Methods
PARA, Zettelkasten, and CODE. Three influential note-taking methods, side by side. What each one is, who created it, who it is for, and how to apply it in a second brain on macOS.
Three methods
Each method targets a different problem. They are compatible. Most mature users converge on a hybrid.
Organization
By Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain (2022).
Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives. Tiago Forte's organization system reduces the question of "where does this go" from twenty folder choices to one of four buckets, organized by actionability rather than topic.
Read more →Thinking system
By Niklas Luhmann, German sociologist, 1927 to 1998.
Niklas Luhmann wrote more than seventy books and four hundred papers by writing one idea at a time, on one card at a time, and linking each card to the ones that came before. The method survives because it was right.
Read more →Workflow
By Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain (2022).
Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. Tiago Forte's workflow for turning what you save into what you ship. The other half of Building a Second Brain, designed to sit on top of PARA.
Read more →How to choose
The three methods on this page solve different problems. Treating them as interchangeable is the single most common mistake new readers make.
PARA is an organization system. It answers the question "where does this go" by offering four buckets sorted by actionability: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives. If your folders are a mess, your Drive is a graveyard, or you have the same document in six places, PARA is the right starting method.
Zettelkasten is a thinking system. It answers the question "how do I build knowledge over time" by enforcing three rules: one idea per note, your own words, explicit links to other notes. If your reading does not turn into ideas you can use, or if you want your past thinking to participate in your present work, Zettelkasten is the method to learn.
CODE is a workflow. It answers the question "what is the full lifecycle from saving information to producing output" with a four-step loop: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. PARA fits inside the Organize step. CODE is the broader frame that ties capture, processing, and creative output together. If you have a system but it does not lead to shipped work, CODE shows you where the cycle breaks.
The pragmatic answer for most people: start with whichever method fixes the loudest problem in your current setup. Add the others as you grow into them. Mindly is built to support all three without forcing a specific choice; the method-specific pages explain how each one maps to the app.
Common questions
It depends on what is breaking. If your files and notes are scattered and you cannot find anything, start with PARA. If your reading does not turn into thinking that lasts, learn Zettelkasten. If you have both problems and want a workflow that ties everything together, CODE wraps PARA and adds the steps for distillation and output. Most users converge on a hybrid over time.
Yes, and many people do. PARA and CODE were designed together by Tiago Forte to work as a unit (PARA is the Organize step of CODE). Zettelkasten can run inside any of PARA's buckets as the style of writing notes. A common mature setup is "PARA for the files, Zettelkasten for the thinking, CODE as the workflow that drives both".
All three. Mindly's Spaces map to PARA's top-level buckets. The mind map and AI-assisted linking implement the network model of Zettelkasten. Quick Capture, AI summaries, and the Notes Editor cover the four CODE steps. Each method page on this site explains the mapping in detail.
No. The method pages on this site give you the working knowledge directly. Tiago Forte's book is the canonical text for PARA and CODE; Sönke Ahrens' "How to Take Smart Notes" is the canonical modern text for Zettelkasten. Reading either deepens the understanding, but the pages here are enough to get started.
The structure of each method is simple enough to absorb in under an hour. Applying it consistently takes weeks of practice. Feeling the compounding benefit (especially with Zettelkasten) takes months. The good news: there is no "perfect" implementation; doing 80 percent of the method beats doing 100 percent of nothing.
Get started
Free for macOS. PARA, Zettelkasten, and CODE all supported out of the box.