Hey :) 

A couple of years ago, I was pretty frustrated with how I was taking notes.

I used index cards.
Post-it notes.
Yellow legal pads were actually my favourite. Yellow legal pads and a thick Sharpie Pro. That was my setup.

That’s how I took notes on calls, ideas, client stuff — everything.

The problem wasn’t taking the notes.
The problem was after.

I’d look at the pile and it was just chaos. Stacks of cards. Pads half-used. Notes everywhere. I was also trying to use Notion at the same time, but I didn’t really have a workflow for note-taking or note retrieval. Things were disorganised, and I didn’t fully realise it at the time, but I just didn’t have a system.

Everything existed — I just couldn’t find it again.

I’m pretty sure it was around Christmas 2023 that I bought myself a reMarkable as a Christmas gift.

Around the same time — I don’t know how — I also came across The PARA Method by Tiago Forte.

Those two things landed together.

One single notepad for everything — every project, every task, every client — with the ability to have hundreds of notebooks inside it. And alongside that, a simple system for organising all of it.

Recently, I picked up The PARA Method again. I bought it on Kindle — it was something like £1.99 on offer — and I thought, you know what, it’s been a few years since I last looked at this. I wonder if there’s anything I’ve missed, anything I could tighten up, or anything that’s slipped over time.

So I went back through it.

There were a few optimisations. I did a kind of project overview — how many projects do I actually have right now? How clean is this? Where am I being a bit lazy? And there were a few things I tightened up, which was useful.

But the more interesting realisation was this: I haven’t deviated from the PARA Method at all since I first implemented it.

That feels worth reflecting on.

I put a system in place a few years ago…and I’ve kept it.

If you don’t know PARA, it’s just an acronym:

That’s it.

The reason it works so well for me is that it’s platform-agnostic.

For example:

Not everything is mirrored or synced perfectly — that’s not the point.

The point is: I always know where things go.

And that solves the biggest problem immediately.

“Where’s that thing?”
“Where did I put that?”
“I know I wrote that down somewhere…”

That problem just disappears.

You don’t need perfection. You don’t need a complicated workflow. You just need a place things belong.

That’s also why I like this system more than a lot of traditional productivity methods. I used David Allen’s Getting Things Done in my early twenties and I loved it at the time — but it’s a lot. It’s basically a flowchart. Too complicated.

PARA feels like it was designed for busy people who don’t want another job managing their system.

What I like about it is how simple it stays.

It doesn’t require perfection.
It doesn’t require constant maintenance.
It doesn’t turn organisation into a hobby.

I don’t want to spend hours organising stuff. I don’t want to introduce complexity into my work. I want to worry less, not more.

I just want it to work.

And PARA does.

That’s why I recommend the book.

It’s short. It’s more like a handbook than a “productivity book”. You really only need the first half to get it. You can install the system as you’re reading it.

If you’re feeling disorganised, if everything feels like it’s everywhere, if you’re collaborating with other people and constantly asking “where’s that document?” or “where’s that file you mentioned?” — this solves that problem.

And it does it without adding another thing to your to-do list.

That’s the real win for me.

🗣️ 👀

Chris.