Using the PARA method with Notion

when I was first setting up my notion workspace back in 2018 it was Thiago Forte's para method that helped me give my workspace some much needed structure at the time I was taking his building a second brain course which is awesome and it really helped clarify some ways of thinking about the data if you're a notion user you probably know that notion is not terribly opinionated about where you actually store your information so you yourself need to give it structure in order for it to be helpful and useful so Pera is essentially a tool agnostic

system for organizing all the information in your life para stands for projects areas resources and archives now Thiago has recently released his new book on the para method so I thought it might be good to dive into how we actually apply para inside of notion and what are some of the key challenges that pop up and how we've adapted a two-hour complex workspace we get asked questions all the time about Pera and how to apply para in notion I think one of the most common reasons that people get really tripped up in Paris is when

they take it way too literally you don't have to translate Pera exactly one to one inside of notion because it's just a different tool it's a more Dynamic application it doesn't work like a finder window on your computer where you're moving files into one specific place so let's start with the p in Para which is for projects and Thiago defines projects as a goal with a deadline it's something that you're actively working on it's short-term efforts in your worker personal life that you take with a certain goal in mind areas are essentially areas of responsibility

or standards to maintain over time they're important parts of our life or work that require ongoing attention this tends to be in the realm of daily habits and meaningful rituals resources are things that you save related to a range of topics that you're interested in or rabbit holes that you're going down things that you're curious about inspired by and learning about and the final A is for archives which are inactive items from the other three categories these are things you might want to say for future reference even though they're not necessarily related to something active

currently when we want to save something we have an idea a piece of information or something thing that we want to store we ask ourselves where does this Live Well notion databases add this layer of complexity that mean we have to adapt para to Notions unique features functionality quirks and limitations there are some things that you can't quite do in notion so it might require some workarounds let's take a look at a flow chart that's adapted from thiago's book to look at where does something go when you're saving it into notion now again this is

customized to our specific setup but I just want to show you an example of how you don't need to interpret prepare so literally when we're talking about notion this is based on thiago's original chart that has a number of questions to help you discern where should something be saved so the first question to ask is is it an appointment or a meeting if the answer is yes in our case this gets saved to a calendar app Google Calendar cron whatever you're using we have a zapier automation set up so that anything that is saved to

our Google Calendar automatically gets sent into our actions database inside of our actions database we keep all time-based events and tasks if it's not an appointment or a meeting we ask is it a task if yes it goes into the actions database if no we ask is it a discussion or decision that needs to be made I've talked about this in other videos before about how we use attentions database as a team to resolve tensions asynchronously kind of in place of slack really Texans are basically anything that's a decision a question something that helps us

move projects forward and the idea is that when attention is resolved usually there's some kind of next action and so that will get added to the actions database the question of if something is a discussion or a decision is not in the para framework is tensions an area is it a project is it a resource it's kind of none of them it's just part of what helps us get our work done and that spans all projects it also spans all areas so there are certain databases in notion that don't necessarily fit neatly into one of

these cat categories and that's okay so we just have slightly more complex needs and we've adapted our notion as such so let's say it's none of those things we can ask is it a note or an idea if it is an odor idea depending on the context of the note or idea we send this to a different database so we ask if the idea or note is related to specifically content creation we will save that into the content database the content database is basically our editorial calendar it's where all ideas for Content that we produce

gets stored and saved with a status an author unintended publish date Etc if the note is related to a specific person we can add that to the person's profile inside of the people database if it's something else if it's just a note that we're creating a thought that you had that you don't want to forget that just goes into the notes and ideas database now again some of these databases blur the lines between what is a project what is an area and even what is a resource for us people and notes and ideas are part

of the knowledge Hub which is part of our resource stack the content database supports content creation as part of our marketing activities so you could say marketing is an area but we have regular projects and activities that we do every single week as part of that area so the content database supports projects it also supports areas and so it can get a little bit blurry but that's okay the point is that we have these databases that are very context specific that allow us to get our work done in a way the power of databases make

it so that it doesn't really matter whether or not it's an area or a project all that matters is that metadata is connected that the content database can relate to a project it can rely late to next actions and it can relate to any resources and assets required to complete that project so if it's not a notor idea is it a piece of information a resource or reference material if it is one of these categories we can kind of further go down the chain and say yes in general most things are going to get saved

into the library database any online courses that I'm taking PDFs that I save interesting articles that I'm reading all of that stuff gets saved into the library database we also have some other nuances and things like using the read wise automation I really like read wise as a tool I use their reader app and so I can save things to read later and it gets saved into read-wise and it provides an inbox and then I can go through and decide do I want to save this to notion do I want to move it into the

library or do I just want to leave it into the read-wise library if it isn't information resources reference material Etc it's worth asking does this really belong in notion so this is a really adapted flow chart of kind of how I think about that para breakdown in the context of notion a lot of this again is based on workflows and ease of use of finding information it's not a one-to-one mapping of the categories of para so again Pera was a loose inspiration and we've adapted it to some of the way that notion interprets data and

it allows us to move data around the space and works with some of the permissions limitations as well Thiago recommends regularly moving things between different categories depending on whether or not they're actively supporting a project an area of responsibility or needing to be shared again this works when we're talking about folders but in notion grouping things into databases is what really allows us to supercharge our workflows but we can't easily move items between databases without losing that beautiful metadata let's take a look at an example project page in notion so here we have a project

that's got all sorts of different metadata available if I were to move this item into a different folder archive folder a resource folder or something like that we're going to lose all of this beautiful metadata so that means any relations that I've associated with this project and anything that kind of gives it that richer context gets lost which is really the beauty of notion so the idea is that we can assign different departments we can assign resources to this and we can change the status of the project to make it archived we don't need to

actually physically move this piece of data or information so again para is really open to interpretation now in the context of teams Thiago recommends having a personal para and a team para which is fine in theory but that can get really complex when you have small business owners that are trying to manage both their work and personal in the same notion workspace do you need two resource hubs or are you saving the same information twice it starts to get a little bit tricky notion does also have certain limitations when it comes to sharing and permissions

so we usually start with Access First in terms of that being the primary consideration because database access is All or nothing you can't just give partial access to database views it's probably one of notion's most hotly requested features that makes things challenging when you're trying to bring in non-notion users in into your workspace so here are some of the ways that I adapt para for a complex notion context I'm an owner of the account the majority of projects and actions for the account are for a work context all of my personal areas are also managed

through this account we manage our family and household activities from this workspace as well with shared pages that are visible only to my husband and I so here's how it looks in more detail the projects aspect of para in notion relies on two databases the projects and the actions you can also integrate a goals database but we're not going to get into that that's a rabbit hole for another day but basically the projects database is probably one of the most utilized databases in the workspace it's the lifeblood of our team workspace and everybody has access

to that database that projects database has a two-way relation to the actions database so projects are basically how we group tasks and events together inside of notion all projects have actions to move them forward and all actions are associated it with a project everything in your life is a project so nearly everything should be added into this database as a project our project database has properties like owner start and finish dates scope which is basically how resource intensive or time intensive is this project a department associated with it design HR operations Client Services Etc a

priority which gets reviewed and adjusted weekly any sub-projects that might be associated with this project which is a self-relation to the projects database so this allows us to have a parent-child relationship with projects a goal database which is basically the bigger goal that that project supports the actions database which is all related tasks and events required to complete the project a status property helps us understand what status the project is in if it's active ongoing completed archived Etc and then a little place to add status updates which is just a text field so that the

owner can update the project weekly as part of our weekly review and this helps us see at a glance what's happening with that project the actions database includes all tasks to Do's events Etc and that's essentially your to-do list so generally speaking all actions should be associated with a project so the projects aspect of Pera is really projects and actions working together as two databases so let's dig into areas areas are interpreted pretty liberally in our space so here's how I think about it my personal areas are unique dashboards inside a personal dashboard in a

private section of my workspace sidebar using notion's Wiki feature I converted this dashboard into a Wiki page which kind of allows me to have the design that I want while also switching into an index mode that gives me a listing of all of the databases inside of that page it's totally optional to do this before the wiki feature was launched these areas were just Pages inside of my personal dashboard they're not connected to any of the other projects and tasks or anything like that they are Standalone dashboards that are just for that one specific context

I like to talk all of those Source databases that are related to those areas into a toggle at the bottom of the page I like to call that the databasement and you can see there's all sorts of interesting databases in there that don't really relate to other parts of the workspace that are more team oriented now of course lots of these life areas do have projects and actions associated with them and I still want to be able to manage those but I don't want to clutter up our team shared databases so what do we do

inside of the shared projects database I have three projects which are for my personal use and they are projects with a status of ongoing they don't have a nice tidy start and finish date the way most projects do they are basically ongoing projects that never really end so I have this catch-all project called life admin and that's where I can put all of my personal tasks now the nice thing about notion is you can scope out access to certain items inside of a database so even though the projects database is shared with the team I

can say I only want life admin meant to be visible to Ben and I that means our other team member will not see this page in the database then I have health and wellness which is a project for any health and wellness related activities softball games spa day doctors appointments Etc things like that personal development is a project for tracking all notes and actions and things related to any kind of personal development initiatives courses I'm taking books I'm reading Etc you could of course lump all of those together into a life admin if you wanted

to keep it simple it's really up to you so by creating projects for these areas I'm able to utilize all of the properties from the project database structure while still using the status property to Mark the project as ongoing that kind of allows us to blur the line between projects and areas is it a project is it an area it doesn't really matter all that matters is I'm able to generate actions related to that so I can maintain those standards or get those projects done so hopefully you can see how you don't really need to

be so rigid with the different categories of para for us it's all about ease of use access to the information and ability to generate new tasks quickly as needed so we've got personal areas and then there are areas that are shared so one example of this is household management and so because Ben and I are both owners of this team account as well as a cohabiting couple we have a team space for our household that is visible just to the two of us so any household projects activities resources things that we're saving inspiration for house

projects all of that gets saved into the household area and it remains completely separate from all other parts of our workspace so technically this is an area but it lives in the sidebar as a team space because it's a shared area this is just one of the easiest ways to maintain this area food is also a big part of our household activities so a custom dashboard is there called foodhq that lives in the sidebar for quick and easy access it's got stuff like a pantry manager recipes groceries tips and tricks cooking videos that I've saved

Etc so everything house hold them food related all lives in that part of our notion workspace and the reason it's separate is it's such a different context that I would use and access that information I'm not usually accessing household stuff during the weekday when I'm doing work stuff and vice versa I don't really need access to those sorts of things while I'm day-to-day getting my work done so those contacts can be very separate I don't need to worry about relations between those different databases it's pretty rare that I need information to overlap between those different

contexts so we've got personal areas we've got shared areas and then we have Team areas which we basically refer to as departments so we have a database called departments which essentially represents our team areas so I kind of use departments and areas interchangeably all projects are related to one of these departments each of these departments is basically a unique dashboard that displays all of the projects actions resources Etc related to this department we can also include any unique Source databases so one example would be our marketing and sales page is a dashboard that has the

content database featured front and center it has links to a Media Kit marketing analytics case studies Etc so how we feature and design the marketing and sales page it's going to look different than another department that doesn't need that same data if we open the client services department that's going to feature the people database at the top or a Consulting pipeline quick links to our Consulting offer pages every single Department page is designed to optimize for the most frequently performed workflows in the most access resources within that department so as I mentioned before for resources

we don't just see resources as topics of Interest the way it's explained in the para book but it's more a team knowledge base for all of our reference materials research notes ideas assets swipe files and even people anything that we reference as examples and inspiration gets collected in one of the key databases in that section now for the most part the library is the catch-all database for pretty much everything that we're saving as reference so unless it's something specific like a quote that I want to save or a swipe file pretty much it almost always

goes into the library by streamlining your workspace into a few core databases you make it easier to relate information together so for example projects database is connected to the library that means every project can quickly and easily reference things that you've saved to the library if you have 10 different resource databases you're going to need a number of different connections to the project it gets harder to maintain all of that so the more databases you have the more likely you are to struggle to answer the question where do I save this so for us Library

creates this catch-all database that most things can get saved to and that is seen as a resource or a reference that supports our projects the archives part of Pera is actually really straightforward projects get archived when they're no longer being worked on and you do that by changing the project status to Archive there's no need to move the project into a different folder there's no need for archive specific folders it's just so easy to change a project status to Archive and then all of that historical context related to the project gets saved and can be

referenced later easily one of the reasons that historical context can be really helpful is if you do similar projects over and over again it's really nice to go back to Old projects and reference previous actions time estimates how many calls were done Etc and it can help improve your estimation of future projects so this is the para adaptation that's worked for our workspace for quite a few years I haven't made a ton of major changes to the structure in a very very long time so as an advanced user I'm able to carefully mix you know

private and share data across different databases it's not necessarily the best or only way to set things up I wrote a more in-depth article about this with some screenshots you can read it on the notion Mastery blog and if you have questions about it post your questions below notion is powerful but it has its quirks and it requires a lot of know-how in order to apply para effectively especially if you are mixing personal and private information with Team shared information making things feel simple and easy to use a notion from a workflow perspective is complex

Notions features and functionality mean endless opportunities and customization when it comes to how you structure your data but if you don't have experience with systems design user interface design or user experience design it's really easy to make a mess of things this is one of the many reasons that I created notion Mastery because it's not just about mastering the tool but it's about developing systems thinking and organizational principles that influence the way that you work so if you want to become a more thoughtful designer of your daily workflows and how you move through notion definitely

check out the course we'd love to have you in there and of course if you want to learn more about Thiago Forte's work you can check out his new book The para method or check out his online course building a second brain I know Thiago wrote the book and and sort of developed the method with the intention that it's meant to be flexible so don't be afraid to adapt it to your needs take what works and leave the rest hope you enjoyed this video if you do have specific questions about how I apply para or

how you might approach something in notion definitely drop it in the comments below I'd love to hear it thanks so much for watching and I will see you next time