P.A.R.A. system and my Active Working system
Makzan’s Dispatch 2020 week 33
Hi friend,
Hope everyone stays safe.
A few months ago, I encountered a life management system called P.A.R.A. It is created by Tiago Forte who also creates the second brain productivity system.
Recently I’m reviewing my productivity workflow and I re-visit this P.A.R.A method. I found them very similar. Let me share how it works for me.
P.A.R.A. stands for Projects, Area of Responsibilities, Resources, and Archives.
Projects are the currently active projects. I use almost the same method called Active Working. I mentioned this in week 20. Tasks and deliverables are groups into folders, named with YYYY-MM-DD for sorting. All materials are put into those tiny project folders.
Areas of Responsibilities are the roles in our life. In Things, I had been using the role system for a decade. I have roles such as manager in the IT department, family, teaching. Role never ends. References that are related to roles are all insider here. For example, work meetings are stored inside the folder Areas / Manager at CPTTM.
Resources are the knowledge system. Anything that doesn’t belong to an actionable project but still worth storing is inside the resources folder. I put my personal knowledge system inside this resources folder. I put lessons learned, thoughts, ideas, learning notes here. And they are bi-directional linked.
Archives are projects that are done. There may also be a completed role of responsibilities event. I grouped them by areas and then years.
So this is my P.A.R.A. System, used for years before we have a name to call it. It works for me and hope that works for you too.
Links worth sharing
content-visibility: the new CSS property that boosts your rendering performance
Accessibility: Why label is important.
P.A.R.A. System introduced by Tiago Forte
https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/
Mozilla lays off 250 employees
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/
“The people who are included in the reduction are both true Mozillians, and professionals with high degrees of skill and expertise and commitment. This action is not in any way - not, not, not - a reflection on personal or professional qualities.”
Using Flexbox and text ellipsis together
https://leonardofaria.net/2020/07/18/using-flexbox-and-text-ellipsis-together/
Nice CSS technique for long text.
content-visibility: the new CSS property that boosts your rendering performance
https://web.dev/content-visibility/
Great for heavy pages.
More Control Over CSS Borders With background-image
https://css-tricks.com/more-control-over-css-borders-with-background-image/
Nice and subtle border effects.
Accessibility: Why label is important.
Quote of the week
“The ability to stay focused will be the superpower of the 21st century”
— Cal Newport
Until next week,
Thomas Mak
