I came accross the P.A.R.A. only shortly after looking in to Zettelkasten, which was a concept igot hooked last year.
I also looked into the Lyt Kit.
Actually what PARA and Lyt Kit are missing, at least to my taste is a greater sense of order and also one point to mentions is the depth of nesting folders. (especially in Lyt Kit).
PARA is to broad and doesnt suggest and kind of structure inside the main folders. Lyt Kit has spaces and therefor will cause too deep nested folders.
I implemented a kind of JohnnyDecimal system before. It was a German author who wrote about his concept of agile files and is suggesting “actionable categories”. This was very unique view and I’ve never come across that concept in the English realm of productivity.
The basic concept is that you dont name a file (in para it would be a process) with an actionable description. So there is no Tax category but the project is “filing income tax 2022” the actionable approach is missing in many of these concepts of categories. By doing so the risk of filing in more than one folder is apparent.
I also think Nick has a point in his calendar folder to store timebased information.
So my approach is to have an
- inbox (thats GTD)
- Calendar (time based notes / daily / journaling)
- projects (with project folder like “0002.51 Filing Taxes for 2022”)
- areas (with a decimal substructure like “5 Financial / 51 Filing Taxes”)
- Resources
- Archive ( in the book it was recommended to set an achrive folder within each section as in “5 Financial / 51 Filing Taxes/ Archive” which holds all the accomplished project folders) so maybe i skip archive as main folder and set that up as last folder “zzArchive”
Having a business made me use the numbering approach, because when satff asks me about something they need I can just tell them to look into Binder 51 or I tell them look within the 5 Section.
Also important is quick access so no more than 2 Folders deep. Having Areas just being named folders might work for more simple life styles but i figures it will get super messy in not time if you really use that approach for too long.
When I am done setting it fully up i might also post a starter kit.
the book I was mentioning: Prozessorientierte Ablage: Dokumentenmanagement-Projekte zum Erfolg führen. Praktischer Leitfaden für die Gestaltung einer modernen Ablagestruktur by Wolf Steinbrecher
Its German, so maybe not many will make use of it. But i think this is worth mentioning here.
looking forward to your comments on this.