Design your own life — the PARA system (2/5)
Design goes beyond a pixel perfect user experience. I asked myself the question: “Can I apply design thinking to my own life?”
People are often stunned when they see the organization of the apps and systems I use to manage my life. Understandably, the way I use my apps can be a bit overwhelming. Simultaneously people are also intrigued by the idea to run everything more systematically. They see the apps I use and the way I plan certain things and want to know how I actually do it. With this post, I hope to give a small insight into the way I run my life.
I have been meticulously about setting up my life around a few important pillars. These pillars have an impact on my life. I realize that the more I use them, the more I progress as an individual.
I am trying to create a master plan where all the facets of life come together in one picture.
My ideas and methods are largely influenced by the writer Tiago Forte. The methods I have developed are often directly inspired by the way he teaches the concept of Building a Second Brain, PARA and reviewing your life. I also drew inspiration from David Perell, Nat Eliason, Cal Newport, Rick Pastoor and David Allen.
PARA
Let start with the basics. To organize my life I use a system called PARA. PARA is a concept that is developed by Tiago Forte, author of the book ‘Building a Second Brain’. PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive. These four channels are the backbone of the system I using.
- Projects — “a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline”
- Areas — “a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time.”
- Resources — “a topic or theme of ongoing interest.”
- Archive — “inactive items from the other three categories.”
Let’s dig deeper:
The two most important channels for me are Areas and Projects. An area of responsibility is “a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time.” Examples of this are Sport; money; travel; friends; health and work areas such as my freelance business; contacts; I need to maintain; and writing. A project is “a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline.” Examples include: Writing challenge; Develop project roadmap; Current book I am reading; Finalize product specifications; Plan a holiday.
Projects vs. Areas of Responsibility
To understand the difference between projects vs. areas let the master himself explain it best:
Tiago Forte: “These definitions seem fairly straightforward, but I want to zero in on the difference between projects and areas of responsibility. After much trial and error, and seeing many people struggle to differentiate between them, I’ve come to believe that even the smallest confusion between these two categories is a deeply rooted cause of many personal productivity problems.”
A project has a goal to be achieved. A clear outcome with a set date. An area of responsibility, by contrast, has a standard to be maintained. And there is no end date or final outcome.
Take for example your friends. A relation doesn’t have a deadline and is something you just have to maintain. But you can still have projects together with your friends. Planning for a vacation with your friends will be a project. Projects will always fall into Areas: Doing sports will be an area, whereas preparing for a triathlon will be a project. Buying a new sofa will be a project whereas your own home could be an area. Understanding the difference between the two is thus really important. More on this when I will dig deeper on projects but let me first explain how I defined my areas.
Why PARA?
You are going to use multiple applications to complete projects. Rather than trying to fit everything into one app it is better to use designated apps for designated proceedings. All my apps use the PARA structure. It doesn’t matter if I am working in my notes or saving a file. I will always have the same structure of projects, areas, resources, and archive. This enables me to focus on the right things at the right moment. You will see the exact same list of projects across all the different apps I use. This enables me to quickly review the progress on a project, make notes about it, or save files without having to search for the right folder.
Defining my Areas
Now that we have a clear idea of what projects and areas are. We can dive into defining them. Areas make it is easier to evaluate your life. Areas are basically the bone structure of my life. These are the clear pillars. Whatever I do, whatever decision I make. I can always judge my life based on the defined areas.
Areas are basically the bone structure of my life.
So how do you define the areas of your life? These areas are different for everyone. It took me quite some time to optimize it further and every now and then I will change things over.
I have used various techniques to further define my areas. I started with making a basic list of all the areas I care about. I defined a few personal areas (Health; Money; Stuff; and Home), Sports (tennis; fitness; snowboarding) and Fun (friends; festival; events travel; and outings), Learning (books; articles; podcasts; and writing). I have a tendency to do a lot of personal projects. After some trial and area, I decided to separate my work areas (Freelance; my startup; business contacts; and productivity) from my personal tasks. In this way, I can have a clear focus on work during the day and focus on all my other projects during the remainder of the day.
After making initial areas I have changed them around multiple times. For example, at some point, I realized that I should put more emphasis on shipping stuff. Not just consuming books, twitter, articles or Netflix series. But actually producing content in the form of pictures, writing and building products. That’s why I decided to make writing an individual area.
Sometimes I cluster subjects. For example, in Health I have subheadings with smaller areas like skin, injuries, teeth, food and mental health.
This list enables me to quickly scan through all the pillars of my life and see how I perform in each area. More on this later on when I will expand on reviewing your areas.
Defining my projects
Just defining your areas is not enough. Areas are too generic and rarely change. They are the fixed foundation. On top of this, we need some building blocks in the form of projects. All my projects are part of an area. Projects are the fuel of my progress. At all times I can use my projects as an overview of what I am working on. Your areas make it easy to set goals for each segment. To build on top of the areas we need to answer the following question:
What do you want to accomplish?
I know that this question sounds vague at first. But if you go through every part of your life, you will be able to find pieces where you could make progress. For example the generic area sports. One of my goals for 2019 is to run a triathlon. Preparing for a triathlon is not an area for me. For now, it’s just a one-time thing I want to accomplish. Let’s break down what we need for that. I need to find a triathlon in the summer, start researching how I need to train for it, do the actual training and finally prepare for the big day. These are all little projects with deadlines. You could call them little sprints. If I start training a week before the triathlon I will be too late. So by planning out beforehand, I can plan to start training in time for the big day.
For example writing: I wanted to write more. I had this goal for over two years. But a goal is just a dream if you cannot transform it into actions. Writing more is way too vague. To bring it to action your need projects. Projects have a fixed deadline with a clear outcome. In December when I planned my upcoming year I decided to make writing a priority. I set the goal to publish at least six articles in 2019. In principle, every article is a project on itself. Even researching for an article or longer essay could be a project. By starting projects you can achieve area specific goals.
There are always multiple projects running at the same time. I use a list of current projects as a quick way to see what I am working on. Projects are a great way to test a new idea. The characteristics (deadline, small defined tasks, focused) make it perfect to see if something works. And because you are working towards a goal you simultaneously get this incredible feeling of achieving something every time you finish a project.
Last month I, for example, read something about the benefits of waking up extremely early. Waking up early would give you this productivity boost in the morning. I was sold on the idea and decided to try it for a week. Seven days of waking up at 5:30 sounds doable. This enabled me to quickly test if I liked the idea. If not, I could move on to something else. To remind myself of the new challenge I came up with a project name called ‘the 5:30 challenge’.
I added the 5:30 challenge to my to-do list and notes app to have a designated place to log the project. During the challenge, I got further interested in the science of sleep. I started reading a few articles about the topic and also listened to three podcasts. I also logged my body, productivity, and happiness during the challenge because I wanted to measure how the new sleep rhythm would affect me. Normally the freshly obtained knowledge wouldn’t be stored for later. Now I had a place to store it and reflect on it later.
Active vs passive channels
If we take a step back and look at PARA again there is a clear distinction between active and passive channels. Projects and areas are the active part of your life. But the passive part, resources, and archive are just as important.
Resources
The resource stack is a great way to curate your own learning and development. It’s like a second brain for your learnings. All curated and once learned and now stored into your digital second brain. Over the last year, I have built up this great stack of notes on various topics. It is specific knowledge for me but probably doesn’t make sense for other people. Resources give an insight into my interest. I have this great source of information on the various topics I have read about. Because you add new information over time the stack of ideas is ever growing. I try to curate it often.
Archive
My archive is a stack of notes with finished projects. It is this logbook of past activities and notes. The archive stack is also great for reusing materials. Work is often somewhat repetitive and there are often elements you can simply reuse. Besides that, it is also great for reviewing your past work or share old materials when relevant. You won’t see any value in short term with your archive but once start finishing projects it's going to be valuable to look back on stuff.
