Methods
The Methods
That Actually Work
PARA, Zettelkasten, CODE, progressive summarization, evergreen notes, and more. The 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.
Eight methods
Pick The One That Fixes What Is Breaking
Each method targets a different problem. They are compatible. Most mature users converge on a hybrid.
Organization
PARA Method
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 methodThinking system
Zettelkasten Method
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 methodWorkflow
CODE Method
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 methodDistillation
Progressive Summarization
By Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain (2022).
A layered technique for distilling what you save. Each time you revisit a note, you compress it one layer further: bold the best passages, highlight the best of the bold, then summarize in your own words, so future-you can grasp the note at a glance without losing the detail underneath.
Read methodWriting practice
Evergreen Notes
By Andy Matuschak, researcher and interface designer.
Notes written and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate across projects and years. Andy Matuschak's answer to transient meeting and lecture notes: one concept per note, organized by concept rather than by source, densely linked, with titles that read like claims.
Read methodLiving notes
The Digital Garden
By Mark Bernstein, metaphor from "Hypertext Gardens" (1998).
A digital garden is a collection of evolving notes, tended and revised over time the way a gardener tends plants, organized by topic and links rather than by date, and kept as living documents rather than finished posts. The metaphor dates to 1998, the modern movement grew around 2020, and the appeal is that notes get to stay alive.
Read methodNote discipline
Atomic Notes
By Niklas Luhmann and Andy Matuschak, Zettelkasten tradition, restated for the modern era.
An atomic note contains exactly one idea, small enough to link, reference, and reuse on its own. The discipline runs from Niklas Luhmann's slip box to Andy Matuschak's evergreen-notes principles, and the interesting question in 2026 is not whether it works but when it is still required.
Read methodCapture habit
Interstitial Journaling
By Tony Stubblebine, introduced the technique in 2017.
Interstitial journaling is the practice of writing a brief timestamped note in the gaps between tasks: what you just finished, how it went, and what you intend to do next. Tony Stubblebine introduced the technique in 2017, and it costs a minute an hour at most.
Read method
How to choose
The Right Method Depends On What Is Breaking
The 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.
Progressive summarization and evergreen notes are refinement practices. They answer the question "how do notes stay useful over years": progressive summarization by distilling a note further each time you touch it, evergreen notes by writing atomic, densely linked notes that accumulate across projects. Both sit naturally on top of any of the three systems above, as do the newer additions to this page: digital gardens for tending notes that evolve over years, atomic notes as the unit that makes linking work, and interstitial journaling for the moments between tasks.
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 of them without forcing a specific choice; the method-specific pages explain how each one maps to the app.
Common questions
Methods, Answered
Which note-taking method is best for me?
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.
Can I use more than one method at once?
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".
Which methods does Mindly support?
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.
Do I need to read Building a Second Brain to use these methods?
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.
How long does it take to learn one of these methods?
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.
Pick A Method.
Run It Inside Mindly
Free for macOS. PARA, Zettelkasten, and CODE all supported out of the box.