The PARA method
Four places for everything: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives. Parent projects, archiving and the Inbox give you the structure without a second app.
Last reviewed
PARA sorts everything by how actionable it is, not by subject. A Project has a goal and an end date. An Area is a standard you keep up indefinitely: health, home, a role at work. A Resource is a topic you are interested in. An Archive is anything from the other three that is no longer active. Four folders, and the question “where does this go?” answers itself.
Why it works
Subject-based filing puts the mortgage renewal next to articles about mortgages. PARA puts the renewal in Projects, where you will act on it this month, and the articles in Resources, where they wait. Your active list stays short because it holds only projects.
Set it up in OpenTodo
- Four top-level projects: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives. Create them from the sidebar. Organise with projects
- Real projects nest under Projects, one per outcome with an end date: “Renew the mortgage”, “Kitchen renovation”. Pick the parent when you create them, or move them later from the project menu. Organise with projects
- Areas nest under Areas, one per standard you maintain: “Health”, “Home”, “Team”. Their tasks repeat; a done area is a contradiction. Make a task repeat
- Resources hold reference tasks and links captured from the browser, with notes. The capture screen lets you pick the project as you save. Capturing pages
- Archive, do not delete. When a project is done, archive it from its menu: it leaves the sidebar but keeps every task and comes back with one click. OpenTodo even offers to archive a project when you complete its last task. Archived projects
- See only what is active with a saved view
##Projects & !completed, grouped by project;##includes sub-projects. Find tasks with a filter
Make it stick
- The weekly review is where things move between the four: a stalled project becomes an area or an archive, a resource becomes a project when it gets a date. The weekly review
- Quick add understands nested projects:
#Kitchenfinds “Projects › Kitchen renovation” by prefix, and the chip shows the path. Tokens - The GTD setup template gives you contexts as labels that work across all four folders. Labels and filters