PKM

PKM Systems — PARA, ACE, MOC, and Second Brain

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PKM Systems — PARA, ACE, MOC, and Second Brain

A reference for the personal knowledge management systems explored and compared.

PARA (Tiago Forte)

Projects / Areas / Resources / Archives

Organises by actionability, not topic:

BucketDefinitionExamples
ProjectsActive work with a deadline/outcome”Launch v2”, “Write report”
AreasOngoing responsibilities, no end dateHealth, Finance, Team
ResourcesReference material for future useArticles, notes, research
ArchivesCompleted or inactive items from the aboveOld projects, past resources

Key insight: same material lives in different buckets depending on current focus.

Second Brain / CODE Framework (Tiago Forte)

A trusted external digital system that frees your biological brain for thinking.

  • Capture — save anything potentially useful
  • Organise — put it where it will be used (PARA)
  • Distil — extract the essential; progressive summarisation
  • Express — turn notes into output (writing, decisions, projects)

MOCs — Maps of Content (Nick Milo)

An index note that links to related notes on a topic. Not a rigid hierarchy — a flexible, human-curated entry point.

  • MOCs are associative, not hierarchical
  • A note can appear in multiple MOCs
  • MOCs are similar to a knowledge graph node but human-readable

Example structure:

AI Tools MOC
  → LiteLLM setup
  → Claude Code config
  → MCP server building
  → Codex CLI

Similar to a knowledge graph in concept, but:

  • Knowledge graph = automated, relationship-based
  • MOC = curated, intent-based, written in natural language

ACE Framework (Nick Milo / LYT)

Atlas / Calendar / Efforts — replaces PARA’s folder structure with:

FolderContains
AtlasEvergreen knowledge: concepts, people, places, sources, statements
CalendarTime-stamped notes: daily journals, meeting notes, logs
EffortsActive work: on (active), simmering (slow), sleeping (paused), done

Plus a + inbox for fleeting/uncategorised captures.

ACE + PARA Hybrid

Commonly used together:

  • Use ACE folder structure (Atlas/Calendar/Efforts)
  • Apply PARA logic (actionability) inside Efforts
  • MOCs live in Atlas as navigational hubs

Meeting Note Flow

  1. Capture → + inbox or Calendar/notes/YYYY-MM-DD.md
  2. Process → extract action items → Efforts; extract knowledge → Atlas
  3. People notes → Atlas/people/name.md (if recurring contact)
  4. Decisions → Atlas concepts or linked from the Effort

Fleeting Notes — The + Inbox

A top-level + folder acts as a frictionless capture zone:

  • Anything can go in with zero organisation
  • Processed regularly (weekly/daily) into PARA/ACE destinations
  • Equivalent to GTD’s inbox

Key Distinction

Organise by actionability, not by topic. A research paper about “AI” is a Resource; “write AI blog post” is a Project.

Source

Conversations: “Understanding PARA” — 2026-05-12 (My AI Notebook project)

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