PARA method

An information management framework devised by Tiago Forte. Its distinctive feature is classification by actionability rather than by topic.

Project, Area, Resource, Archive

PARA stands for the following four categories, ordered from most to least actionable:

• Project: A short-term task with a clear goal, outcome, deadline, and so on. Gather the information needed for each project in one place. Examples: “Organize my thoughts on X and publish an article,” “Make project Y open source.”
• Area: An ongoing activity or responsibility. Examples: “Product management,” “Health management.” Many projects arise from these. For example, the Area “Health management” might generate the Project “Lose 3kg by October.”
• Resource: All topics that do not belong to a specific Project or Area. Serves as a personal library.
• Archive: Long-term storage for completed Projects, Areas that are no longer major activities or responsibilities, Resources that no longer match current interests, and so on.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

• Designed with action in mind
• Simple enough to apply immediately
• Encourages ongoing review (Values in the process)

Weaknesses:

• Little specific guidance on managing information within each category. Many people seem to create deep tree structures within them. But information structures are not trees.
• The boundaries between Project and Area, and between Area and Resource, are ambiguous.
• Questions about hierarchy, such as “Shouldn’t Resources belong inside each Area?”

The weaknesses mostly seem to be variations on the tyranny of the dominant decomposition. PARA’s single concern, “actionability,” acts as the dominant decomposition.