Getting Your Digital House in Order

Organising your digital life might not be sexy, but it does feel A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. once it's done...

Hello 👋

Welcome to Notes by Martine, the Deep Dive edition.

This month’s deep dive is about digital life organisation. I know it’s not the sexiest subject in the world, but once you get your digital house in order - I promise - the reduction in cognitive load feels A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

Digital Life Organisation

There are myriad ways to organise your files, folders, tasks, notes, and other digital assets, but the one that has always left me scratching my head is Tiago Forte’s PARA.

I mean, I got it, but I didn’t quite get it - know what I mean?

When Tiago released his new book, The PARA Method, I was curious. Could this new book make PARA stick for me?

PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives - you organise everything under these headings.

Here’s an article on PARA if you do not want to purchase the book (although it is a delightfully quick read, I highly recommend it).

One of my biggest challenges with PARA was distinguishing between projects and areas, but I’m finally clear on that now. I share a concrete example below:

• Project: “running the London Marathon in April 2024”

• Area: “health and fitness”

Areas are broad categories with a standard to be maintained over time - they usually don’t have an end date or deadline. Projects have deadlines - they are a unit of activity. Both areas and projects consist of tasks.

I also made an interesting observation, which I shared in the tweet below (it’s a long tweet, so click the image to read it). My observation was that I only tend to have recurring tasks in areas - which makes sense as recurring tasks contribute to maintaining the standard of an area over time.

The book cleared up a lot of confusion for me, so I decided it was time to test out the PARA Method in real life. So far, it’s working really well.

Here’s an exclusive video showing how I have set up PARA for my to-do list app and file and folder storage👇