Areas Are Private Whereas Resources Are Shareable

There is an additional guideline that many people have found helpful in distinguishing what goes in Areas versus Resources: the boundary between private and shared information.

Areas of responsibility are inherently private. It’s no one else’s business what material you save related to your Health, Finances, Personal Growth, or Kids. For example, in my Health (area) folder, I keep blood panels, notes from doctor’s visits, medical bills, and vaccination records (all things relevant only to me personally). I can always share an individual item if I want, but these categories should remain private by default.

Resources are quite different, since learning and exploring new things are inherently social activities. There are many situations where you might want to share your notes with someone else—to get feedback on an article you’re writing, to compare notes with a colleague on a skill you’re both learning, or to offer restaurant recommendations to a friend who is visiting a city you’ve been to before.

Therefore, I recommend you think of your resource folders as “shareable by default.” That way you can share individual documents (or even entire folders) with others on the fly, without first having to comb through them for any personal details.