Transcription
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, 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 a new note, 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 the link to the tweet and add that at the bottom of the note 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 note, 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, or 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 endpoint, 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.