I magine for a moment the perfect organizational system.
A system that told you exactly where to put every piece of information in your digital life—every document, file, note, agenda, outline, and bit of research—and exactly where to find it when you needed it.
Such a system would need to be incredibly easy to set up, and even easier to maintain. After all, only the simplest, most frictionless habits endure long term.
It would need to be both flexible, adapting to your needs in different seasons of your life, and comprehensive, so you can use it in every one of the many places where you store information. For example, the Documents folder on your computer, a cloud storage platform,1 or a digital notetaking app.2
But most of all, the ideal organizational system would be one that leads directly to tangible benefits in your career and life. It would dramatically accelerate you toward completing the projects and achieving the goals that are most important to you.
In other words, the ultimate system for organizing your life is one that is actionable.
Instead of putting more obstacles in your path, postponing the actions that will make a difference, it would pull those actions closer and make them easier to start and finish.
After more than a decade of personal experimentation, teaching thousands of students, and coaching world-class professionals, I’ve developed such a system. It’s being used today by elementary schoolchildren all the way to multinational corporations, and everyone in between.
It’s called PARA—a simple, comprehensive, yet flexible system for organizing any type of information across any digital platform.3
Whether you want to save excerpts from a book you’re reading, a voice memo about an interesting new idea, inspiring quotes from a podcast interview, web bookmarks with useful online resources, notes from important meetings or phone calls at work, photos that remind you of cherished memories, or your own personal journal entries, this system will equip you with a set of tools for preserving any information far into the future. And not only preserving it, but skillfully using it to achieve anything you set your mind to.