Questions about Chris’s reminders system
Hey Chris and Peonkun community! I’ve got some questions relating to the curation blog.
So, all reminders, besides the inbox, seem to be in the planner section?
Why isn’t the inbox a Smart Folder for reminders without tags? Though I have to say this causes some annoyances. when trying to add a reminder to anything other than the inbox, it disappears into the inbox. However, when you add a tag, it automatically returns to its original location in the planner section. Which is nice.
And on a similar front, why isn’t the planner just a Smart Folder for anything with a tag?
I also don’t understand the necessity of PARA all reminders have a tag. This leads me to think that every task isn’t supposed to be in the planner section. However, I do have some other smart folders in the PARA system, but they feel redundant because of the tags and search functionality.
P.S. Chris, thanks for all the articles and community building; it’s awesome. I found your context through a deep research from Claude, so it seems the AI SEO is good :) bit random, but I totally overhauled my second brain based on these articles. It was a fun process but with its challenges. If you are interested, I could forward the chat thread to you. You might see some interesting insights on a noob going through this brand for the first time.
Hey Gav Zam , great questions and thanks a lot for the kind words.
The Inbox is a normal list on purpose. I use it as my default capture area and brain dump. New reminders should land somewhere stable first, so I don’t lose the context too early.
That’s also why I sort manually. I don’t want every new task to instantly disappear into a Smart List just because a tag was added or missing. The manual step gives me one small moment to decide: What is this? Where does it belong? Is it actually relevant?
PARA is only used as Smart Folders in my setup. It is not where the main tasks “live”. The main working system is the Planner. PARA is more of a sorting and filtering layer on top of it, so I can quickly zoom out and see projects, areas, resources, or archived things when needed.
So yes, you are right that tags and search can do a lot of the work already. PARA is not strictly necessary. I use it because it gives the system a little more overview without moving the tasks away from the Planner.
For bigger projects, I usually create a copy of the Planner structure where only that specific project lives. That way the main Planner stays clean, but the project can still have its own focused planning space.
And yes, I’d love to see the Claude thread. That sounds really useful, especially to understand where the system feels clear and where it becomes confusing for someone setting it up for the first time.
Thanks again for sharing this. 🙏