Digital KANBAN BOARD with TRELLO | Hey friends this is part 3 of a mini-series where I'm sharing all of my
favorite productivity tools and hacks that I personally use as a writer and
entrepreneur in the last couple videos I've talked about my bullet journal and
my Google Calendar and if you missed those I'll link those down below but in
this video I'm talking all about Trello and how I'm using it to create a kind of
digital combat board which is totally helping me stay on track day-to-day and
week-to-week and month-to-month even more with my goals and the tasks that
I've set aside for myself to accomplish I've been learning a whole lot about
Kanban boards lately from other tubers like heart breathings which if you're
not following her and haven't checked out her content yet you definitely
should but she is more of a physical conven board that's on her wall and I'll
sort of talk about that in a second but I was super excited when one of my
wonderful patrons Cam Meze told me that you could make a digital Kanban
board with Trello I freaked out and I've been loving using it for the last few
weeks so I wanted to dedicate this video to cam you're amazing and for the rest
of you I hope you get a lot out of these tips first for anyone who's like me and
has no idea what a Kanban board is according to Wikipedia combat boards
visually depict work at various stages of the process and I would just insert
in there they visually depict the work of accomplishing a goal at the different
stages and they use mainly two things first cards to represent work items or
tasks to accomplish that goal and columns to represent each stage of the
process and the process most simply is usually one a to-do list - a doing list
and three a done list and you can see how that just progresses in what you
usually do anyway you make a list of things you need to do you do one thing
at a time and then when you're done with that you check it off or in this case
you move it to a dumb list again I am just getting into this stuff so if
anybody is a Kanban board expert and wants to clarify anything or add
anything to that definitely let us know in the comments but I have recently
gotten into this idea of Kanban boards because of heart breathing's that I
mentioned before and her YouTube channel which you can see here she has a whole
playlist of Kanban board stuff which I haven't been binge-watching and if
you're interested in making more of a physical
on board I really like how hers is laid out she has three columns and she puts
them vertically to do doing and done and then she visually depicts her four
biggest goals or projects with different colored stickies and then those stickies
again represent the tasks to accomplish each goal and for me I'm looking at this
and I'm like this looks like a lot of fun it's very tangible and visual and
can be put up on my wall and I was sort of prepared at some point to like go out
and like get aboard and get stickies that I liked and take the time to like
write everything out but then like I said before my patron Kim was like I
actually create my Kanban board in Trello and I was like oh my gosh I need
to try this because having it digitally would be so great so if you don't know
what Trello is or never have seen it before welcome to a basic Trello board
which you can change the background here to whatever you want but Trello is
usually used for productivity anyway I'm going to show you how it enables you to
make a digital version of a Kanban board basically Trello is made up of two
things again lists and cards and the lists you would create a to-do doing and
done list and then add cards like this to add your tasks and I'm going to show
you a little bit later you can use labels to color code each of these tasks
so you know which task belongs to what goal you're trying to accomplish the
basic process though is you put all of your two dues in the to-do list like
we've done and then choose a one thing to put in the doing list as you do it
this keeps you focused on one thing at a time and then when you're done you put
it in the done list then rinse and repeat with each remaining item you
still need to do some reasons why I really love this kind of approach to
Kanban boards is one you can set up an account for free and who doesn't love
free it's digital so you're saving trees and time and money it's easy to edit and
rearrange tasks without losing stickies there's also a mobile version so I don't
have to be tied down to my computer all the time number 5 you can create
checklists within each task that are checked off a bowl so you can see here
that I'm creating the task and then checking them off there's even a
progress bar here which is really great and for a practical example like when
I'm a YouTube video I have a whole list of
first I script and then I film and then I create the thumbnail and then I edit
and I can just create that and actually copy over checklists for different cards
so they make that really easy if I'm editing my book I can create a whole
task list for editing my book as a bonus if you want to get really fancy you can
also add photos as attachments or covers you could use this for adding an
aesthetic board or an Instagram post if you're planning your posts or a YouTube
thumbnail or just a cover to make your list look prettier like this and if
you're wondering I just created these with a SoundCloud banner in canva you
can use any banner template and they're really easy to create and then just
upload it to your Trello board it's easy to delete and archive items that you
don't want to see anymore or you can send them right back by just pressing
send back to board and finally I really wanted to show you how labels work and
how you can use them to color code your task and assign them to specific goals
that you have so to create the labels first you can set that up by going to
show menu here at the top then going to more and then going to labels and then
they have a bunch of colors here that you can use you can also add a few more
colors here you can double up on colors if you want but for me I have three main
goals that I've shared before I have goals for my writing and books and
publishing I've pulls it for my income inside hustles and I have goals for my
platform and these are the same colors that I use with my Google Calendar so
again if you want to check out that video you can see that everything's
going to line up for me so that whether I'm looking at my bullet journal my
Google Calendar or my Trello board everything sort of jives together and it
helps just organize everything a lot easier then after you create your labels
you can go in and click labels and then assign them to the different tasks
depending on what goal it relates to and if you have something that relates to
multiple goals at a time you just check both of them and one more thing about
labels that I really love is you can actually search labels and just have
those at labels for that specific goal show up if you won't just want to clean
the ball up and just focus on one thing so you
just go to show menu and then go to search cards and then you can just click
and it'll just show you the cards that have to do with it that goal and then if
I wanted to look at both book and platform for some reason or both
platform and income for some reason then I could do that too now if you want to
get a little more detailed like I have you can add a few more lists to your
board and I love that again if this was a physical board I would have to either
create but recreate the board or add an additional element to it but because
it's digital it's easy to add and so I've added a monthly to-do list a weekly
to-do list and today's to-do list and this is just is really happy for me
because I can just at the beginning of the month especially with the help of my
bullet journal lists out everything that I like to do in the month and then
progressively each week I can move things over to that week's - dues and
then each day I can look at the weekly - dues and move over things - daily the
other ones that I've created at the end here are also big accomplishments and
small accomplishments and I really liked adding B's because my done list would
get really long and it would sort of be hard to see what I actually got done
that day as opposed to multiple days so at the end of the day I'll move all of
these things into big accomplishments and this is sort of like the months
accomplishments and then as a record I'll move the month's accomplishments
into my bullet journal so I can keep kind of an ongoing record of what I've
actually been doing and I don't know about you but sometimes you just get to
the end of the week or the end of the month you're just like what the heck did
I get done and here you can see everything that I got done I also keep a
list of just smaller accomplishments or different things that just came up that
were in a part of my bigger plan but that I ended up doing so I can keep
track of those to another of Kam's ideas also that I might try is to have a
physical quarterly Kanban board that is sort of more simplified and like more
just like the general tasks and then when I get into my Trello board it's
more of like the more specific like nitty-gritty and monthly weekly and
daily to do's but having a physical quarterly Kanban board would be nice for
like an overall view of the order and then maybe of the year so I
can see that at all times and then when I want to get into the daily stuff then
I can get into my Trello board you might also be wondering am I still using my
bullet journal on a daily basis as well in short I am definitely still using my
bullet journal but lately I've been using it more at the beginning and end
of each day again like I sort of hinted at before to track my overall progress
and keep a record or a crew of all the work that I've been doing while I use my
Trello board more throughout the day to keep me focused but the downside of
Trello is that it's harder to keep those long-term records I don't necessarily
want my big accomplishments board to just keep going and going going every
single month if I was going to keep track of everything forever on this
board it would just get too long and too complicated so what I like doing is once
I get to the end of the day and once I get to the end of the month I like
recording all of these things and checking off things in the bullet
journal and then I can go through and delete and clean up the daily Trello
board more the other thing that Trello can't really do is schedule out my time
I can create lists and I can maybe put in how much time I think it's going to
take but I still use my Google Calendar to set aside time blocks for each item
so in the beginning of the day I'll set up my daily to-do list but then I'll go
into my Google Calendar and I'll make each of those two dues a block of time
so I can make sure I actually have time to get everything done that I'd like to
get done at the end though just a note I am in no way saying that anybody else
needs to use this exact process or use all three of these I know that I'm a bit
crazy using one of these tools will probably definitely be enough for
anybody else but this is just what I'm doing right
now and I might simplify it over time I might realize that I don't need one of
these items but because it's really working well for me right now
I just wanted to take the time to share it with all of you so you can pick and
choose what you think might be helpful you can go ahead and experiment with
these things you'll probably find out even more things that I didn't even know
about and at the end of the day you can figure out what's best for you I just
like presenting all of the options showing you all the things I
found so that you can make a decision for yourself if you're excited to dig in
and create your own Trello Kanban board or have any other Trello tips I'm
missing again let us know in the comments below I always love that to be
a space that we're just sharing information together and if you go ahead
and create your own and you want to post a picture of it on your Instagram or
your Twitter account be sure to tag me because I'd love to see how you're using
it your progress and I'd also love to give you a shout out if you want to
check out even more productivity tips be sure to watch that full playlist on the
screen here and stay tuned because next week I'm going to be doing another
Trello video but it's gonna be actually more focused even more for writers and
how I outline my books with Trello and how I'm also using it to make editing
notes and a revision plan for my books so stay tuned because that's coming soon
and we'll see you in the next video