A friend of mine introduced me to Trello a year or so ago…and I don’t know how I ever stayed organized without it!
It works great for taking a quick note, planning your week or keeping track of long term goals and tasks. Best of all…its FREE! (there are also paid levels that offer more features – but the free version does plenty).
The central component is the Board, which basically contains columns of Cards. You can create your own columns to suit your needs – then easily add cards to each column. To keep track of progress or categorize cards you can drag them into different columns.
I added a screenshot of one of my boards below. I have 5 columns titled “Staging”, “Prioritized by Sunday”, “In Progress Today”, “Done” and “Blocked”.
The Staging column usually contains tasks I want to remember to do – but don’t really plan to do them any time soon.
Prioritized by Sunday – tasks I want to have done by the end of the week.
In Progress Today – tasks I plan to complete today.
Done – done!
Blocked – tasks I can’t do until something is resolved….I’m blocked.
Remember…you can title these columns however you want.
The cards within the Trello board are where you can jot down additional details, set due dates, labels and even attach files (the file size limit is pretty impressive for a free app).
Also, as you drag your card between different columns on your board – it logs that activity too. Pretty cool stuff.
Trello allows you to create more than one board which is nice if the items you need to track should be categorized somehow. Just don’t get carried away and set up too many boards or you might start to lose track of things.
Give it a try!