Need some major help organizing your life?
If you’re anything like me, you have planners and to-do lists and scraps of paper with reminders and constant timers going off on your phone just to try and keep yourself organized as best as possible. All of this chaos quickly turned into productivity once I started using Trello to declutter my life.
Obviously, we all have our own methods of organizing our ever-busy, ever-changing lives, but what if I told you there was a place where you could organize every aspect of your life on one single platform?? I mean, c’mon, you can’t say no to that.
What is Trello?
Trello is the ultimate life planning website. It is a free platform where you can create boards filled with lists filled with cards that make any project, plans, events, you name it, easy to organize.
Trello was created with the user’s busy life in mind and it is designed to have moving parts and be incredibly user-friendly because they believe organizing should not be another worry on your to-do list.
Created in 2010, Trello has over 4.75 million users who are making their lives more simple and more organized on a daily basis. While many other organizational platforms on the market exist, Trello has proved itself to be the most easy-to-use, customizable, and inspiring one to date.
Let’s Get Started!
In order to begin your journey to the ultimate organization, you will first need to create a Trello account to store all of those ideas, events, and projects you have yet to sort out. Believe me, you won’t regret this.
- Head on over to Trello and click on the “Sign Up” button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
- Add in your name, email and password and press “Create New Account” to get your account created.
- Once you’re in, it will ask you to choose what you will be using Trello for – which there are many responses for such as productivity, marketing, personal, and project management. Click whatever best describes your goals for using Trello.
- Voila! You’re in!
Time to get organizing!
In order to get the best experience out of Trello, here are some explanations of the different features and items they have to offer and how to use them:
1. Boards
When on the main screen of your account on Trello, there will be a page titled “Boards”, this is the place where your main topics will go depending on what you have to organize. These can really be anything. For example, maybe you have a “Blogging” board, a “Personal” board, and a “Weekly” board.
These boards will look different for each person depending on what and how you are choosing to organize, but they are 100% customizable in terms of getting organized in a way that’s best for you.
Let’s say you choose to use these titles for your boards, you may place all of your blogging/work/editing/etc. projects and plans under your “Blogging” board; all of your personal events – special occasions, appointments, holiday plans, grocery lists – under your “Personal” board. And maybe your “Weekly” board is where you plan out what and when events from your other boards need to be completed by.
Now that you have created some boards, you’ll need to add some lists to each in order to add specific items within.
2. Lists
Lists are the categories within the boards that further break down the topic of your board.
To access the lists, you must click on a board and it will bring you to your board’s page. Within your board, there will be a rectangular button saying “ + Add a list ” which you will click on to make separate sections within your board.
Sticking with the above examples, let’s say you’re wanting to add lists to your “Personal” board. Click that “ + Add list” button and begin making lists depending on your needs. We’re going to add “Upcoming Events”, “Appointments” and “To Dos” within the Personal Board.
Now that you have a couple lists to get you started, next we will add cards to your lists specifying each task or event.
3. Cards
Within your lists, you will find “ + Add a card “. Click on that button and begin adding the different things related to each list. You may put a dinner party you have coming up under your “Upcoming Events” list and the doctor’s appointment you have under “Appointments”.
It’s pretty self-explanatory once you begin adding lists. It’s just a matter of playing around with it for a bit until you get the hang of it.
Once you’ve created a card, you can click on that card within the list and it will bring you to the back of the card. Here, you can add things like descriptions, comment, due dates, attachments, etc. in order to best help you in terms of organizing a specific card. This feature is great when multiple people are using a given board at a time in order to keep track of who-does-what.
What else can Trello do?
As briefly mentioned above, Trello can also be used as a collaboration. You can invite unlimited amounts of people to any and every board you have and divvy up cards to different people. This feature is great for small businesses and families who need to keep track of what’s all getting done in an efficient way.
Trello even has an app so you can take it wherever you go. They have seriously thought of everything.
For more examples and tips, Trello has an inspiration page with examples of how to use different templates. There are some excellent examples on here showing you the various ways your boards can be set up.
While Trello is just one of many life-organizational tools, it definitely out-ranks the rest. Planning out all areas of your life can be stressful, we know. And finding the perfect platform to do so shouldn’t be another stressor. While the old pen-and-paper planner is a must for some, there’s only so much you can do there.
Give Trello a try and I guarantee you’ll be happy you did!
Fran Kolars is a blogging intern for LadyBossBlogger. She is currently working towards her bachelor’s degree in Retail Merchandising and Interior Design at the University of Minnesota. Blogging is an interest of hers that was sparked by her passion for mental health, self-care, and motivation for women.