OpenTube

My Entire File System in 9 Minutes

Tiago Forte

98,886 views

🧠 Get my official PARA Claude skill: https://bit.ly/4aeeczq
🧠 Get my free Beginner's Guide to Claude: https://bit.ly/basb-community

Most people drag files into AI one at a time. I stopped doing that. Everything I work on already lives in one place, so I can point AI straight at the part that matters.

In this video, I walk you through the whole thing: my local files, my personal drive, my work drive, and the shared drive my team lives in. Then I show you what that makes possible, like pointing AI at a single project, or a project plus the bigger area it belongs to.

The payoff is speed. When everything has a home, I can get through in minutes what used to take me hours.

✉️ Join my next AI Second Brain Cohort: bit.ly/3S5stbu

🎰 My team turned the PARA Method into a game, and it's way more fun than you think.
Play PARA Sort 👇
https://hidden-shore-420.higgsfield.gg/
Post your high score in the replies. Let's see who's really got their life sorted!

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Every folder on my computer
0:33 PARA shortcuts in my sidebar
0:48 The three local folders
1:04 My personal Google Drive
1:51 My individual work drive
2:10 The 17TB shared drive that only streams
3:42 Why every project lives in an area
4:26 Pointing AI at a project and its area
6:25 The combinations you can run
8:09 Get the free Claude skill

20 Comments

@TiagoForte Creator 3 months ago Pinned

🧠 Thanks for watching! Get my official PARA Claude skill: https://bit.ly/4aeeczq

🎰BTW My team turned the PARA Method into a game, and it's way more fun than you think. Play PARA Sort: https://hidden-shore-420.higgsfield.gg/
Post your high score in the replies. Let's see who's really got their life sorted :_Winking:

@leointeligêncIA 3 months ago

Most of your examples focus only on marketing. It would be helpful to broaden the scope and include everyday applications—not just specific projects like books or marketing campaigns. Those aren’t part of many people’s daily lives, so adding more variety would enrich your content and examples.

I’d like to see other approaches. The P.A.R.A. method has many more uses than just marketing, books, or launch campaigns. Show how to reuse resources, such as applying what you study to projects, or using it for self‑knowledge and financial analysis. There are countless ways to apply P.A.R.A.

Please include more everyday examples related to P.A.R.A.

@addhoardingprocrastinator 1 month ago

those most important thing about your system is it's consistency and your discipline with it. Very nice.

@devinhedge 3 months ago

1. I use and have used a similar approach as PARA for the larger portion of my 36 year career. I still adopted/shifted to a modified PARA approach because of the simplicity and reduced cognitive load for someone with ADHD/AuDHD.
2. I've also been using a similar approach for using the Claude desktop and Claude Code. What I learned is that Claude doesn't really read your folders, will tell you it did, and can lie to you in the most believable way until there is some point you are making that is NOT mainstream thinking, distinct from what an average person would arrive upon. It is in those moments you find out that Claude missed the nuance in your reference data and introduced something called "context drift". Context drift becomes amplified over three or more prompts until context collapse occurs.

@Last_day_events 3 months ago

Thank you for sharing this. Your folder structure is incredible. Learning how to use AI is a skill in itself. Absolutely amazing when you understand the potential.

@kumharebrothers7898 3 months ago

The presentation of video & animations is absolutely cinematic

@smartbuddy5031 3 months ago

Was thinking of your videos this afternoon

Thanks for being transparent Tiago. love from India

@smclark280 3 months ago

Wow - thank you for sharing! I've got to go back and check out the PARA method for my personal/home life! :)

@NicolasSchaII 10 days ago

Thx very useful

@AliGunerMD 3 months ago

Thanks for sharing.

@JaeyeokYoon 3 months ago

as you say at the beginning it’s not common, thank you for sharing

@phy6geniuxYTcreations 3 months ago

I bought your book about Second Brain, and it was still the best self-help book that I still use up to this day, for almost 4 years now (I read it last November 2022, and it transformed the way I work with my personal knowledge. Thank you, Tiago! Will use your PARA Claude skill! - your fan from PH

@TradeWithMomentumOptions 1 month ago

Note that when you give access to the folder and files and content I’m the files; your data / files are not on your own anymore they are now shared by Claude regardless what they claim

@TheSteinwolf 3 months ago

Ok, as some others mentioned, it's not easy to implement for „normal“, or let’s better say, private persons. So I adopted only a few parts. But my problem is, that I now have some folders that can fit the same files. For example insurances. Do I now put this in the folder Private, or House, or health insurance in Private and the rest in House, or to have them in the same place, do I have to create an extra folder where all the insurances get in? Or 3D printer things. Private, Hobby, Projects,…? Now I always end up searching, where I put them.

@elmiathewriter 3 months ago

How do you determine or plan the structure of the folders within each branch of PARA? Or did your folders emerge organically over time, as more relations and common themes became clear in all of your various files? I want to implement the PARA system for my messy files and notes, but don't really know where to go from beyond the starting point - like what to put in my Projects vs Areas vs Resources. I loved this insider look at your system!

@O.G.NickyScarfo 3 months ago

What about your file access protocol for Claude? Could be a cool vid topic 🤔. But do you give free reign to Claude your PARA folders? or only when you do specific tasks related to the relevant context folders?