Sunday, August 9, 2020

How I Use Trello

Awhile back I asked on Twitter if anyone would be interested in hearing about how I use Trello. While this is aimed at making ADHD organization easier, this should still be useful for anyone looking at Trello.

This post is about what features I use. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel with explaining how all the settings work. Trello has good documentation on thier website. 

What is Trello? 
Very quickly, Trello is like a virtual bulletin board. Where you can create cards to hold information. The cards are organized within lists on the board. A user can have multiple boards. This can be for solo use or collaborative. 

When setting up a board I try to keep the purpose in mind when deciding how information is going to flow or live. How task oriented? What's the project scope? 

Examples: 
-When I was job searching each list was a step in the search process. Then each card was a specific job application, and I'd move the cards from one list to another. This follows the logic of a card being on a list based on where it is in a process. 
-For my job workload organization I do time based lists. I usually have each list cover a month worth of time. This can also work with Quarters. 
-I've got a Story board for writing and a general art board for ideas. Lists here are more topic based. Like setting ideas, muse prompting, or material type.

Trello Settings used:

This is under power ups, the calendar feature is something I use on most boards. Calendar or not all cards can have a due date. Due dates can send reminders. What I like about the calendar is that it can toggle from a list view to when things are due. This is a helpful view, and cards can be dropped and dragged on the calendar as needed, which updates their due dates. Note that they still stay in thier list. This is also more functional on the desktop web version than mobile app.

Lables are my next favorite feature. While cards live on lists they can have multiple labels for organizational purposes. For my job board this is the type of task. For my committee team board this is team role based. Both boards are time based lists. Labels show on the calendar and can be used when filtering a board. 

Email settings are another feature I use. Trello allows for card creation by email. This is under the email to board setting. Trello will generate a email address for the user and the board, which I then save as a contact in outlook. Email subject populates the card name while body will be the card description. And any attachments on the email will be uploaded to Trello.

Trello does have a personal paid version, thier Gold, which allows for more power ups per board. They also have a business class which gives more boards per team. What's covered in this post is available with the free version. 

A note on mobile, I have an Android phone and use the app in addition to desktop. The app can display push notifications when a due date is approaching. And I can use the "add card to Trello" option whenever there's a share button on my phone. 

1 comment:

M.J. Fifield said...

I use Trello as a virtual storyboard. It's a useful app, and I haven't even used most of the bells and whistles they offer.