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Why I Banned PARA From My Second Brain (And Why You May, Too)
The “P” in PKM stands for Personal…

PARA is the hot thing when it comes to building your second brain.
But if you’ve tried PARA and found that it just didn’t work for you, then you’re not alone.
Today, I will show you why I decided to ban PARA regarding my second brain.
Let’s dive into it.
The psychology behind PARA
PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive.
It’s not only a way to organize your notes but digital information (files) in general. In fact, Tiago Forte (the “PARA creator, if you will”) qualifies PARA as “A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information”.
As someone who has been struggling for years with messy desktops and hard drives, what I love about PARA is that Tiago kept his promise. PARA is versatile and works everywhere. From your mailbox, to your notes, and files on your computer…
This allows you to save a lot of mental bandwidth when searching for something because the taxonomy is the same all across the board.
But while this versatility is its biggest strength, it’s also its biggest weakness. Why? Because this versatility also comes with its limits.
How’s that?
Simply because you can never take full advantage of specific features like backlinks or tags. (Good luck tagging a file on dropbox.. or linking to a local note in Apple Notes!)
PARA works great with a strict folder structure. (Worth mentioning: Tiago was never a huge fan of tags.)
But that’s not the only drawback to PARA.
PARA hurts your creativity
Tiago has been heavily influenced by David Allen’s GTD methodology. In fact, GTD was one of the first courses he taught online.
So it’s not surprising to see David Allen’s footprint in Tiago Forte’s way of doing things. PARA is no different. Because PARA has been designed to be geared towards action ability.
In short, your notes are only as good as you’re going to do something with them. This…