Some scary exciting Trello events and new mini Trello course
Trello Tip of the Week
Trying to get your team, family, friends, neighbors… anyone… to understand Trello? Just use the metaphor that it’s a digital whiteboard with super charged sticky notes. I’ve found this super helpful in explaining Trello to folks, because it’s a great way to show how useful it is without overcomplicating it.
Of course the supercharged sticky notes part is an understatement, but if you’re trying to get people on board with the concept, that’s a great place to start.
Another metaphor I like to use is that Trello is like legos. It has a lot of awesome parts and you can build just about anything you want with it, but sometimes you need an architect to make an instruction sheet for you with step by step instructions of how you can make a Hogwartz castle from a million tiny colored pieces. Don’t worry - I’m happy to be your architect!
I’m trying out a new tool for making mini-courses, and I created this Trello 101 course. It’s extremely basic, but a great explainer of what Trello is and how you might use it. (And totally free, might I add.)
Feel free to share it with your team or the next person who asks you “hey what is Trello?”
New(s) And Upcoming in Trello
🎉 Big announcement! If you’re a free subscriber to this newsletter, thank you and I hope you get a lot of great benefits from my weekly posts. But I’m about to start a new offering for my premium subscribers - a monthly Trello AMA session where I’ll open up a zoom for 30 minutes and take anyone’s trello questions live!
It’s a great way to get some help and learn how others are using Trello and what challenges they’re having with improving. If you want to get an invite to these monthly calls, just upgrade your subscription and you’ll be added to the list!
I typically charge ~$130 for calls about Trello consulting, so being able to do so for less than $10 a month is a pretty great deal, and a great way to see if you really need a full-on consultant, or just a few quick questions answered!
Crmblegeist: a Halloween Trello Special! Learn more about Crmble and other Power-Ups to improve your Trello workflows and chase away those workflow scaries. Live virtual event on Oct 31st at 1pm EST. I’ll be there, so save your spot!
Speaking of events… save the date for November 10th-11th! I’ll be attempting a 12 HOUR long Trello live stream! We might finally get an answer to the question about “how long can Brittany talk about Trello?” 😂 More details to come but go ahead put a reminder on your calendar so you don’t miss out!
Trello How To & FAQs
How to generate Butler variables for future days (Atlassian Community)
Automatically notify customers and users when a card moves lists (Atlassian Community)
Basic To-Do List Automation in Trello (byRosanna YouTube)
Trello Use Case Idea
Trello isn’t just helpful for my productivity… it’s also helpful for my mental health.
I’ve recently started going back to therapy and coaching to work through some of my anxiety and ADHD, and I must say - the hardest thing about it is knowing what to talk about.
And especially since I’ve started doing coaching, they want to talk about GOALS and stuff, which is awesome, but like… my goal is not to be anxious and to be able to focus on work so… 🤷♀️
Anyways, I’ve created a Trello board where I can catalog my thoughts throughout the week of issues I come up across or things that I want to work on, and then I can reference that list when I meet with my coach/therapist.
I’ve also got another list for tracking specific experiments or things we’re working on, so when they ask “how’s that thing going?” I have a specific answer!
This Week’s Find
I’ve been using Akiflow and you might have heard me mention it when I first found it, but I think it’s really here to stay. It’s become a pretty nice part of my workflows.
It’s a tool that combines all your todos and calendar in one place AND helps you plan it to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. And you’re like… wait a second… isn’t that Trello?
And yes, it accomplish a lot of that in Trello, but there are a few things that I’ve found Akiflow adds ON TOP of Trello. (It’s not a replacement for Trello - in fact, it syncs with Trello to grab your cards from Trello!)
Sync tasks from multiple places. As much as I wish everyone would create cards for me in Trello when they want me to do something, I get requests and action items from my email and Slack. Akiflow let’s me save those by saving a message in Slack, or starring a message in gmail.
Quickly add a task from anywhere with a keyboard shortcut. I still haven’t gotten to this point with Trello (although i can do it in browser with PixieBrix). Sometimes you just wanna quickly capture something. It’s not really a goal, it’s just something stupid like turn on the crockpot or make your bed, or take a shower (just me that needs reminders for that?) Use the Akiflow keyboard shortcut to open the command bar and create a task from anywhere. It can even grab a link you just copied. And just quickly queues it to an inbox. No need to define which board/list, or even a name for it. Just quickly saves it. I love it!
Planning tasks. I started to build out a system for this in Trello and I think I can make it work with timeline view, but it’s not perfect, and I haven’t loved any of the solutions i’ve found thus far for combining Trello and my calendar. (Although Planyway and Calendar Power-Ups get very close.) With Akiflow you can set actual due dates and deadlines, but also queue up what day you plan to work on tasks. And even better, if you don’t get to something today, it will automatically move it to tomorrow. (Something you’ve gotta build automation for if you’re only using Trello).
Keyboard shortcuts. Everything I’ve just described can be done with keyboard shortcuts. From adding tasks, navigating through today’s list, completing them, planning when to do them, adding labels and due dates, even creating new calendar events. I feel like a wizard.
BONUS - Calendly features. Create a calendar scheduling link, just like you would with Calendly, without having to pay for yet another tool.
I’ll stop for now but I could keep going - I made a video showing how it works and comparing it with a similar tool called Morgen. Let me know what you think! If you want to give it a try, send me an email and I can give you a code that gives you a special discount (I’m not allowed to share it broadly because it’s such a great discount -30% off, so just reply back to this email if you’re interested.)
That’s all for this week folks! Hope to see you on Monday for Crmblegeist!