My Second Brain in Apple Notes (PARA Method) | Part 4

I'd like to show you another example of what Peril looks like this time in a different Notes app which is called Apple notes I've replicated the same setup that I showed you previously in Evernote in Apple notes here you can see the interface looks very similar there's a sidebar on the left that shows me my projects areas resources and archives notice that it's quite nice that I can collapse these down into just four folders which is very useful when I'm on my mobile device or on the go if I click into for example the projects

folder you'll see I have individual project folders for each one of my currently active projects all nested within the overarching projects folder if I click on one of these project folders for example the AI Workshop that I'm planning on teaching I simply copied and pasted all of the existing notes and their titles into Apple notes it's a very direct one-to-one translation you'll notice that most of these other folders are empty with zero notes inside and that's because this is a demonstration that I wanted to make for you on what it would look like inside these

notes I'm free to add a title I can add links I can even add images for example down here you see screenshots that were copied and pasted directly into the body of these notes I'm going to go ahead and close the project folder and look here in the areas folder where you see all the same areas related to my business up here and my personal life down here I'll go ahead and close that same with resources I've created a few demonstration folders for you to see what this would look like and same for my archives

one more thing you might notice is that I don't have a folder called inbox and that's because Apple notes comes with a default folder simply called notes which functions exactly like an inbox any note you take on any device if you don't put it somewhere specific will appear here in the default notes folder which you can simply use exactly how I use an inbox I'm going to show you three different kinds of content that I'll capture and then sort into the different para folders let's start with some content from an email this is an email

I received recently from Michael a speaking coach that I'm working with and he was kind enough to send me what you'll see here the notes that he took on our coaching session okay so this is incredibly valuable think about the knowledge that this represents it's information from our coaching session that has been translated interpreted through his lens so I'm definitely going to go up here and click the download button it will save to my downloads folder and then if I head back over to Apple notes I can simply create a new note call it notes

from Michael coaching session and I might say April 2023 and then I can simply open up my downloads folder down here click and drag that attachment right into the body of the note and you can see Apple notes very helpfully creates a preview so I can see exactly what that attachment is let's look at another example from an online article this is an article that I was reading from wired.com a popular Tech website I came across this paragraph which has some interesting facts and even links to outside pieces of research on something that I'm becoming

more interested in as my parents age what which is cognitive function and even cognitive decline so what I'm going to do is highlight that paragraph that I want to save right click it and say copy and then once again I can head over to Apple notes create a new note paste it right within the note and to be sure that I'm able to find where this came from in the future I'm going to go back to the website copy the URL and paste it here at the bottom of the note and then let's look at

one more example from social media let's say I'm scrolling through Twitter in this case one day and I come across this interesting article about the rise of Fusion Energy it's kind of a random interest that I have not super relevant or actionable to any project that I'm working on now but I would like to kind of keep developments in Fusion Energy at the kind of periphery of my attention so what I'm going to do is just copy a piece of text from the social media post head over to Apple notes create new notes paste it

right there and just in case I want to read the full article in the future I'm not even going to click into it because I don't really have time to read it right now but I can copy link to tweet and add that at the bottom of the node as well now let's say I go through my week follow the same kind of process and at the end of the week I have between 10 and 15 new notes all I'm going to do during for example a weekly review is ask myself for each of these

notes what project area or resource is it most relevant to where is it going to be useful not just interesting but useful actionable practical so let's start with the notes that I saved from my coaching session I'm going to start as I always start by opening up the projects folder because if I have a choice of multiple places where this could go I want to favor projects since those are the shortest term situations where I might use this so in this case I'm asking myself with notes that are related to improving my speaking skills in

what situation and what project are those going to be most useful the soonest and what comes to mind is actually the launch of my book in Brazil this is kind of an unexpected connection because that might not seem to have anything to do with speaking but I'm actually remembering once I see these side by side the project and the know that I will be doing a speaking engagement I'll be speaking to a large group of people when I travel down to Brazil for the launch of that book so this is a just a great example

where this knowledge that I have generated or acquired related to speaking with one little action just clicking and dragging from here over right there the next time I sit down whether that's today tomorrow and weeks from now to work on this project the launch of my book in Brazil I will stumble across I will come upon these notes that will be so specifically relevant to this one thing I'm trying to achieve let's look at the next example about cognitive function so in this case I'm looking through my projects and I really don't have anything related

to that the thing that comes to mind actually is my parents so my relationship with my parents is an area there's no end point there's no deadline that will go on hopefully for a long long time so I'm going to go ahead and open up areas and I'm actually going to notice now that I think about it that I don't have an area folder related to my parents so this is another key moment where you realize oh there is a responsibility there's a standard of performance in this case related to my parents and the possibility

that I may need to caretake them in the future that has suddenly Arisen it suddenly emerged from something as simple as a paragraph of text that I copied and pasted from a website so I'm actually going to take this opportunity to create a new folder called simply parents I'm going to click OK and then I'll need to move the parents folder into the areas folder and I'm going to move it down here in the personal section basically in a few seconds I've created a brand new category that didn't exist until this very moment now I

can go back to this new note I've created and I can move it directly into the parents area of responsibility and one more example for this note related to Fusion Energy I already know right off the bat there's no project related to it there's no area it's definitely going to be kind of a passing interest which will be in my resources so the reason I'm interested in Fusion Energy I'm just noticing now that I'm thinking about this is this relationship to climate change I'm interested in how developments and innovation in the way that we generate

energy is going to impact the future climate so notice that I have already a climate change resource folder right here it's a perfect match all I have to do is get this note move it directly from the notes inbox over to climate change and now I'm finished what I want you to notice from this is it doesn't have to be hard you don't have to overthink it there is no correct place or one perfect place that one of these notes goes in fact there's almost always multiple places that it could go which is why you

want to use para to create a checklist an order of priority if it can go in a project it should if not it should go in an area if not it should go in a resource and if you can't even think of a resource that it can go in a resource that it's related to you can just delete it and save yourself all the trouble foreign foreign