How I use Trello boards to avoid procrastination
I started in the world of programming in February of 2021, and since my first semester in a technical course, I had a big problem with procastination. I would only do or remember about assignments the day before they're due, forget which classes were on the day, and as it was online, the amount of homework was much bigger than what I was used to in high school. I got lost, and being the procastinator that I am, the piles of homework would only discourage me from even touching it. I'm not the only procastinator. According to a National Library of Medicine study, around 80 to 95% of college students procastinate at some point.
I've used quite a few apps to solve this issue, but only a few of them worked for me. I've sticked up with Trello, as I've found the perfect methodology to me. ToDoist also worked fairly well, but due to it's 5 project limitation, it slowly got tiresome to manage around it. If you want to know the board I use and tips I can give to manage your work better, stay with me.
Okay, but what is Trello?
Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. It uses Kanban boards, which have, at it's core, 3 lists that are normally called "To Do", "Doing", and "Done". Inside those lists, cards (or post-its) that contain certain tasks are put in one of the lists list, based on their current state. If a task, for example, was in the "Doing" list and was finished, it should be moved to the "Done" list.
Click here to see an example image.
Interesting, but why should I use it?
The following points are my main reasons to use Trello
- It's targeted towards medium and large companies, so they won't try to get money from single users, unlike ToDo apps
- It has automation tools and power-ups to help easen the burden of managing the board
- A lot of companies use Trello and the Kanban methodology to manage their work, like FreeCodeCamp, Google and Adobe
- And if you want, you can even use the Scrum methodology in a Trello board, although with some tweaks
- Allows for a bird's eye of the project, whcih makes planning much easier on the long run
- Easily teamwork with other people, understand what they're doing and what they did
- Reminds me of near due tasks by reminders on the app
How do you use Trello, then?
There are a lot of Trello board templates. Yet, none of them quite worked for me ever since I started using Trello, in 2021. While some boards felt overwhelming with the amount of lists they use, and others felt underwhelming or simply confusing, as they have fewer lists, and everything felt crapped into a small space. So I decided to take some templates and mix them together. I used a total of 3 boards mixed together, they were:
- Personal Productivity System, from Justin Gallagher, co-creator of Trello
- College Planner, from Kyeisha Laurence
- Guillaume Wuip's To Do list
All of their blogs, teaching how to use their specific boards, will be on the references, in case you find one of theirs suit your organization style more. But for me, I had to change some things.
I found the need to use 2 main Trello boards. One that is my personal and college life managment system, and another one that is a model I use for big or group projects. Let's start with my personal and college one.
The board
It consists of 5 lists (plus a done list)
- Resources
- Today
- This Week
- Exams/Assignments
- Repeat
They are almost self-explanatory. My Resources list contains info about the other boards I have, my teacher's contact info, in case I need to contact them, and useful links that can help me one day, today and this week have tasks I plan to do, Exams/Assignments has my college work, and my repeat list is for repeated tasks, like classes or going to the gym. The done list is where I keep the completed tasks, and once every two months I clean it up to avoid clutter.
As you might have noticed, most of my cards have labels to them. It's to help me organize and prioritize them better. Here is a list of the labels that I currently use.
Some cards also have checklists to them, mostly when they're too big for a single card, but are too small for a board. Here's an example
Okay, but how do I legitimately use that board? Every night, I plan my future day by adding tasks on the Today list and arranging them in priority, so I won't need to decide which task to do on the next day. I also limit the tasks I want to do today to 5, in order to not get overwhelmed by a gigantic list. If there are tasks I want to do, but there's no space for them in the Today list or they don't need to be done right away, I put them in the This Week list to not forget about them. Those are the lists where most of the action happens, the other lists are mostly to help me remember what I need to do in the future.
For the second board, I keep it as a model for big projects, so it uses the average Kanban methodology.
Click here to see the second board
It consists of 5 lists as well:
- Resources
- Backlog
- To Do
- Doing
- Done
Resources has the same use of the one in my personal board. Backlog is used to store macro tasks (or features, as I prefer to call them) that need to be completed, in order for the project to be finished. To Do is where I store smaller tasks that are needed to complete a macro task. Doing is where tasks that are currently being done are stored, while done is where finished tasks are stored, no matter their size.
This board also has it's own labels, which will vary, according to the project.
I also use something called power-ups, which enhance the capability of a Trello Board. I use these power ups in a daily basis:
- Google Drive
- Card repeater
- List limits
Thank you for reading this far! Upvote if you found it useful.
Socials
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matheus-felipe-de-oliveira-ferreira-49909b215/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/theusf40
References
Justin Gallaher productivity board
