14 When in Doubt, Start Over

I’ve offered a lot of advice and recommendations about how to make PARA work for you, and in this chapter I want to give you one final one:

If you ever get stuck or feel overwhelmed, simply archive everything and start over following the instructions I provided in chapter 3. For example:

• •  If your Documents folder becomes a digital dumpster fire, move everything into an archive with today’s date and start fresh.
• •  If you have tons of digital notes piled up in the inbox of your notetaking app, move them to an archive folder with today’s date and be done with it.
• •  If your cloud storage drive is a hot mess, move everything to a dated archive and reset for a new week, month, or year.

Yes, you read that right: the act of declaring “digital bankruptcy” is an escape hatch that you can use anytime your digital world starts to become too chaotic and suffocating. I’ve done it countless times, and every time it fills me with a sense of relief and enthusiasm for what’s next.

When it comes to your finances, there are serious consequences to declaring bankruptcy. But not in the digital world. There is no downside to archiving everything because it will all remain available in the future.