I love Trello. I’m like the unofficial spokesperson!
If you’ve never heard of or used Trello, I highly recommend trying it out. It’s a free app that’s kind of like if Pinterest, Evernote and Wunderlist had a baby.
You can organize anything from projects, tasks, to-do lists, schedules and goals into boards. Each board then has lists that you can create cards under to drag around and organize.
I use Trello to organize every single project and website I run, but I also use it for a few other things that I’d love to share! Most people that try Trello don’t know where to start or how to use it. I’m hoping this blog post will guide you and inspire you to try different things on Trello and start taking control over your tasks and projects. It will also, hopefully, make you a much more productive entrepreneur and procrastinate a lot less.
Manage Projects
I use Trello first and foremost to organize and manage every single project and website I’m working on.
For example, every website has it’s own board. Within each board, I have lists: Content Calendar (to schedule blog posts), Site To Do (to organize tasks and ideas I have for my website), Marketing Plan Of Attack (to list tasks to help grow the site) and Blog Post Ideas (to quickly create cards for every idea I come up with for content, no matter where I am).
Under each list, I have cards. For example, for Blog Post Ideas, I might create a card like “Write about my favorite Ninja Turtle”. You can edit each card to make point form notes on what you’d like to talk about for that blog post.
Once you’ve researched the topic you want to create a blog post for, you can then move the card. The cool thing about Trello is the ability to drag and drop a card to any list in the board really quickly or even move a list or card from one board to another. So, once I feel like I’m ready to write about this topic, I’ll drag the Ninja Turtle card from “Blog Post Ideas” to my “Content Calendar” card. Here, I can edit the card and put a due date, which syncs up with my Google Calendar.
This way, I can start scheduling my content to keep myself accountable and put my websites and content in a nice rhythm which visitors love!
From here I can start throwing up tasks like marketing tasks to help grow my website or even site to dos like “update X page”.
I also use these boards for each project or website to collaborate. I can invite other Trello users to help manage certain boards. That way, if you’re working with a team, Trello becomes a powerful and awesome free tool to collab on website and project ideas really easily.
Set And Track Goals
I also use Trello to set up, create and track my goals from week to week, month to month and year to year. Here’s what my Goals 2015 board looks like:
As you can see, I have the following boards:
Goals For Week, Goals For Month, Goals For Year, Achieved, Wishlist
Here I can easily add all the things I want to accomplish for the year, form SMART goals, and as I want to achieve them, let’s say “Create online course teaching X”, I can move it from Goals For Year to Goals For Month when I’m ready to tackle it.
Once I complete a goal, I move the card to my Achieved list. This allows me to reflect and see everything I’ve accomplished for the year, as well as motivate myself.
The Wishlist List is simply my list for the things I’d like to buy or do this year. Sometimes I’ll include links to the event or Amazon product in the card to make it easily accessible when it’s time to do it or buy it.
Weekly To Do
Instead of using a traditional to do list app or a sticky note, I now use Trello to organize and set my weekly schedule. Since it syncs up with my Google Calendar and I put move tasks from other boards to my Weekly To Do board, it’s a seamless and logical transition for me that has been a huge key to my daily productivity.
So, I first have my Someday list, which all misc tasks or things I’d like to eventually get done, go under. Then I have a list for every day of the week. Here, I can easily drag around tasks that need to be done or move tasks from other lists, like my Goals board, to here. I will set the weekly to do usually Sunday night, and each night, I will double check the next day’s to do list and sort and schedule accordingly.
Have a conference you’re going to Friday? Create a card for it under Friday, at the address to the description, and put a Due Date on it for the time of the event so that it syncs up to your Google Calendar. Pretty sweet, right? No more clunky To Do list apps.
Idea Dump
Gone are the days when I need to find a pencil and paper every time I come up with a random idea. I now just whip out my phone. I used to do it in weird ways like texting myself the idea or waiting for Evernote to take ages to boot up and by the time it does, I lost my thought.
I have a board just for all my ideas. Every time something hits me, I load up Trello and quickly create a card for it.
More complex idea or thought? Create a list for it in your Idea Dump board and create cards for each smaller idea you have for this bigger idea or project you’d like to one day tackle.
Manage My Clients’ Projects
I also have a big board just for my web design business. Under this board, I create a list for each client that I’m presently working with. This way, I can create cards for each task that needs to be accomplished and edit the card descriptions if I need to add details, pictures or links.
I can also push or move each task to my Weekly To Do board and label them with colors that I will create for each client, so that at a glance, I can quickly see who’s project I am working on.
Take Control Of Your Productivity With Trello
Why do I do all this with Trello and suggest you do too? It keeps everything in one place, which means less apps I need to sync with one another and less apps I need to have and remember to use on my phone. Trello does it all for me.
If you need more resources to help you organize your life and projects, there are a ton of great books out there that go deeper on productivity. Blinkist takes popular productivity books, and condenses them into short and easy to digest written and audio summaries of all the best points. Skip the fluff and get the nuggets quickly from some of the best books out there on productivity. I highly recommend checking out Blinkist. I use it to consume several books a week, it saves me a lot of time and money.
What do you think? How do you use Trello? I’d love to read about it in the comments below so I can try and do the same with my Trello!
