How to Setup PARA in OneNote: Organize Your Life Like a Pro!

[@blackhannahofficial]

I'm the person who for years and years, purchased and depended on physical notebooks. Thanks to your channel I'm learning a weightless, paper-free way of organizing myself 🤗

[@magicmulder]

Just don’t forget backup. 😊

[@dream-bits]

but Sir, what about the great montblanc pen and a nice piece of paper? ;-)

[@blackhannahofficial]

@@dream-bits I still love paper, just not for organizing. I'm getting older, and quite frankly... I just can't keep up with paper like I use to.

[@j.e.madrigal]

@@dream-bitslove my Montblanc 149!

[@xtermigator]

Do you have a copy of your set up start

[@davidlee8019]

🎯 Key points for quick navigation: 00:00:00 *🧠 Introduction to PARA Framework* - PARA framework overview and its impact on productivity, - Definition of PARA components: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives. 00:02:19 *🛠️ Setting up PARA in OneNote* - Basic setup in OneNote using separate notebooks for each PARA component, - Recommendation to start with fresh notebooks dedicated to PARA. 00:03:47 *📂 Organizing with Section Groups* - Instructions for setting up Section Groups within OneNote notebooks for each PARA component, - Alternative setup for organizing PARA within a single notebook. 00:04:59 *🎨 Personalizing Notebooks* - Color-coding and adding icons to distinguish between work and personal notebooks, - Tips for using icons to increase clarity. 00:06:09 *🗂️ Creating Sections by PARA Component* - Detailed approach for creating individual sections within PARA components: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives, - Suggestion to tag project sections with icons for easy navigation. 00:07:18 *📚 Maintaining Resources and Areas* - Distinction between Areas (ongoing responsibilities) and Resources (shareable references), - Emphasis on adding sections only when actual content is available. 00:08:23 *📦 Using the Archive* - Moving completed projects, outdated resources, or irrelevant areas into the Archive notebook, - Importance of archiving entire sections to simplify future retrieval. 00:09:27 *🔄 Flexibility of Moving Notes* - Flexibility of shifting notes between active and archive folders as needs change, - Example of archiving and reactivating project notes based on activity level. 00:10:11 *📌 Optimizing OneNote Navigation* - Tips for pinning notebook navigation pane for seamless access to PARA sections, - Setting OneNote’s search function to include all notebooks for quick information retrieval. 00:10:38 *💼 Practical Benefits of PARA in OneNote* - Benefits of using PARA as a structured repository for ideas and resources, - Example of saving inspiration and insights for future use without cluttering active projects. Made with HARPA AI

[@pablotavaresbr]

Thank you very much for sharing your outline of the PARA method. Last week I saw Tiago Forte' videos and tried to implement it in my onenote repository, merging private items and work. I used it for 2 days and found it very terrible and not very productive. I undid and regrouped by macro subjects. But today, when you posted the video for the first time, it gave me an inspiration... Now that night I finished arranging the documents on ONENOTE... Next week, let's get to work to feel the usability... I am extremely grateful for you sharing your ideas and all your help. Hug from Brazil.

[@axeemx]

Hi, Its been 7 months since you have adopted this method. Would you mind sharing your experience?

[@JimmieZaccai]

Update??

[@jrgarciab]

Man, this channel is so good. This gentleman explains so well and his speaking cadence feels like he majored in broadcasting/communications. And the production quality is top notch. This video in particular is going to help a LOT of people. Thank you, sir.

[@vkrmsjn]

This confirmed that what I was doing with notebooks to implement PARA is correct. But thanks a lot. Its very useful.

[@Skitsfosho1]

Pure One Note Gold. It was the missing piece to my organization. Thank you!

[@elizabethwang2.0]

I just watched Tiago's videos on PARA. Then, I saw your videos! Perfect timing! Thanks, Andy!

[@ZenTeaNow]

Useful! I am migrating my PARA folders from Evernote to One Note and your video helps. My structure is similar so it gives me confidence.

[@TheWid]

Been doing PARA on OneNote for over a year now, but your video here gave me lots of tips e.g. using icons, capitalising and pinning. Thanks a heap!

[@Jasonmilei-ri1ob]

I love OneNote and I’m glad for every Tipp to organize it’s better. I’m an engineer and it’s sometimes very hard to sort all these information in an practical way. We often have new trainings with organizations methods but the trainers never can really explain how the real life workflow would look like

[@oandre]

Andy, I've been following your videos for a while now. My favorites are One Note, and although I've been using the program forever, thanks to Andy I learned some very practical tricks. I'm Portuguese and I didn't know Tiago Forte, and your demonstration of the PARA method in One Note was fantastic and made me research Tiago and his methods. Keep up the good work.

[@bellmusic3702]

Very helpful! I have so many paper note books of information I knew it was time to go digital but I didn't know where to start. Now I feel motivated and this the combination of PARA and One Note will be a killer combo!

[@erniehayden]

Nicely done, Andy! I am a "Tiago" follower and set up my PARA in OneNote by using a "leader" for Responsibilities (RESP) and References (REF) before each title. Overall, though, your video will be immediately of interest to the Windows OneNote users in Tiago's Second Brain following.

[@dream-bits]

Sir can you tell me more about your method? This sounds very interesting.

[@alejandrovalencia4869]

Great to see the PARA system here

[@debracox9277]

Excellent video. Thank you! I just finished The PARA method. Already setting up my onenote. So helpful to see your concrete examples!

[@isalarda]

Very straight forward. Exactly what i needed.. Thank you for sharing, Sir..

[@regrr1774]

Thank you! I've been waiting for this. I learned and got to organize my One Note (after 3 years of usage!) for the first time because of your tutorials. I tried watching Tiago's and other youtubers' videos on how to do PARA but I couldn't figure out how to make sense of it in One Note. Your explanation is giving me hope to try the PARA method once more. 🤞

[@cleeveharmony402]

Thanks for this Andy. Ive been using ON for some time, but just picked up on PARA recently. I'd be really interested in seeing how you actually use PARA from day to day.

[@BennyurenaVMPGlobal]

Thank you so much, I've been waiting to see someone structure PARA in OneNote, you nailed it brother !

[@AndyPark365]

Thanks Benny!

[@suzywest7119]

Thank you for this! I just read Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and was trying to figure out how I wanted to incorporate PARA into the OneNote system I use. Love how you set up PARA and will use your tips!

[@Halfhoff]

Really helpful. I love PARA but I’m left at work with Office Apps only so I’m trying to expand my knowledge of OneNote. Thanks!

[@jasonchapman6318]

Really good video. I haven't seen the para method, but I do have thousands of pages in a couple of notebooks.

[@annebogardus4878]

This was so helpful! I love the PARA concept but have been struggling with how to implement it. Thanks for the clear guide on how it works in OneNote. 😀

[@MiamiHeat872]

This might help you looking at PARA from another angle: 1. PROJECTS: just a higher level way or organizing a lot of related tasks into groups 2. AREAS: categorizing everything in your life by responsibilities, obligations, or commitments 3. RESOURCES: your knowledge library on topics, interests, skills, or idea collections

[@chaskinsnc]

Thanks For the video. I really want to do PARA in apple notes but I am a windows user at work. In your multi notebook method in Onenote, haw can you have a unified inbox or quick note for sorting?

[@lofigueroa]

Excellent video and explanation of each area of the system! 😊

[@altruologist]

Thank you so much for sharing this. The pace of your presentation is excellent and very easy to follow. The timing was great for me after deciding to migrate from another note taking/knowledge software.

[@timochey]

Awesome video!! Do you track goals (from daily to long-term) in here? IF so how do you do it?

[@sherrillstrassburg9157]

Thank you for this Andy. I am now setting up my work and personal notebooks with this method! You've explained it well! I am curious, though, where would you put notes from different meetings that you attend for work?

[@JimmieZaccai]

Hey Andie, great video. Question.. For Study Notes what area would this fit in for the PARA onenote setup?

[@aboliIII]

I've been loving your stuff, Andy! It's really helped me build a structure to hopefully set me up for success on the new job frontier. I've watched many of your Outlook, To Do and OneNote videos including this one. Two questions: 1) Do you use the categories in Outlook to help manage your Outlook/To Do tasks? If so what is your system? I assume it's not PARA... 2) I have an inbox set up for each PARA section in OneNote. In general, what is your criteria for when to send Outlook emails over from Outlook to MS Onenote? Right now I typically either archive unimportant emails in a MS Outlook archive folder OR create a task within MS Outlook that syncs to To Do. Any tips there?

[@richcastellano5707]

Excellent video, clear, consice and easy to follow. Because of your video I started using PARA with OneNote and it's eliminated a lot of paper off my desk. I just started seeing more about MS Loop...have you considered making a video on using PARA with Loop? Thanks!

[@jayin2002]

Where in Onenote should I save txt based ebook contents or my own summaries of the books? What about tons of my own IDs and passwords?

[@ybarrett2405]

So very clearly explained! Thank you very much😊

[@alexanderulyev4651]

Thanks for the guide, I appreciate it.

[@ThePharaohsCat]

Great stuff Andy. Recently found your channel as reviewing my Obsidian setup and considering returning to OneNote. Have used a form of PARA for years in GTD method. So maybe an Inbox and Archives is similar. And my individual projects would labelled/foldered under Projects. Stuff in between I never properly categorized. They'd be in Inbox, Archived or deleted.

[@alc2672]

This was a great way to represent Home and Work together using the PARA method - I do a lot of handwritten notes for work so OneNote being the main source for that just brings this together nicely. What do you use as a task manager through this process? Microsoft To Do, Things3, Reminders?

[@enicode]

Where would you put inactive (to be done) projects? What about delegated tasks? Are they also represented as projects?

[@j2mccoy]

Great video Andy...thanks. I've been looking for someone to illustrate the PARA method in OneNote. I've been trying to make it work in Notion, but always want to come back to OneNote for its simplicity. Was hoping you could do a video on how to manage the differences between OneNote Desktop, to mobile phone to tablet. This is my only frustration with OneNote and one of the reasons I tried to move to Notion...because of its UI consistency between devices. Any input would be appreciated.

[@KetniphaS]

Thank you. useful example

[@hdevere1]

Well done, thank you for doing this so succinctly too

[@MichaelToub]

Great Video!

[@sobaksobak4185]

This is helpful and practical, thank you! I am trying to adopt using an icon for each project name but I can’t seem to change the font to Webdings for the one character in the section name? Or how else to do it?

[@RajmahendraR]

Just a thought in Archive i can also create a folders of PAR in that so when move from on particular folder I can put them same in Archive folder also right it also give me grouping in A folder.

[@joewhite121]

Excellent video. Thanks

[@sergiojohnson1903]

Pure gold and would work in MS Loop

Thank you for very interesting video! Which verstion of the OneNote are you using here. Everything looks different in my OneNote for Windows 10. Thanks i nadvance for the info!

[@eclipsenow5431]

My main problem with Onenote is appearance on phone. How do I disable all horizontal scrolling in Onenote so that the text just wraps around on my phone? Other notes apps (like Notion) can have big wide pages on the PC but then when synced to the phone just text wrap automatically around the size of the phone. I know some people want the OPTION of a great big drawing space on their phone - and spend a minute scrolling horizontally - but I'm only using this for Admin and passwords and stuff when out and about. I just want stable reading as I scan down the page - and don’t want it to wobble side to side like it’s drunk! Are there any answers? The Microsoft forum responses to this issue are not encouraging.

[@annehunerbein9851]

Thank you for this! Do you also still use your OneNote Bullet Journal and is it incorporated in this system?

[@ChandreshShah]

Andy, what do you use as your Task Manager? Tiago recommends setting up Task Manager and Notes app (Onenote in our case) to be setup in an identical way.

[@bretwalder]

I add an !Inbox Notebook to PARA to send Material before I place notes in the system. A kind of holding area.

[@AndyPark365]

Yes. I have the same, except my inbox is setup as section within my AREAs notebook. 😀

[@6Ligma]

Thanks, the audio is working fine now on this video (it's coming from both ears). Just one question : yesterday I tried implementing PARA in my Onenote. Before, I had a notebook dedicated for "journaling" that had multiple sections for different years (2019-2020-2021) . Now that I've moved to PARA, that whole notebook should become a single section in "areas" notebook.right? How do I go about and implement "year sections (2019-2022)" in this? Should I make each year a single page?

[@6Ligma]

@@bjorn6530 oh that's a genius plan, thanks for sharing.... Yeah, I'm like this too, I rarely go back and read back my journals. But one thing that I did is that I made a dedicated page in my journal for "super important thing that happened or things that I shouldn't forget". Reading that page is like reading the essence of that year's journal. Thank you again for the tip

[@AndyPark365]

@6Ligma - You might find this video interesting. It's an interview between Ryder Carroll (The Bullet Journal) and Tiago Forte (BASB). Here's the timestamp where they talk about journaling vs. note taking. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eou5komXq52ffdE

[@adilahumad]

Can you please show how to set up visually appealing page for different things including to-dos and to follow up section.

[@thejulesfather]

excellent work. very helpful

[@Metzanine]

Nice. Would you consider using Loop for this purpose?

[@glennbyerly4279]

1. I had never heard of PARA, so thanks for preparing this video. It's quite interesting and should help me to restructure my voluminous set of notes in OneNote. 2. What software did you use to create the various graphics/slides within the video.

[@AndyPark365]

Thanks. For the various graphics and illustrations in the video, I used a combination of Camtasia, Davinci Resolve, and PowerPoint.

[@loanstofit]

Great tips!

[@athithyaparamesh8251]

My OneNote is up-to-date but the UI seems to be old. Any idea?

[@bajangsekacang]

Thanks Andy you give me how to create my "second brain" via note book

[@chille006]

Thank you! This is REALLY helpful. I've been watching videos for PARA and trying to design this with OneNote. Do you have an overview on what you keep in your Inbox tab? Is this a to-do list for the project?

[@AndyPark365]

Hi - it's a temporary holding place. If I want to capture a quick note or web clip and not sure where I want to save it, I put it in my inbox. Then when I have time, I will go through and make thoughtful decision on where to file them, or I may even decide to delete them if the idea no longer seems interesting.

[@DINU_R]

Does it work with MacBook Onenote

[@paulgullas]

I think I'm going to start implementing this method to organize a lot of my current notebooks. But I may still keep several different "Resources" notebooks dedicated to specific topics instead of cramming them all into a single one. I would create corresponding Archive notebooks for each as I need them. Thoughts?

[@dream-bits]

thats an interesting approach Sir.

[@matthewqtran1318]

yeah, i feel like i need to organize that way as well. basically adding in another layer to help organize things. for examples AREAS as a section doesnt give me the immediate overview when i open up one note. thanks for the idea.

[@AndroLee]

Great video! But if you use iOS OneNote like me, stick to one notebook and create PARA as 4 sections is a better idea. Because in iOS OneNote you can only view one notebook at a time. And It's not easy to jump to another notebook and manage data among them.

[@rezkifabilla-lw2dr]

someone please answer me, is there any good one note use as a teacher?❤

[@eduitguy9016]

Where would you put meeting notes?

[@glenlinard1952]

To the according project I guess

[@eduitguy9016]

@ what if the meeting isn’t a project. But a recurring team meeting or similar.

[@Skrattoune]

I'm a little bit confused... what PARA adds to the normal use of OneNote then? What you demonstrated in that video is just the basis of the basics of OneNote.

[@merinarajkarnikar5946]

Very helpful

[@railzip]

Thank you!!!

[@yw1971]

I prefer dividing the Notebooks to 'Home'. 'Works', Web-sources' & sometimes 'Projects'. No need for Section-groups: Pages & sections are enough. Up to 10 sections for Notebook

[@Kev_Manus]

Great breakdown and tips. This is the format I use also. + I have another folder for Capture & Collect. Its like my inbox and collects my notes, pics, ideas and then I can review them and put them to whichever folder they need to go to or delete them.

[@AndyPark365]

Yes, I have an "inbox" section setup within my AREAs notebook for the same purpose. 😀

[@kevenchen9060]

Do you save your personal notebook on your personal onedrive?

[@AndyPark365]

Yes, they are saved in my personal onedrive.

[@-Ambos-]

It could be so good but I think it's horrible that you can not use a layer more to separate notebooks in further folders and then sections with pages. Notebook - section-pages is just not enough depth for managing everything

[@avilang1]

Why are you not using notion as a second brain?

[@tumblingrosesstudio]

I don't see a difference between Resources and Archives....,... it's all reference material??

[@paulgullas]

I think the idea is that Resources is reference material that is more actively & currently useful in your life. Archive contains things that you don't really need anymore, but could still be useful in the future. Archives also would contain Archived Projects and Archived Areas.

[@phlweb1966]

You archive completed projects and areas that no longer apply to you. Reference is essentially an archive of research and reference material of things that interest you.

[@bretwalder]

You can also process any useful notes from a project into resources…that’s what makes it dynamic. Notes can move depending on their usefulness to current actions

[@tumblingrosesstudio]

@@paulgullas Ah, OK, I use my old reference material intermittently and am a digital hoarder/re-user! So I'll just use "Reference Material" as a category

[@MS-2000BB]

This is some serious High School level nonsense.