I'm sure many of you, including me, were introduced to the PARA methodology a long time ago. Although they understand that it is an efficient personal knowledge management system, they always wonder how to implement it concretely. In many articles, the theory of PARA seems abstract and difficult to apply in practice. However, after reading more articles and case studies, I gradually understood the PARA method and its practical operation. I would like to share with you who have the same questions, and I hope to provide some help and advice.
PARA is actually a model for knowledge categorization, specifically projects (Projects), areas (Areas), resources (Resources), and archives (Archives), a total of four categories. Any of your knowledge assets, such as information, notes, documents, etc., can be categorized into one of these categories. The criteria for categorization is the relevance to your current goals, i.e. the usefulness of the knowledge. Each of the four categories has a specific purpose, which is explained in more detail below.
A goal to be achieved or a task to be accomplished in working life. This category is characterized by a short-term result that needs to be accomplished, and the project ends when it is completed. This category holds the intellectual material related to your project, which needs to serve the things you are most concerned about at the moment and which are the most urgent. Example:
- Work projects: to improve the sales of products, to develop a program of promotional activities, to improve the level of work skills of the team
- Life projects: renovation plans, weight loss tips, travel plans
Areas of knowledge that have nothing to do with your short-term projects, but are based on what you need to do in your life or work, and which you want to build up in the long term. For example, a skill you want to enhance, a subject that interests you, an industry that stimulates your curiosity. Although there is no project goal to be a constraint, you need to have your own criteria to determine what knowledge needs to be put into this category so that this knowledge can help you improve yourself. Specific categories could be:
- Work-related: marketing, programming skills, relationship maintenance, financial knowledge
- Life-related: cooking skills, fitness methods, language learning
Knowledge that is not categorized as a project or field, but is of interest to you or may be of value in the future. In fact, if you are interested in any information, you can put it into this category, waiting for the time when you need to use it later, ready to use. Resources can have the following categories:
- Personal Interests: movie knowledge, literary excerpts, painting art
- Life reference information: life tips, products of interest, and food recommendations.
Information that has become dormant from the above three categories, such as projects that have been completed or discontinued, or areas or resources that are no longer of interest. They may be of little value in the short or long term, but they are not suitable for discarding, so they need to be archived and out of your sight until they are needed later. The advantage of doing this is that they won't interfere with your current goals and interests, nor will they be lost forever. It saves you energy and it's always accessible.
PARA is highly versatile as well is organized around your goals, which can save you time:
- Domain versatility: PARA categorization has nothing to do with industry domains, so no matter what your occupation is, and no matter what area of information you are concerned with, you can use this set of methods.
- Universal tools: PARA is also not limited by the specific tools or software you use, whether you use a computer, online documents, or note-taking software, you can use the same set of methods to organize the content, no matter where your information is placed, the organization of the same way!
- Goal-centered: PARA to how useful the information is to your current as a criterion, it is heavy action, light classification, so that knowledge serves your goal, rather than the process of your classification of knowledge.
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We wanted to know how to apply the PARA method, but the information we found often only described what PARA is, but did not expand on how to apply the method. After looking at some practical examples, I found that it is quite simple to use. In fact, using the PARA method is actually the following steps:
1. Organize the first level of classification according to PARA: Divide all the knowledge into four major categories, and then do the subject classification under it. For example, in a computer, divide all files into 4 folders and then subdivide them into items or topics, or in note-taking software, first divide them into 4 categories and then organize the notes into topics. Then organize the notes in different categories.
2. create subdivided topics in PARA: in each category, organize specific files or notes by items or topics, for example, inside the first level folder of the computer, continue to create second and third level folders, and then do the classification of topics in these folders; or continue to do the subdividing in the four major categories of notes in the note-taking software.
3. Documentation to flow through the four PARA categories: do a block migration of secondary folders or notes according to whether or not they are useful to the current problem so that they flow in bulk through projects, domains, resources, and archives. Let the knowledge that is useful to you at the moment be the first to appear, while the rest of the knowledge is lying in the archive folder.
After establishing the PARA system, knowledge should be allowed to flow through the four categories as we need it at any time and needs to be considered:
- Project: relevant to your current goal and has a clear deadline. The information here is meant to be used at any time to help us reach our goals.
- Areas: are things you focus on for the long term and have no short-term deadlines. The information here is meant to help us keep accumulating areas of interest to us.
- Resource: to store knowledge that we are interested in but haven't yet found an application scenario that might be of value to our subsequent projects, so it's good to be prepared.
- Archives: materials that are no longer of short-term value concern but are to be kept in a safe place. We can ignore them for the time being, and then find them when we need them and put them in other folders.
We all want to find a system that can effectively organize all our information, PARA is one of the effective methods. Before using this method, we should also understand the following points:
- The value of all the knowledge we collect is not in the way it is categorized, but in its ability to improve the effectiveness of your work or the quality of your life. Therefore it should be problem-solving oriented so that the collected knowledge can really help you.
- You have limited time and it is totally unrealistic to collect and organize all the information. The way to improve your efficiency is to build a body of knowledge around your work goals or life goals, rather than blindly collecting all the knowledge you see.
- It's wrong to collect knowledge without organizing it, and it's wrong to overemphasize organizing it. The satisfaction of creating a perfect set of categories for your knowledge base is addictive, and if you are addicted to it, it can leave you with no time for the things that really matter. Therefore one needs to be wary of a mentality that emphasizes accumulation over utilization.
