The PARA method is a renowned and widely used technique for organizing digital information. Developed by Tiago Forte, a productivity expert and founder of Forte Labs, this methodology has been instrumental in guiding people to build a second brain. Creating a second brain proves to be an efficient method for managing new information, staying ahead of work tasks, and achieving goals.
When I was setting up my *Notion workspace for the first time back in 2018, it was Tiago Forte’s PARA method that helped me give my workspace some much needed structure. It provided a helpful starting point that I was able to adapt to my needs, and to Notion’s unique functionality.
Tiago Forte recently released his new book on the PARA method, so we thought it would be helpful to dig into what the PARA method is, why you might want to use it, some of the key challenges, and how to effectively apply it to your Notion workspace.
PARA is essentially a tool-agnostic system for organizing all the information in your life. PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives.
Here’s how Tiago defines PARA: (quotes from the author)
PROJECTS: A Goal with a Deadline Projects you’re actively working on – short-term efforts (in your work or personal life) that you take on with a certain goal in mind.
“No matter how wide-ranging your responsibilities are, you can always break them down into smaller projects.”
AREAS: A Standard to Maintain over Time Areas of responsibility – important parts of your work and life that require ongoing attention.
“This is the realm of daily habits, meaningful rituals, and timeless values that transcend any particular project.”
RESOURCES: Topics of interest that may be useful in the future Resources on a range of topics you’re interested in and learning about.
“Taking into account the importance of utility, resources can also include “assets” such as stock photos, product testimonials, code snippets, typography samples, or a “swipe file””
ARCHIVES: Inactive items from the other three categories Archives include anything from the previous three categories that is no longer active, but you might want to save for future reference.
“Don’t think of the Archive as an “idea graveyard” where information goes to die. Your archives represent the sum total of your life experience, a treasure trove of hard-won lessons and profound insights you’ve gained from both successes and failures alike. I guarantee it will contain useful material you can reuse and recycle in future endeavors.”
While you can use the PARA method in any digital system (computer files, Google Drive, etc.) I use it primarily in Notion. Before using it, I had a lot of my information scattered everywhere in Notion without any real system. Thanks to the PARA method, I’ve organized all my information in Notion, enabling me to have a clear view of tasks that require completion and make prompt decisions. Building my second brain in Notion makes it easier for me and my team to collaborate which allows us to move more efficiently and think creatively.
The PARA method is broken down into four major areas:
Utilizing the PARA method allows me to overcome the overwhelming feeling of the information I consume. Instead, I start asking myself questions like:
Where does [thing] go? The idea is that if you have a piece of information you need to save, you can ask yourself:
Is this supporting an active Project/Goal? YES: Save it to the Project folder NO → Will it help me uphold an area of responsibility? YES: Save it to that Area folder NO → Will it support of one my interests or curiosities? YES: Save it to the Resources folder NO → Delete it!
Now, this is fine for organizing folders on your desktop and such, but with Notion, it’s not quite so simple. Why?
Linked Databases give us immense power to filter and view information in different ways depending on the databases properties. Notion databases give us the ability to add metadata to our information that can make it even easier to find and connect projects, areas, and resources together in helpful ways.
Notion databases also add a layer of complexity that mean we must adapt PARA to work with Notion’s unique features, functionality, quirks, and limitations.
Let’s use a specific example:
Content Marketing is a personal topic of interest (Resource), but it’s also an Area of responsibility for our business (part of the Marketing activities), which means it also has active Projects associated with it. If I’m saving information, reference material, or assets relating to content marketing, where should that information be saved/stored?
PARA is most useful in the context of Notion if you don’t interpret it literally.
For example, you don’t need four pages in your sidebar, or four pages in a database named Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives.
PARA was designed to be flexible and fluid.
“The contents of PARA are constantly flowing between different categories as your needs, goals, lifestyle, and priorities shift.” — Tiago Forte
Tiago recommends regularly moving things between the different categories depending on whether or not they are supporting an active project, upholding an area of responsibility, or needing to be shared etc. Again, this works when we’re talking about folders, but in Notion, grouping things into databases is what really allows us to supercharge our workflows.
The beauty of storing things in databases is that we have the capacity to gather more context, reflect and review, and see patterns over time in a way that would be challenging without.
We may want:
Visibility into how many projects get archived within a specific timeframe, or by a specific team member. An easy way to see all projects, resources, or documents relating to a specific topic/tag. To review project resources and reuse them in another project, without losing the relations between those the two databases. The problem with how Notion stores data is that moving pages from one database to another means losing any relations that were attached to that data (womp womp)!
Notion’s functionality (and limitations) mean a slightly different approach is necessary from an implementation perspective in order to truly leverage the power of databases.
In the context of teams, Tiago recommends having a personal PARA system and a separate shared/team PARA system. This is fine in theory (and makes sense for large teams to have their own PARA system), but this can get complex for small business owners that don’t have such a distinct delineation between work/personal.
Many people are looking to manage both personal and shared data in the same workspace. (Most of our Notion Mastery students are business owners trying to manage the complexity of their personal lives and business lives in one place seamlessly, so this is a very common challenge).
Does a small business owner need to maintain two Notion resource hubs, one for personal stuff and one for their small team? What happens if you want to move something from a private database to a shared database (remember, you lose any relations you’ve created to that database page)?
Where/how we store information in Notion completely depends on whether or not you’re in a personal/private or shared/team context, and whether or not you want/need to keep historical context.
Notion also has certain limitations when it comes to sharing and permissions, so access is usually the first consideration when determining the structure of your workspace environment, and where data needs to be sourced.
The biggest limitation currently is that database access is all or nothing.
You can’t give partial access to databases. You can adjust access permissions on individual pages within a shared database, but you can’t, for example, limit visibility on a specific view of a database.
This means if you decide to have a single task database that you share with your team, you can’t easily restrict your team from viewing your personal tasks (without manually restricting access on every single newly added task – yikes!). But most people don’t want to maintain two task databases… so what to do?
PARA needs to be heavily adapted in a Notion context mostly because Notion’s sharing and permissions can make mixing personal/private and team/shared information challenging (which is exactly why Tiago recommends keeping them separate), but having two of every database isn’t necessarily an optimal solution either.
As always with Notion, the best approach depends on your unique circumstances. How PARA is applied in a Notion workspace will completely depend on:
There’s lots of wiggle room for interpretation and implementation when it comes to PARA. I’ve made some adaptations to the system based on Notion’s features and limitations, and based on some key criteria:
Status property. Projects get archived when they become inactive but have not been completed. Moving a project to the archives is an act of changing the Status to Archived, rather than moving the entire project itself (more on that below).Here’s how it looks in more detail:
The Projects aspect of PARA in Notion relies heavily on two databases: Projects and Actions (You can also integrate a third Goals database, but that’s a rabbit-hole for another day!).
The Projects database is one of the most important databases in the workspace (it is the lifeblood of our shared team workspace). The Projects database has a two-way relation to the Actions database.
Projects are how we group tasks together in Notion. Using a relation property, all projects in the Project database are related to the actions (from the Actions database) required to complete the project.
Everything in your life is a project, so nearly everything should be added as a project into this database.
Most of us have many more commitments than we realize; when we don’t break up our responsibilities into projects, we end up thinking we have much more time than we really do.
Projects have database properties like:
An example Project. In this example, Notion Mastery and the PARA method is a Project with two incomplete Actions associated with it.
The Actions database includes all tasks (to-dos) and events (time-based meetings and events from your calendar). This database is essentially your to-do list. Generally speaking, all ****actions should be associated with (related to) a project.
An area of responsibility is “a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time.”
This is where things start to get a tricky and are open to interpretation depending on your unique needs: