Use the PARA Method to Organize Your Life

Hi everyone. My name is Matt Ragland and welcome to a new episode of Connect the Dots. I'm really happy to be with you and thanks so much for listening, for watching on the Connect the Dots YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe, rate, review, comment, like. All of those things are really helpful to the channel and I really appreciate it. So thank you so much for doing that. The other thing that I want to tell you about before we get started is the day that I'm recording this, I'm recording it on February 10th, It's gonna come out in a couple of weeks. But what I'm excited about is today is the last day of the Productivity Power-Up cohort course that I've been running for the past month. We had 35 people in the first round and it has been a transformational experience for so many people, myself included. And what we're doing is we're going through these productivity power-ups, these principles that you can apply to everything that you do in your work and your life. So we cover things like the PARA framework, which we're gonna talk about today. We talk about how to manage your time and allocate your attention and your time, your focus to the right things at the right time, like we talked about in the time management strategies episode. So a lot of the things that we've covered in Connect the Dots from a very broad level, we really get into the details. We talk about specific use cases to your life to your work, to your projects, to your side hustles. And it's a cohort, it's a community experience, which I really love. That was something that has been awesome just for me to be a part of as well and to lead people through. Because it's one thing to be like listening to Connect the Dots or watch one of my YouTube videos by yourself. You can get a lot from that. That's one of the reasons that I record these episodes, that I film these videos, is so that you can take a lot away from them and apply it to your own life. But there's something really cool about being in a community where everyone is moving in the same direction with this and you get encouragement from others. You also get to see that like you're not alone in all of this. You get encouragement. You are also like held accountable. You get feedback. And so it's been a really wonderful experience for everyone and we're going to be opening it back up in probably mid-April. And so if you want to be on the early bird list for the next round of Productivity Power-Up, just go to matragland.com/powerup and you'll be able to sign up for updates and also to know ahead of time this is when we're opening it back up. So again, that's matragland.com/powerup for you to know when the next round, the next cohort of the Productivity Power-Up is going to begin. So let's go ahead and get into the episode. What we're talking about today is one of the 10 productivity frameworks that has changed my life, and it is the PARA framework created by my friend Tiago Forte. Now, you may have heard me talk about Tiago in the past. You may know of his work yourself. One of the main things that he's known for is this idea of building a second brain, and he has a wonderful course that I think is opening back up itself in the next couple of months called Building a Second Brain. And one of the, you know, main frameworks is his PARA framework, his PARA method for organizing your digital life, organizing your work, your side hustles. And this was so like important for me when I discovered it about this time last year, because when you go through it, it makes so much sense for how you can have like a clear, calm perspective on like where is everything that I'm working on. And it's not just a— it's not even just about work. Like, you can have all these different applications for literally any part of your life, and it really has been something that is huge for me in terms of keeping things calm and organized in, in my work and in my life. So let me tell you what PARA stands for. It stands for Projects, Areas, Research, and Archives. The first one, P, is for projects. And projects are things that you do that have a very definitive end date, deadline, or just specific outcome, series of tasks to be completed. It's not something that's open-ended. It's something that's like, when this is done, it's done. Examples of projects could be things like, I am going to launch the Connect the Dots podcast. That's something that once it is launched, that launch project is complete. You could even like squeeze it down to say that even each episode that I do is like a small project of Connect the Dots. And, but it, because once I have it, I have it planned, I have it filmed, I have it edited, and then it's published, that specific project is complete. Now the next, the next phase of this is the A, which is Areas of Responsibility. And areas are things that are kind of open-ended. They don't have a definitive end date. They're just something that you are committed to, something that you're working on, or just is an ongoing part of your life until, you know, until it's not. And so you could say that now the Connect the Dots podcast is an area of responsibility for me. There's not a specific number of episodes that I'm shooting for to then say like, Okay, I'm gonna do 10, 15, 30, 50 episodes of Connect the Dots and then it's gonna be done. Then it would just be a really large project and not an ongoing area of responsibility. This is a big difference and a big distinction in PARA, and it's a really important one to understand, is that you can still have something that is very similar in nature and maybe exactly the same, But the way that you treat it, the way that you're working through it in the moment, could distinguish it between, or will distinguish it between, this is a project and this is an area of responsibility. So, connect the dots when it was in launch mode was a project, and now connect the dots that it's an ongoing thing that I'm doing is an area of responsibility. There are a couple of other analogies that Tiago has used in the past that I really like. In the like summer mastermind that I ran in 2020. He came on and did a special session with all the members. And the thing that I really liked that he talked about was like saying that getting married is a project. Yeah, as, as kind of like, you know, like kind of overly simplistic as that can sound, but getting married is a project. You have things to do, and then you have a very literal like deadline, date of completion, which is the day you get married, then the getting married project is complete. But then being married, maintaining and improving and cultivating your marriage, well, that's an area of responsibility. It doesn't have, you know, a definitive— doesn't have a definitive end date. It's something that you're committed to. A couple of other analogies that might bring this home for you is literally like, say, home buying. Buying a house is a project, but owning a house is— owning a home is an area of responsibility. I really like those differences and thinking about in terms of like, okay, a project is something that has a deadline or series of specific tasks to be completed, but an area of responsibility is something that I'm committed to for an ongoing— on an ongoing basis, okay? So making sure that you understand like the differences between those two is really important. We'll come back to, we'll come back to a couple of ways that like Tiago and I kind of differ in what, what is a project and what is an area, especially as it relates to existing areas. But I want to keep going on what is the R and what is the A in PARA. So we've talked about projects, we've talked about areas. The third is R, and that is research. Now, Even though it doesn't like— even though it's third in say like the order of PARA, often many things will begin, many projects will begin as research. You know, that makes sense. When I was doing— when I was getting ready to possibly launch a podcast to start Connect the Dots, then I was doing a lot of research. You know, that makes sense when you think of it in those terms. I was looking at what are some podcasts that I admire, where might I host my podcast, what are some ideas that I have for shows. And so I was researching, I was taking notes, and all of those were being collected into my, say, like research file, research page. I was using Notion for this. We'll talk about that in a little bit later. But I was researching everything. All right, so that's, that's what the R stands for, it's research. And some things will never necessarily leave the research stage because you don't have anything specific that you want to do with it, like a project. But we'll come back to that again, we'll get into some of the nuances of this in just a moment. And then finally, the other A is for archive. And this, you know, we won't spend very much time on this because it's rather simple. Once something is, say, like no longer a project, it's not an area of responsibility, you're not doing active research on it, then it just moves into archive. Now, one of the things that's still really helpful for this definition of archiving is that if something ever happens where you're bringing the thing that you archived back into existence as a project or a new area of responsibility, you just go into your archive and you pull it back out. So let's take— let's keep using the Connect the Dots podcast example. So right now, well, it started as an area of research. Let's bring this full circle. It started as something that I was researching. Once I had made enough progress in the research phase, then it became— it became a project, a launch the show project. Once I had launched the show, now it's an ongoing area of responsibility. So you see how it starts in research, it moves into a project, and then it becomes an area of responsibility if that is the case. Now, it could have just been like, okay, I'm doing a, like, single— I'm doing a single project on, like, just doing some audio, audio recordings, and then, okay, all done. Then it would move into archive. But right now it's an area of responsibility. But if at any time, like, okay, I'm not going to do the podcast for a little while, or maybe I'm just done with this version of podcasting, then Connect the Dots as a file or a page or a notebook moves into Archive. But even in that Archive place, if I'm ever like, hey, I'd like to start Connect the Dots again, and I just go into Archives, I pluck it out, and I move it back into either Active Projects or Area of Responsibility. You've heard me use the metaphor a couple of times of like a file folder or a page or a notebook. And that's kind of what I want you to think about visually, metaphorically, when it comes to like how a specific, like a specific piece or file can stay the same but move through these different stages of like the PARA framework. And so like I could have one page, one page or one notebook or one file that has all of my research for Connect the Dots. But then when it moves into the launch project phase, then it, again, it moves into projects when it's getting ready to launch. But now that it has been launched, that same set of like files or pages or notebooks sits in kind of my, in my area of responsibility stack. Now there are some visual aspects of this that I want you to pay attention to and In fact, I'm going to record like a visual of this with Notion because that's what I use for PARA. But you'll be able to see then in this example how something can again start in research, move into projects, into areas, and then finally into archives, even be pulled back out of archives depending on what, you know, what stage you're in and what you're doing with the, you know, with the file at that time. Now, one of the other things that I alluded to that separates in a very, a very small nuanced way between how Tiago treats some projects and areas and how I like to do it is, let's continue down the path of using Connect the Dots as our main use case now. Connect the Dots is an area of responsibility for me. And if I've understood Tiago properly in the past, He basically treats every, say, episode of, every episode of his podcast when he was doing it. I'm actually not sure if it's still active, maybe an archive, or like a blog post. All of those for him are specific projects, and I don't do that. So he would have like his blog, his blog or email newsletter area, but then he would create a new project for like this week's newsletter or this week's blog post.. And what I do is I basically just create in Notion a new, say, page or project within the area. Again, if you're, if you're thinking about this, a lot of it is very visual. So I encourage you to look in the show notes for this and look for the video that I'm going to link you to that will show you visually how I'm doing this in Notion. But once something is in the area, of responsibility for me, then new pieces of content for this specifically just exist as like sub-projects within the area. So I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, make sure you check out the visual example, the video walkthrough that I'm going to link to in the description and in the show notes below. The main reason that I do this is because I like to keep a pretty clean project list. Usually no more than 3, 4, 5 things at the most. Now, this is just a way that I like to think through it and understand what I'm doing right now. I can totally see from Tiago's perspective or other people's, like, if I have a definitive, like, end result and outcome of publishing a new article or a new podcast this week, I want to see that. I want to see all of those things in my project list, so I'm aware of the commitments that I'm making. And maybe you look at your project list, like maybe I would or should, and think like, oh wow, I've got like 7 or 8 things to do just this week. Even though they're just for this week, they'll be done. Maybe I can't commit to all of that. And it raises like a higher level of awareness and expectations for what I'm actually committing to myself. But again, what I like to do is, especially from a content perspective, say for YouTube or the podcast or even the email, the daily emails that I've been doing, is once something is in that, you know, area of responsibility, column, stage, or stack, then new pieces of content, you know, small projects that arise from, you know, from within that platform, from within the podcast or the YouTube channel, They just live as like subprojects inside of the area of responsibility. One other thing that I do a little differently than Tiago is I have an additional stage for on-deck projects, things that I know are coming up very soon, usually within the next 60 to 90 days at the most. And I just have a stage there for putting that project So I have a more like visual reminder of it and a quick access to it whenever I need to or am working on additional content or research for that like project that's upcoming, again, on deck. And that is a little different than Tiago. I think if, if when I asked him about this, he would have just said like, well, until it's an active project, then it's just in research. Or he might have said that even Like, if you're working on it, even if it's not starting yet, then go ahead and just put it in projects. But again, just the way that I think, the way that it helps me to like stay calm, cool, collected looking at my dashboard, is I only like to have the projects be things that I am actively working on and are happening at that moment. So things like, say for example, the Productivity Power-Up, which I mentioned at the beginning of the show. Right now, It's in active projects, but in December of last year, I was still like a few weeks away from launching. It was in the on-deck stage. And after, after I, after we complete the final lesson today, it's going to move into archive until it's time to run a new cohort and it'll come back into on-deck. And then when the cohort is actually running, it will move into like the active projects. So those are the two things that I do differently from Tiago when it comes to like how I set up my PARA dashboard and like how I move different like pieces of content, files, or notebooks throughout the different stages. The first one is that once a, especially a content, a content commitment becomes an area of responsibility, like the email newsletter, the podcast, and the YouTube channel. When I have specific pieces of content within those, I just create them as like little projects within the area. I don't create a whole new page or file just for the one, the one week of content, or like the one little thing that I'm doing. That does not go in projects for me. It just stays within that area of responsibility. The other thing is, like I just mentioned, is that I do have an additional kind of project state or status or stage called On Deck. And those are things that I'm kind of semi-active on, but they, they aren't, they aren't currently running. I'm not super active on them. And so this could be like, say for example, I'm getting ready to like relaunch my like YouTube starter workshop. And that'll probably be at the end of February or the beginning of March. And so right now I'm just kind of, I'm working on it some, but it's not super active. And so I have it on deck because I know in the next 30 days that it is going to become an active project. Now let me tell you about another way that I differ from the PARA framework, and it's not really that big of a difference. It's just that I wanted to name the different things differently. Yeah, I wanted to in a little way make it a little bit of my own, like put some customization and personality on it. And the way that I did that was to go towards my own love of the outdoors and games and exploration. So what I have instead of Para is the Wilde with an E at the end. The Wilde Framework. And let me tell you what each of those stand for, for me, and how they connect to some of my own personality customization, additional staging with Tiago's, like, benchmark PARA framework. Alright, here we go. So the W stands for Worlds, and that is the connection to the areas. And para, because when you think of like a world, it is kind of like an area. It's open-ended. It's like you can do whatever. It's an ongoing commitment to be a part of that world. So with connect the dots, it's now I'm a part of the podcasting world. I'm in the YouTube world. I don't plan on leaving those worlds anytime soon. Okay. So worlds is the equivalent of areas. In PARA. All right, so what's the I stand for? I is for inventory, which is the equivalent of the archive. So once something isn't in active use, it moves into my inventory. All right, that one's pretty simple. L is levels, and that's the equivalent of projects. I think about this more in like the gaming perspective. The way that I've kind of positioned and thought about the Productivity Power-Up is kind of my old love of 8-bit, 16-bit games like Super Mario 3 and like Legend of Zelda. And I think about like how you go through different levels within the greater world. And you have a specific, you know, Final Fantasy is another one. And so I have a specific level to complete, you know, that you jump on that pole at the end of Mario, at the end of a Mario world, you jump on that pole at the end. And you know, you bring the flag down. Okay, I'm getting a little too in the weeds here. But once you finish that level, then you move on to another one, but you're still within that greater world. So, you see how just like projects can be a part of an area of responsibility and vice versa, you still are committing, you still have a specific outcome and a level that you are trying to achieve. The D in WILD stands for parentheses on deck. So, the D in deck, which is basically what's up next. I talked about that just a moment ago. So it is kind of like a project. It's that middle— it's that middle ground between what is research and what is an active project, the on-deck stage. And that's what the D is for me in W.I.L.D. So we're tagging on an E at the end of W.I.L.D. here, and for me that stands for exploration, which is the equivalent of research in para. And I like this, you know, because to me, I like to treat research like something that I'm exploring. I'm just learning more about it. I don't necessarily have a set outcome. It's not something that I'm like a part of a world in, or it's an area of responsibility. It's kind of like you're playing, you're exploring, you're testing different things, you're just learning without a specific like outcome or endgame in mind. So those are the 5 stages of my productivity dashboard that I've taken and like taken and evolved, customized for me personally in PARA. And that is Worlds, Inventory, Levels, On (parentheses), On Deck, and then E for Exploration. And I really like putting my dashboard together this way because it's customized to me. It's something that I enjoy doing. When I look at it, I like feel that I've built on top of like standing on the shoulders of giants, that old, that old quote of something that Tiago put together that has been hugely transformational for me. And just so you know, like, you know, Tiago will like talk about this often, is that a lot of what he thinks about from a lot of the frameworks that he has put together has a lot of roots in like earlier productivity teaching. I know he was really influenced by David Allen's Getting Things Done. So we all kind of take bits and pieces and like we learn from the different like masters around us. But one of the things that I really want you to focus on and think about, and this is something we talk about a ton in the Productivity Power-Up, is life will really start to shift and change for you when you take the, the foundational lessons and principles from people that you trust, people that you know have been successful, applying these methods in your own life, but then tweaking them, customizing them for your own life, for your own system, for the way that you need to get things done, the way that you like to work, the timing, the style, the, the flow of everything. Like, your life is different than mine, my life is different than Tiago's, and once you get to understand those foundational principles of productivity, of focus, these different ways that you can power up your life and your work by just understanding which tool or which power-up applies in different, you know, in different situations, then you're building a system that makes the most sense for you. And when you really start to think for yourself and trust yourself in that way while still keeping an open heart, an open mind to learning best practices from others, life really goes to another level when you're able to do that. So it's something that I really want to encourage you on. It can be tough early on, but don't always default to thinking like, well, Matt has the right answer, I got to do this, I got to see what Matt says about this. And like, if I was like, well, I got to see what Tiago says about this, then, you know, I would always like kind of stay a little stuck because I wouldn't be thinking for myself or trusting myself or building a system and a framework that fits the life that I have. I'd just be trying to like fit my, you know, square peg into someone else's round hole. That sounds a little— that sounds a little— I don't know. We're going to leave it in the podcast, but I didn't really think about how that sounded until I said it. But maybe you'll get a chuckle over that when you're listening back to this. Okay, so how do you actually do this and put a PARA framework together for your own life, for your own work? Well, what I would start with is just by making lists. Like, you can do this in your bullet journal, you can do it on a notepad, you can do it on like any productivity or note-taking or like, you know, work app that you use. But just start making lists based on each of these foundational 4 stages of projects, areas, research and archives. And what I mean by this is think about like what are the active projects in your life, and remembering that definition of these are things that have a definitive deadline, these are things that have a specific series of tasks that you need to complete. Those are your projects. Now those projects can live or be very tightly connected to areas of responsibility like If you work at, you know, a job, if you have, if you have a job, then that is an area of responsibility for you. Now, you probably have projects within that, that area of responsibility. And depending on how you want to treat it, you can have like solo projects that then kind of move or, you know, transition into that area of responsibility. Or you can have like all of your projects connected to that area just kind of sit inside of that same file. And before I go any further, I want to remind you that if you look in the description of the show notes, you're going to see a link to a video where you can see how I'm setting all this up in Notion. We'll talk about Notion in just a moment, but if you want a more visual example of this, then make sure that you sign up for the email. But make a list of all of your active projects, make a list of your areas of responsibility, make a list of things that you are kind of actively researching or looking through, but you don't have a specific project. It's not a part of an area of responsibility yet. Make a list. Make those 3 lists today, right now, unless you're driving. But make a list of those 3 stages. What are my projects? What are my areas of responsibility? And what am I researching right now? And I don't think that right now, if you're doing this for the first time, you really need to worry about archives unless you just want to put something there. Where you think like, oh, I just finished this and I want to have like something in my archive stage or status. So I'm just going to throw that in. That's totally fine. But I would just start with what are my active projects, what are my areas of responsibility, and what am I researching? Even if you just did projects and areas at the beginning, that would be a really good place to start. Now, I've mentioned Notion a few times, so let's talk about Notion a little bit. Notion is my favorite organization and productivity like tool to use for something like PARA or what I use as Wild. And the reason that I do that is because, one, you can do— Notion is just so flexible, for better or for worse. The more comfortable you get with Notion, the more you're like, oh my gosh, I can do this and this and this. That's amazing. But early on, it can feel a little overwhelming to be like, oh, I can do so many things, but what do I start with? So again, Sign up at the bottom description show notes. I'm going to show you a video to how to do all of this in Notion. So make sure you check that out. It's a great way to start with Notion is by setting up your PARA dashboard. But the way that I like to set it up, and some of you will recognize what I'm talking about in a moment, some of you will be like, what? And if you're like, what? Then just watch the video and like hit the 30-second-ish skip on your podcast player. The way that I like to set this up in Notion is with the board view, or like the Kanban board. And so I have a stage or a status for projects, areas, research, and archives. So they're just set up like boards, and each, each, um, like different thing that I'm working on is a different like card or page that sits in projects, areas, research, or archives. Again, check out the video. It will make more sense. You certainly don't have to use Notion for this. One of the nice things about PARA is that it is pretty tool agnostic. You can use kind of whatever you want on it. But I do think, I will say, because of the flexible kind of fluid nature of PARA, I don't personally recommend using a Bullet Journal for a PARA setup. The only way that I could really see doing this with an analog, from an analog perspective, is if you literally had like specific notebooks. So maybe like Field Notes notebooks, you know, tiny ones. If you had specific notebooks or even like literal file folders for these different things. So if I had a connect the dots file folder and I, you know, I'm not actually at home right now, so I can't like go grab even an example of a file folder. But if I had a Connect the Dots podcast file folder, then I could like think of a way that like I, you know, if I had a file cabinet, then like the top drawer could be projects, and then, you know, different drawers for each of the statuses. And then like when I'm working on Connect the Dots as a project, you know, moves up there. That is like the literal visual metaphor for what we're doing in Notion with this. But in terms of analog, because the way that, like, information moves so fluidly throughout different stages of PARA, it would be tough to do from an analog perspective, though not, though not impossible. I know that Tiago started putting this together, and I think still largely uses Evernote for a lot of his PARA. I think he may have moved actual PARA framework into Notion by now, but a lot of his note-taking, the early organization, the way that he used para for a long time was in Evernote. And the way that you could do that is basically each stage, so projects, areas, research, and archives, all of those existed as a specific notebook in Evernote. And then notes, or like projects as they existed, you know, different notes would move throughout these different, you know, notebooks. So If I was using Evernote, then I would have like a note that started a note about the podcast prep that would start in the research notebook. And then when it was time to like do the launch project, it would move into, it would move into launch and then, or sorry, into projects. And then once the project was completed, it would move into areas of responsibility. So there, that particular notebook. So there is a way to do this in Evernote. There's also a way to do it in Roam, even though I don't— I've tried this in Roam from like a setup perspective, and I think it gets a little squirrely. It gets really squirrely really quick. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend using Roam for this, even though it is doable. Like, you could have a top-level page for, you know, for the para, and then you could move like your— you could move different pages' keywords into those subpages. But again, like, just the way that I'm thinking about it, I think Notion's the best. You could potentially use Trello for this as well because I really like the Kanban board setup. Taskade is another one that you could set up in this way. But what I have used is Notion, and that's what I would recommend getting started with. Check out the video. It will show you how to, how to set this up initially. All right everyone, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Connect the Dots and watching if you're on the YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe, rate, and review to the podcast, all the different places you can find it, whether that is Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Overcast, you know, watching it on YouTube. And also check out, there are like top clips from each episode that go out on the Connect the Dots YouTube Clips channel. I should have said that in a clearer way, but there's a Clips channel on YouTube as well. You may have been seeing these also show up on Instagram or on my Twitter feed. I'm starting to add them to Facebook and LinkedIn as well. So make sure you check those out. I really appreciate all the ways that you're supporting the show. The two big, like, calls to action that I want to give you in this, just to kind of wrap it up, is when you're, when you're first setting up your PARA dashboard, just start by making lists. That'll help you, like, get, you know, start to understand it. So what are my active projects and what are my areas of responsibility? Understanding that they can be connected, but they are distinct. So like buying a house is a project and owning a home is an area of responsibility. See how those two things are connected, but they are still distinct stages of the process. All right. And if you want to, if you want to like see how I recommend setting this up in Notion, which is what I use and recommend using for this, to me it's the easiest, most flexible way, then make sure that you sign up for— sign up to see the video below in the description, in the show notes. The last thing is, if you're interested in being a part of the Productivity Power-Up, which I've mentioned a few times in the show today, we're just wrapping up Cohort 1 literally today, February 10th. Now, this episode is going to come out a little bit after that, but if you're listening to this and this is something you want to be a part of, you know, going through each of these productivity principles, these power-ups that you can use whenever you are faced faced with like a challenge with something that you're like, I don't know how I'm going to get this done, the Power-Up will help you get to that point. It'll literally like power you up. You'll be like, ah, I never thought of that before. Now I can do this. Now I feel more confident. Make sure you go to mattrogland.com/powerup and just get on the early access list so you know when it is coming. Probably going to relaunch in April. All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Connect the Dots, and I will see you Next week. Thanks so much, everyone. Bye.