Okay so last week I told you about my favorite paper planner, this week I am going to review Trello, one of my favorite apps. It is an incredibly simple way to organize your thoughts and to-dos, yet very flexible, and very useful as it synchronizes across computers, phones, and tablets. Plus it is free!
There are just three simple concepts in Trello — the board, the list, and the card. They are basically comparable to a blank sheet of paper (board) with columns drawn on it (list) and post-it notes (cards) that you move from list to list. This system is based on the personal Kanban board, which you can learn more about it here.
Back to Trello. When you open up Trello, you are greeted by a list of all of your boards. Here are mine:
You can create a board for anything you have rattling around in your head that needs to be organized or get done. I have a schedule board, which I manually sync with my planner in the mornings, several work-related boards, and a bucket list board.
Then, on each board, you create lists, and within each list, cards. Here is an example:
In case you are interested in my lists, the first list is “inbox”, and this is where I put cards when I don’t have time to think about which list they belong to. It is also where Evernote (discussed in next post!) puts the cards I send to Trello.
The second list is my “big three” — every night on my iPad I’ll pick the three things I want to do the next day, and move them to that list. My planner always sits by my computer, so the next morning I”ll sync up my planner and Trello.
The third list is my “Little List” which is tasks that take 10 minutes or less. I just do them whenever I have a few minutes. I can view Trello from my phone so if I am waiting in line someplace I can usually check this list and knock something off of it.
The 4th list is Important and Urgent (time sensitive), my top priorities for the week. The 5th list is Important and Not Urgent. AS a small business owner, these are the tasks that will fall by the wayside if I don’t make a point to work on them little by little. Hopefully my 2014 taxes will be off of the list well before April!.
The 6th list is stuff to delegate, and the 7th list is my list of completed cards. Every month I archive this list and then I have a list of what the heck I do with my time every month.
Trello is completely flexible. I can change the name of lists, I can remove lists, I can add lists whenever I like.
There are a few other things I really like about this system:
1. You can drag the cards from list to list within a board. So on my schedule board, if I have something in my “urgent and important” list, I can move it to my “big-three-of-the-day” list. And when it is finished, I can move it to my “Jan monthly done” list.
2. You can archive your lists. So at the end of January, I can archive my “Jan monthly done” list and create a “Feb monthly done” list.
3. You can even drag cards to different boards — like if I have a blog idea in my blog board, and I want it to be one of my big three projects of the day, I can drag it to my schedule board.
4. You can share your boards. So I can share my business boards with associates, or I can share my schedule board with my husband.
5. You can add a lot of information to the cards. For example, each card can have a checklist, or it can be given a due date, or shared with a colleague. You can attach a file, or a picture to a card too.
This is the basic outline of Trello. To learn more or sign up, you can check out this referral link! Trello
To read about my favorite planner, click here!
