A few years ago (a FAIR FEW years ago), John and I were drowning in 'to-do lists'.
We had just opened our home studio in Melbourne, so I was leaning on John a lot to help me keep things running effortlessly.
As time went on, we found that we needed lists for our lists. We had post-it notes of things to remember, whiteboards with scribbled out shopping lists and chores, random notes in our phones for the things that had to be added to the other lists.. we just had lots and lots of lists!
We sat down one night for a usual 'Date Night In' after the kids had gone to bed, and completely laid out our business plan, our life goals and all the things that had to be done in order to get to where we wanted to go.
I'd read about TRELLO and decided that it was exactly what we needed.
We needed something that..
Kept all our tasks in one place
Was easily accessible, regardless of whether we were out or at home
Easy to make adjustments
Could be viewed across a number of devices, to keep John and I on the same page, whether we were viewing on our phones in the store or on the computer at home
Wasn't too overwhelming for John! - a big one.. or he won't even bother
Was easy to use for all the aspects of our life - homeschool, photography, educational content, home maintenance, blogging and family management
Was either free, or didn't cost a small fortune!
TRELLO offered us all of these things!.. AND IT WAS FREE!!
Over the years of using TRELLO and the new family additions, new work ventures, new goals and priorities, we've found a way that helps us stay on track with all the things that make our life what it is.
Special events, work flow, homeschool tasks and activities, things that need to be purchased, whatever it is, we have a way of adding it to our board!
Let me break it down for you..
THIS IS A BOARD.
This specific board is named 'Erin Michele Thomson' - in the left-hand corner.
Your board consists of lists - here, I have them labelled 'URGENT', 'HIGH PRIORITY', 'LOW PRIORITY', 'IN PROGRESS..' and 'BRAIN DUMP'.
Within those lists, you have 'cards'.
THESE ARE CARDS.
You'll see that, in my 'HIGH PRIORITY' list, I have a 'card' that reminds me to do our 'Weekly Dropbox Upload'.
Underneath that, you'll see another card to remind me that it's Leigh's Birthday this week! - HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR TUESDAY LEIGH!
You'll notice the different coloured bars on each card.
THESE ARE LABELS.
You can personalise your 'labels' to whatever you like!
We use Orange for 'Homeschool' tasks, Red for 'Events' or special dates, Purple for 'Growth' tasks (things we need to do to GROW our business or enhance our life in one way or another, Light Blue for 'Maintain' tasks (tasks we do regularly to maintain our life and business - like regularly backing our files up in Dropbox), Light Green for 'Home Life' tasks (things like 'Buy new black shoes for John') and then we have Pink for 'Work' (which is the label we use for ALL work related tasks).
Now, the reason we have it set out like this isn't to make it pretty and pointlessly colour-coordinated.
There's a very real, very IMPORTANT reason for this..
it helps us create balance!!
I know, at a glance, when we have too many 'Work' tasks or too many 'Events' or places to be.
Balance is HARD. Regardless of what you do or how you live your life, balance is always going to be hard to work out.
For us though, we've found that TRELLO has helped us limit the unnecessary tasks that we put on ourselves.
It's helped us prioritise our time and see when something is beginning to take over our lives, BEFORE it happens!
Now, let me explain the names of each list..
Here, you have 'URGENT', 'HIGH PRIORITY' and 'LOW PRIORITY'.
Years ago, I used to have another list called 'NOT A PRIORITY'.. I'll talk about that soon.
The lists are super straight forward.
They allow for me to drag and drop a card from one list to the next, as the priority for that particular task changes.
In this image, you'll see that I have an 'IN PROGRESS..' list.
This list holds the cards for tasks that we've started but haven't yet completed.
All I've done is drag a card from one of my other lists (usually the 'URGENT' list) and dropped it into this list!
Then you'll notice my 'BRAIN DUMP' list.
This is my way of dealing with the constant list of things that pop into my head when I'm going to bed each night.
I'm sure we all have it. We lay down in bed and, all of a sudden, all the things we need to get done come flooding into our minds and we're already anxious about the day ahead.
Each night before I go to sleep, I start a card and just date it that day's date.
Notice the little checked box in the right-hand corner of that card? That means there's a checklist inside that card.
The 0/17 means that, of the 17 'items' in that checklist, 0 of them have been checked off.
When you click on the card, this will pop up.
You can see the entire checklist here.
As you can tell, I'm not super particular about what I put into my brain dump because, well, it's a dump!
I'm literally dumping every thought that runs into my head, onto a card.
It completely clears my mind and allows me to sleep without feeling like there's something I need to remember for the following day.
You can see that I put all sorts in here.
Things to remember..
Things to do..
Promises made 😬..
EVERYTHING!
Every morning, I have this little thing I call 'EIGHT BEFORE EIGHT'.. I'll go into that in another blog post one day.
But the idea is to get the important things done first - converting this checklist to actionable cards is one of those things.
You simply click on the ellipsis icon on each checklist task (like in the image below) and you can either 'Convert to Card' or 'Delete'.
As I'm running though my list, I think 'Does this REALLY need to be done?'
If it's a priority to have done, I will convert the item to a card.
If I feel like it was just a thought and, upon sleeping on it, it's not of any priority at all, I'll delete it!
DON'T FILL YOUR LIFE WITH TASKS THAT AREN'T IMPORTANT TO YOUR LIFE!
Remember how I mentioned how I used to have a 'NOT A PRIORITY' list?
What I would do is, instead of deleting tasks that weren't of priority, I'd add those items to 'NOT A PRIORITY' which just meant that I was adding several tasks, EVERY SINGLE DAY, that weren't important to my family and I, or wasn't going to help us GROW in one way or another!
We ditched that list and have been so much happier for it!!
We have various boards for various workflows and sections of our life.. but this is our main one.
I have my own board, John has his own board (which we can add things to when we need to off-load a task onto each other.
Our MOST IMPORTANT board, however, is our 'COMMUNICATION BOARD'.
It's personal, so I'm not going to share it, but it holds three lists;
'SHOPPING', 'JOHN and 'ERIN'.
In our 'SHOPPING' list, we add cards for the grocery store or the butcher - this means that we always know what the other needs, regardless of who's at the store.
The other lists are for John and I to have a constant line of communication with each other.
I add cards to John's list and he adds cards to mine.
Without getting too knee deep in our personal life, we add things like;
"The kids have had their iPads confiscated and can't have them back until tomorrow morning"
"Carter's appointment has been rescheduled"
"Havanah really wants to read a book to you when you get home from work"
"Session booked for next weekend"
"Can you book me in for a haircut next week?"
We mainly use it to ensure we're on the same page with EVERYTHING. We have access to TRELLO on both the computer and our phones through their app.
Whenever a new card is created, and the privacy is set so both John and I can see it, we receive notifications on all our devices to let us know that the other person has added something that we need to see.
You may wonder, why wouldn't you just send a text or call?
Well, in our experience, you can SAY something in a phone call and either the other person wasn't listening or didn't hear you.
You can TEXT something and it often gets forgotten. Hell! Sometimes I read an entire text message from people and forget it the second I put my phone down!
Adding these things to TRELLO means that it is already added to the system that we use to manage everything else. If we need to action a task, it just takes a click!
TRELLO has been so wonderful for our life and business!! I could never go without it!
If you use this system to manage your life, or work, we'd love to hear how you arrange your boards!
This blog post isn't sponsored by TRELLO and we receive absolutely nothing from TRELLO for telling you about them!
We've used this system for years, I talk about TRELLO to all of our 'EM Startup' students and I really hope you're able to implement and love it like we do!
