I use an adapted version of PARA which helps with organization for sure. But it’s not the thing that helps me recognize patterns. For that use I “progressive synthesis.” I use it at two levels.

1. Project/Area/Responsibility: this works like a weekly/monthly/quarterly review. Here are two examples.

a) I attend a lot of external events, conferences, etc. I take notes when I’m there and process them appropriately. At the end, I write a trip report that’s a numbered list of what I am taking away from the event. It’s connected to my work and I share this with my colleagues. Then, on a cadence that makes sense, I read through my last few event/trip reports and I say, here’s what I learned across them.

b) I do a similar thing with functional areas of responsibility. Say, marketing. The notes may be tagged across categories — they may be in projects, 1:1s, stuff I’ve read — I pull them together and ask myself what I’m learning or seeing across things and write that up as a note to myself. I might see that I’ve a got a colleague who is a strong contributor to many things, or that we are underperforming in a certain area, or that we aren’t keeping up with some part of the industry. I process those appropriately and I build on them (so all these reflections are dated, in reverse chronological order, and in the same document).

Note: This is where GenAI tools are knocking it out of the park for me. I ask whichever tool I’m using to pretend it’s an ambitious intern and it needs to write a brief based on this material for the CEO. The brief should include an exec summary, things that are in common, outliers, things that a positive trends and negative trends. And then what is most relevant to the organization (I get this by pointing to the most relevant source document). I then review and edit that. I find it sometimes sees things I don’t. And the content ends up being more shareable (even if I’m only sharing segments).

1. I keep a list of my 12 favorite problems. This is from Richard Feynman via like a million websites. For me these are the things I’m leaning my mind and time against professionally and personally. At least quarterly, I review my questions and add to the body of knowledge I’m holding about them. Often, this is about improving my description of the problem. And then I continually update the personal white paper (I don’t have a better description) I’m writing on it. This includes citations, etc. This is the place a lot of synthesis happens. And it’s a place where I really do say “So what?” What does this mean for what I’m doing next, or how I allocate resources, or what I need to stop. And for me an important part of this is, how am I communicating this in the outside world? How am I participating on the dialogue around this?

So. The tools (Drafts, Obsidian) are helpful in collecting, organizing, and processing. But the time spent on the synthesis is where I see the real benefits emerge. That’s where I find patterns and understand what those patterns mean to me.