Life areas planner
Areas: give your thoughts somewhere to belong
Group every note, map and task by the parts of life that matter to you, like Health, Family and Work: a life areas planner you can rename, recolour and make your own.
What you can do with Areas
- Everything can have an area. Notes, mind maps and tasks can all be given an area. Your notes and mind maps sit together in one list you can filter or group by area, and your to-do list works the same way.
- Eight areas to start with. Health, Family, Work, Growth, Social, Money, Hobbies and Misc, each with its own emoji and colour.
- Make them yours. Add an area, double-click one to rename it, pick from twelve colours, change its emoji, or drag the list into your own order.
- More than one area for anything. A note about joining a new gym can sit in both Family and Money. Anything without an area waits in the Inbox.
- Tasks carry their area. A task made from a mind map node takes the map's areas with it.
- Remove an area any time. What was in it moves to the Inbox, so nothing is lost.
Why I wanted a life areas planner I could make my own
A thought is easier to find when it can live in the parts of life that matter to me. Areas began as a practical way to group things (Work, Family, Health and the rest), but I wanted to change those names and colours to fit my own life. Classification should help me see a pattern, not force me into somebody else's filing cabinet.
Rachit, founder of Xale
The ideas behind Areas
The labels should fit the life
A way of sorting only helps if it matches the picture you already carry of your own life.
- Worth reading: Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988). Things are easy to use when their design matches the model people already have in their heads.
- The usual way: somebody else's filing cabinet, with their names on the drawers.
- In this release: eight areas to start with, every one of them renamed, recoloured, reordered or deleted as you like.
See every part of life, not just the loudest
When everything sits in one list, the most urgent part of life crowds out the rest.
- Worth reading: Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). Plan the week by the roles you play, so no single role quietly swallows the others.
- In this release: filter or group your notes, mind maps and to-do list by area, and see what's waiting in Family or Health as easily as in Work.
Further reading
- Tiago Forte, "The PARA Method: The Simple System for Organizing Your Digital Life in Seconds" (Forte Labs), on areas as the ongoing parts of life. fortelabs.com/blog/para
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