You need all your digital information well organized on your devices, but that is easier said than done. Productivity guru Tiago Forte saw this and came up with the PARA system, a simple technique to keep everything related to your work and interests in digital order.
How to Organize Your Digital Life in Seconds (PARA Method) | Part 1
PARA is an acronym that stands for Project, Area, Resource, and Archive. The goal of using it to categorize your digital information is similar to using the Organizational Triangle to organize your physical stuff: you need to know where every document, file, presentation, note, image, and outline is when you need it, so you can find it more easily.
Projects refer to anything you’re currently working on in the short term (like finishing a report or buying a new couch), while areas are broader, long-term activities that you need to work on over time (like your overall health or career progression). Resources are any bits of information that might be useful in the future, and the archive is for inactive files from the other three categories.
You can implement this system in your computer’s files or a cloud-based service like Google Docs or Dropbox. Each of the four categories should be a top-level folder. Anything that has to do with a current project goes into projects, anything that has to do with your broader responsibilities goes into areas, anything that might be useful for one of those projects in the future goes into resources, and anything you’ve completed or are no longer working on goes into archives.