Permaculture Zones of Use are the way to go during the design process of your property, as well used as a management tool. They directly aid our efforts by offering simple, but effective logic to the positioning of design elements in the whole system.
It’s based on distance from the dwelling place (ex. house), how often you would have to check the areas (veggie gardens, chickens, food forest…..just to mention a few) and how long you would have to work on it. Makes all the sense in the world if you wish to be efficient and obtain optimal results as you work at the elements you chose to have in your design.
In this article from Permaculture Research Institute, you find a great description on what each Zone means and why do they matter.