How a GTD Master Trainer Uses PARA

A GTD-style “second brain” setup is being tailored for flexibility by splitting notes into dedicated stacks for capture, action, projects, and priorities—then extending PARA with tagging to keep reference material usable as it grows. The core move is operational: incoming notes land in an inbox, actionable items get separated into an action-focused stack, ongoing work sits in a project stack, and anything not currently active is pushed into “someday/maybe” or archive. That structure is meant to keep attention aligned with what matters now, while still allowing quick reshuffling when priorities change.

The system’s stacks start with an inbox for unprocessed notes, described as roughly a week’s worth at a time. From there, “action support” holds single notes tied to an action rather than mixing them into project notebooks. Ongoing work lives in “project support,” organized by life areas using prefixes—so projects are grouped in a way that matches how the user mentally sorts responsibilities. When projects are not active but still potentially useful, they move into “someday/maybe.” Unlike the classic PARA approach where someday/maybe can become buried or “out of sight,” this separate stack is treated as a visible holding area that supports agility: projects can be pulled back into active circulation or swapped out quickly as circumstances shift.

Archive is reserved for completed projects that no longer demand attention. Two additional reference-oriented notebooks fill gaps in the PARA model. “Resources” is a catch-all for material that doesn’t currently receive attention, while a “notebook” is for research and reference collected over time, including content that benefits from progressive summarization. The key difference from a classic PARA implementation is how this reference layer is categorized. Instead of relying on a single stack limitation, the setup uses hash-prefixed tags to organize the resources notebook by “topic types” (mirroring PARA-style categories) and also adds entity tags for people, plus optional document-type tags (e.g., receipts or questions). This lets the same note be retrievable through multiple lenses—by author (such as Thiago Forte), by subject, or by the kind of artifact it represents.

Finally, a “slip box” is layered on top for writing support, drawing on the smart node system associated with Lumen. Insights pulled from reading are added into the slip box using a numbering hierarchy that builds relationships between nodes. The payoff is downstream: when writing time arrives, the network of linked insights is already assembled, reducing the upfront work of searching, organizing, and reconnecting ideas.

Overall, the system is presented as a stable, months-long workflow that has evolved from earlier versions—keeping PARA’s attention logic while adding tagging and a node-based slip box to make reference material and writing inputs more flexible and easier to reuse.