How I Use Trello for Task and Project Management

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I use Trello along with Toodledo for task and project management.

My main software for Task Management is Toodledo.  It's a dumb name and it has a pretty clunky interface, but I honestly haven't been able to replace it because nothing else has quite the feature set that I need.  The most important thing Toodledo does for me is allow me to schedule future and repeating tasks in weird intervals -- like every 32 days or every 4th month.  I have a whole video on Toodledo if you are interested in how I use it.

So, Toodledo is essentially my main tickler system.  Every day I wake up to anywhere between 9 and 27 tasks for the day.  Some of them are super short -- like clearing out my voicemail box one time a week, some are longer -- like spending an hour a day doing YouTube video tasks.  But despite the fact that Toodledo does exactly what I need it to do -- it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles and it's not 3-dimensional or versatile enough to do full project planning with.  For that, I have started using Trello.

If you are not familiar with Trello at all, I have an overview video that discusses its history, how it works, and it’s great features.  In this video, I'll share how I use Trello in my life.

There are really five reasons I use Trello and I'll walk you through them and provide examples.

1 - Everyday tasks

I already told you that I use Toodledo to keep track of the things I need to get done every day, right?  Toodledo is great at reminding me what I need to do, but in terms of working through that list -- it blows.  Toodledo provides a list, but not a plan.  I want to be able to reorder the tasks manually in the order I plan to do them, but I can’t do that with Toodledo.  I sometimes create an agenda in Notability (you can see my video on that), but many times, if I have over 10 tasks to accomplish, I pull them into Trello, where I can manually sort them and then drag them over to the Done list once I've completed them.  I have a video coming out soon that walk through the process I use for this.

2 - Projects

Aside from the tasks that I have to do every day, I usually have a list of projects that I'd like to work on.  These are not projects that need immediate attention or I else would divide them up into tasks and add them to Toodledo.  Rather these are projects that I can work on when I have the time.  Since I'm currently in grad school, I usually have some time between semesters to deal with projects like redoing our last will and testament, fixing the chair in the sitting room, and learning how to use the tennis racket stringer.  These are not terribly pressing, like dealing with flooding in our basement, but if I have time -- I can work on them.  I keep a Trello board for these projects.  Here's how I organize it.  I have a general list for projects, but bigger projects with many items get their own list -- like visits for my son's college options and YouTube video research.  Then I have a list that contains projects that are currently underway -- you can see I have a some meetings set up with due dates.  And my "Done" list is where I move cards that are complete.  My Done list is almost always to the left of everything for convenience, but this is against Trello and kanban board convention.  The third reason I'll make a Trello board is for

3 - Big Projects

Trello is not just a task management system like Toodledo, but it has a lot of additional versatility to store information.  So, if you are doing a giant project like renovating your kitchen or going on a big trip, I like to make a board for these.  That way I can include lots of information that I need to make decisions for that project.  In the case of a kitchen renovation -- you could store floor plans, links to a budget spreadsheet, contact information for vendors or contractors, links to kitchen furnishing websites, photos of styles you like (like a Pinterest board) -- and then you could include a list of tasks and drag these to a Done list when complete.  We currently have a board going that my husband, son, and I all collaborate on for the 9 colleges my son is talking to for next year.  Each college has a card and goes through the visiting and interview process to be sorted into Top, Middle, and Bottom choices.  The only issue that I have with project boards is, since I don't check my Trello boards daily, if a task needs to be done on a certain day, I always duplicate that task on Toodledo since I'm more accountable to that system.  The fourth reason I use Trello is for

4 - Graduate School

I'm going to do a whole video on how I use Trello to organize myself for grad school, but because I block off time several times a week to dedicate to Grad School, I can use a board for the work I have to do for it.  I do put some specific tasks into Toodledo, like on Mondays I remind myself to open Trello and get organized for the week.  Within this board I keep all of the assignments and reading for each class for the semester, information and tasks for big projects or papers, contact information and syllabuses (syllabi?) for each class, and some general school information like links to the library and to class registration.  The last Trello use for me is 

5 - Helping My Kids Get Organized

This is the new system that I'm implementing this year to help my kids stay on top of their chores and school work.  Trello has great collaboration features, so my kids can create a board and add me to it, allowing me to edit and view it.  In addition, I can turn on this "Watch" feature so that I'm notified any time there is activity on the board.  Each of my kids will have a board that will contain all of their work from school plus home chores.  My kids is are both required to organize a plan of attack for the evening within Trello before they get started on school work.  I'll be able to see immediately what their plans are and whether they have completed all of the chores for the day.

So, that's it for now.  I could also easily use Trello for my YouTube video process.  It really a perfect use for it, but I have the two week ritual memorized and internalized so I don't really need the organizational help there.  So, that is how I use Trello along with Toodledo for task and project management and to collaborate with family members.  Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching.