Let’s talk about PARA – the organizational system that might just save your sales career from the hellscape of missed opportunities and forgotten follow-ups.
P = Projects
A = Areas
R = Resources
A = Archives
Today we’re laser-focused on P: Projects. AKA where the actual money happens.
These are your active deals with deadlines. The stuff that pays your mortgage. Enterprise pitch due Friday? Project. QBR presentation? Project. That creative follow-up to the prospect who’s ghosting you? Yep, project.
I used to have these scattered across my brain, CRM, notes app, and random spreadsheets. Now? One place. Magical.
Here’s the brutal truth: if you can’t identify your active projects, you’re basically throwing darts blindfolded at your quota while your manager watches in horror.
Projects are finite. They have deadlines. They produce outcomes. They PUT MONEY IN YOUR POCKET.
Examples:
“Generate 12 top-of-the-funnel opportunities by end of Q2” – that’s a project.
“General prospecting” – that’s not a project, that’s just you pretending to work.
The magic of isolating your projects is clarity. When you separate the “must do now to get paid” from the “would be nice someday” stuff, life gets remarkably simple.
Try this: List every single thing you’re working on. Now ruthlessly categorize. If it doesn’t have a deadline and doesn’t directly lead to revenue – it’s not a project. Move it to Areas, Resources, or Archives.
You should end up with a couple of ACTUAL projects. If you have 35, you’re lying to yourself about what you can accomplish, and that commission check is going to reflect it.
Remember: Projects expire. They succeed or fail. Then you archive them and move on. Like that prospect who ghosted you after 3 meetings – it’s time to let them go to the archive, friend.
Now go find your actual projects and make some money. Your mortgage doesn’t accept “I was really organized with my Archives folder” as payment.
