The PARA method: file notes by what they are for right now

Sort by use, not by subject

The natural way to file notes is by topic: a folder for marketing, one for psychology, one for travel. It feels tidy, and it fails the moment you need something. An article on pricing sits under “Business” while the quote you are writing lives somewhere else, and you have to remember that one exists to go looking for it.

Tiago Forte, who teaches personal knowledge management at Forte Labs, proposed the opposite. File each note under the project or goal it will help with right now, so that everything a piece of work needs is already in one place when you sit down to do it.

“Organize by actionability.”
Tiago Forte, The PARA Method

Four categories

Projectsprojects/: Short-term efforts with a goal and an end: a website redesign, a client proposal, buying a new computer, a trip.
Areasareas/: Parts of your work and life that need ongoing attention and never finish: health, finances, a team, a client you look after.
Resourcesresources/: Topics you are interested in or learning about, with no responsibility attached yet: design, photography, habit formation.
Archivesarchives/: Anything from the other three that is no longer active but worth keeping: finished projects, areas you handed over, interests you dropped.

The order matters. Projects come first because they are the most actionable; archives come last because you rarely open them. When a note could go in two places, it goes in the more actionable one.

Projects end, areas do not

The distinction people trip over most is between a project and an area. “Hiring” is an area: it never finishes. “Hire a designer by March” is a project: it has a goal and a day when it is done. Forte's point is that breaking an area into projects shows you how much work you have actually taken on and lets you see progress, which an endless area never does.

Notes move as your work moves. A resource becomes part of a project when you start using it. A project goes to the archives when it ends, with everything that was filed under it. Nothing has to be filed perfectly the first time, because the structure follows what you are doing now.

“Your system has to give you time, not take time.”
Tiago Forte, The PARA Method

Why it suits an assistant

PARA is simple to describe and tiring to keep up. Every note needs a small decision about where it goes, finished projects need archiving, and the inbox fills up faster than anyone empties it. Those are exactly the chores an assistant does without complaint: it asks which project a note will help, files it, and once a week tells you which projects have gone quiet.

Running it on notespace

The built-in para methodology lays a space out like this, with an inbox for anything that is not obvious yet:

inbox/                        quick captures, not filed yet
projects/<project>/overview   goal, status, next actions, links
projects/<project>/...        everything the project needs
areas/<area>/                 ongoing responsibilities
resources/<topic>/            reference and interests
archives/projects/<project>/  finished work, old paths kept

Every project has a status. The server rejects a note under projects/ without a status (active, on-hold or done), so “what am I working on?” is always one search away.
Each project and area has an overview. A note at the folder's root holds the goal, the next actions and links to the rest, so any assistant can pick up where another left off.
Unclear means inbox. When it is not obvious where something belongs, the assistant saves it to inbox/ and says so rather than inventing a new folder.
Archiving keeps everything intact. A finished project moves to archives/ in one step. History stays with each note and links pointing into the project are rewritten, so nothing breaks.
A weekly review on request. The assistant empties the inbox, updates next actions on active projects, archives what is done, and reports projects past their due date and areas nobody has touched.

Start one

Connect notespace to your AI app, then ask in plain words. Your assistant proposes the change and nothing happens until you confirm it.

You

Organize my work space with PARA.

Then, as things come up

Save these call notes. They are for the Acme proposal, due on the 15th.

And on Fridays

Do a weekly review. What is overdue, and what can be archived?

Changing a space's method never edits notes that are already there. If the rules do not fit how you work, ask your assistant to draft your own and approve them the same way.

Source: Tiago Forte, The PARA Method (Forte Labs), also the subject of his 2023 book of the same name. Quotations are from the article.