

Too many projects. If there are twenty, most of them are Areas wearing a project's clothes, or wishes with no next step. A project that has not moved in a month is a Someday item — say so and move it.

Filing the same note in two places. If a bullet fits two buckets, put it in the one you will go looking in, and let the search find it from the other. Two copies is two copies to update.

Rebuilding it every three months. PARA is deliberately shallow — four buckets, one question. If you find yourself designing a fifth, you are back to sorting by subject with extra steps.