For a long time I thought PARA was silly but yesterday I looked at it again and thought, “This actually makes sense for me. And I’m already about 80% of the way there.”
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Then remember that the remaining 20% will take 80% of the effort. 
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As another GTDer, I put this methodology in practice, as well as the general concept of A-Z filing for general reference material. It has saved me tons of time on the backend finding things. Now, no system is perfect. I still find there are times one item could be filed in two different places. I still sometimes forget how I might’ve categorized some document on the front end when I filed it. That said, I have very few instances of having to scramble to find something. I can almost find anything in a couple clicks, and if worse comes to worse, search gets me to it.
Like many law firms, we use a numerical system for client/matter numbers in my office. That’s tough. After a case is closed, I can never remember the client/matter number. I can almost always remember Smith v. Jones.
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Nobody’s asked me, but all my notes in Obsidian are now in a slightly modified PARA (I added a Goals folder), and I find it refreshingly easy to work with. I’ve always preferred folders to tags.
I’m not sure how well this would work for client folders, though, the system seems better for notes and documentation. But I am thinking about it. The issue I have is that several recurring clients have Resources dedicated to them that aren’t always relevant, but useful 1-6 times a year. So I need those handy. But they belong in the client’s folder, not the Resources folder.
For me, PARA is very close, but I almost feel like some Projects need their own Project, Resource, and Archive subfolders, if you know what I mean.
Or perhaps I misunderstand what Areas are for; maybe I can stick all that into an area, but it seems fuzzy to me.
File management is hard I guess, and this is probably why the iPad has become so popular.
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I think of PARA more as a set of guidelines than strict rules.
Projects: That’s simple. A project has a conclusion state, a point where you say, “I’m done with that.” The sales pitch for the Spacely Sprockets deal, planning a conference agenda, etc.
Areas are ongoing. If you’re building an archive for work, your areas might be things like filling out human resources documents, benefits and such.
Archive. That’s simple too. Anything that’s no longer current from Projects and Areas, but that you do not want to delete, goes in the archive. Completed projects resources, last year’s company holiday schedule and benefits presentations, etc.
Reference: I’m a little hazy on that. Like you, I tend to store reference materials in the same buckets as the appropriate project or area. But that’s OK. PARA isn’t a set of laws that a person is required to follow.
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Yeah, my only real confusion with PARA are big projects with lots of little projects in them. Thus far I’ve just been creating multiple text files for each sub project (like a unique page in a website development project) and putting them in a directory inside my Projects folder. Instead of archiving completed sub-projects, they just stay in the directory until the whole thing is done, and then I’ll archive the whole directory.
There is also a little bit of a mental hurdle for me where I want projects to live inside Areas (like GTD), but that would send the entirety of PARA’s structure tumbling down, so I am trusting (and probably benefiting from that).
I think about this from my PMI background. In many cases I think of “areas” as “programs” – a related set of time-and-deliverable constrained projects whose collective outcome, as a program, satisfies goals or delivers benefits that no project on its own can delivery.
Katie
That’s fair. I have a bunch of areas that fall more traditionally in line with the definition of an open-ended grouping of related things (i.e. my own business or long-term repeat clients). There aren’t really specific or measurable goals in any area outside of the projects that come up, but those live in separate folders.