Achieving Order in a Busy Life: How the PARA Method Helped Me

  • Productivity
  • Note-taking

In August of 2023, my life was a bit chaotic. I was a recently married man juggling three clients with no employees, trying to figure out government compliance, learning company finance, hiring, and other related tasks. I needed to put some form of order into this chaos. So, I turned to digital note-taking to ensure all my learnings were not lost amidst the constant context switching that was going on.

I had organised my notes in a hierarchical order based on the domain they belonged to, and this was working just fine. However, it required quite a bit of effort to figure out how to arrange them within their specific domains while still making them noticeable when needed. I got better at it over time, but I still felt there might be a better way to go about this.

While I was researching note-taking techniques, I came across the PARA method.

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The PARA Method

In short, the PARA Method is a way to organise notes based on actionability. In this method, notes are organised into four folders based on the following concepts of the PARA acronym:

Projects

  1. Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now.
  2. Well-defined and finite with a clear endpoint.
  3. Contains only those ideas and notes that help complete the project.

Areas of Improvement

  1. Things to actively improve or maintain.
  2. Long-term responsibilities to manage over time.
  3. Open-ended.

Resources

  1. Personal library of references, facts, or inspirations.
  2. Topics or interests that may be useful in the future.

Archive

  1. Completed, redundant, or abandoned.
  2. Inactive items from the other three categories.

The details of the method can be found here.

Quote from the blog:

It may be difficult to believe that a complex, modern human life like yours can be reduced to just four categories. It may feel like you have far more to deal with than can fit into such a simple system. But that is exactly the point: if your organisational system is as complex as your life, then the demands of maintaining it will end up robbing you of the time and energy you need to live that life. The system you use to organise information has to be so simple that it frees up your attention, instead of taking more of it. Your system has to give you time, not take time.

Initial Days

As with anything, starting out wasn’t always smooth sailing. My Projects folder had, I think, 5–6 projects running at a time. I was not able to think about Areas of Improvement at all, and I didn’t even look at the Resource folder.

I thought maybe I wasn’t doing something right, and read up as much as I could about this. Still, I couldn’t find a way to manage this.

After two weeks, I realised that following a system as it is might not be the best idea. The system is supposed to work for me, not the other way around! I tried to analyse what the critical points of failure were:

Projects

  1. I didn’t have a defined idea of how to ensure the project actually reached its end or what the end looked like.
  2. I put everything I thought was related to the topic of the project instead of only things that could be used directly in the project.
  3. There were too many items being worked on simultaneously.

Areas of Improvement

  1. This had become something like my unattainable New Year’s resolution list 😅.
  2. The list was quite long as well.
  3. I was trying to do this every day as if these were projects.

Personalising the System

The problem was clearly with how I was planning things out. To fix this, I decided to implement a simple system that I use at work for software projects and general items at work.

  1. Use Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle Model (Why, How, What) to ensure the motivation for pursuing the project is being realized.
  2. Prioritise using the EADPC Model (Eliminate, Automate, Delegate, Procrastinate, and Concentrate). The words sound heavy, but it’s a very simple framework as explained in this TED Talk. I saw this TED talk in my first year at the job in 2017 and it has always served me well.
  3. Define a proper scope of the project and decide what complete looks like.
  4. Always set a DEADLINE!

This allowed me to create a template for both Areas of Improvement and Projects. The first note for every single Project will be a Project Plan that takes about 10 minutes to fill up.

Project Plan

  1. Why am I doing this?
  2. How will I do this?
  3. What am I doing?
  4. Scope
  5. What does complete look like?
  6. Tasks
  7. Deadline

For example, the Project plan for writing this article looks something like:

Why am I doing this?

  1. To gain clarity in thought.
  2. To gain clarity in communication.

How will I do this?

  1. Write a blog regularly with active readers.

What am I doing?

  1. Writing an article about our experience with the PARA method to be posted on LinkedIn.

Scope

  1. Limit article content to my personal experience with the PARA method.

What does complete look like?

  1. A complete anecdotal article on the PARA method from a personal point of view with all personal modifications with reason and impact.

Tasks

  1. Revise and update initial notes on the PARA method ✅ 2024–05-…

… Around 11 tasks

Deadline

  1. Sunday, 19th May 2024

And a Plan of Action for Areas of Improvement:

Plan of Action

  1. Why am I doing this?
  2. How will I do this?
  3. What am I doing?
  4. Initiatives
  5. Projects

For example, the Plan of Action for the Area of Improvement that spawned this article looks like:

Why am I doing this?

  1. To gain clarity in thoughts.
  2. To gain clarity in communication.

How will I do this?

  1. Write a blog regularly with active readers.
  2. Talk to people and review conversations.
  3. Augment information gathering with phone calls and meetings to improve listening.

What am I doing?

  1. Write a blog post every Sunday and publish it to LinkedIn.
  2. Purchase co-working space once a week to have in-person interactions with employees.
  3. Record meetings and review impact.

Initiatives

  1. Started recording Google Meets meetings using TLDV.
  2. Booked WeWork Noida on XXX Date.
  3. Booked myHQ on XXX Date.

Projects

  1. Node.js V22 release article — Completed.
  2. WeWork Virtual Office article — Completed.
  3. ZC WhatsApp integration article — Completed.
  4. PARA Method article — In Progress.

Other than this, I am making sure to not have more than three personal projects running at a time using the EADPC Model. This by itself saves me a lot of time.

Current Impact

I have been using the PARA Method since August of 2023 and the personalized version since September of 2023, so it has been around ten months now. I have used it for most of my projects since then, and this has helped me complete 17 personal projects with three Areas of Improvement currently running without too much trouble.

Even after personalisation, implementing and getting used to the system took about a month. But it has been working out quite smoothly since then.