- [Scott] Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you are in the world. And welcome to this month's Stop The Busyness Webinar. This month we're taking a look at Trello. And specifically how we can use Trello as a to-do list. Now Trello, for some of
you who may have used this application in the past, you may know was not initially designed to be a to-do list. It really has its core
functionality in project management. But Trello is so diverse. It's such a flexible tool. It can be used in many different ways. And I've found more and more
people are starting to use it as a to-do list. And I think it might just be the very best to-do list available. So today we're gonna be looking
at how we can use Trello as a powerful to-do list. Some of the things that we
will cover in today's session. Why do people not stick with a traditional to-do
list app very long? The productivity section of both the Google Play store, and the Apple App Store, is a very popular, a very competitive space. There is a large number
of to-do list apps, and task manager apps available. But why do so many of us start with one and we'll stick with it for a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months. And then we just try the
next one on that list. Why don't we stay with 'em very long? We're gonna see how we can set up Trello to manage not only our tasks, but also our projects, a really big benefit of using Trello as your to-do list. We'll look at some of the pluses of adding so many
details on a Trello board without cluttering up our to-do list. Trello is very flexible
in that it can provide you a very clean look of all of your tasks. And yet you can have additional content, additional notes, and detailed descriptions
tucked underneath that to-do. And lastly, we'll take a
look at some of the more advanced features in Trello. At least advanced features
that you don't find on many traditional to-do list apps. And that's things such as checklists, and email forwarding, and different labels that we can attach to our Trello to-do list. My name is Scott Friesen and I'm the founder of Simpletivity Training and Consulting. And I refer to myself
as a busyness killer. Why a busyness killer? Well it really pains me
to hear people complain about how busy they are. And the reason being is
that I know that there's a very distinct difference and profound difference between being busy and being productive. And I want people to be as productive or as effective as they can be not just busy. So I help people and organizations
to be more productive instead of just being busy. As always, we appreciate
your participation and welcome your questions as a part of today's webinar. If you are watching this live, you can use the live chat
window here on YouTube, or you can also use the
hashtag StopTheBusy on Twitter. Even if you're watching a
recorded version of this webinar, I will look for those questions. I will look for that
hashtag and do my best to ask them in the future. So either use the live
chat here on YouTube or the hashtag StopTheBusy, and I'll reserve some time
at the end of today's session to go over those questions. So to-do list apps. There is certainly no shortage of the number of to-do list apps that are available to us today. If you search for a task manager, or a task app, or a to-do list app, in the Play Store or the App Store, you will see many of the apps that I have presented here on the screen, and many, many more. There are certainly no
shortage of availability of to-do list apps. Now some of the ones that
I have on the screen here are amongst the more popular ones. And I'd be surprised if there
are people on today's session who have not used one, maybe more than one of
the ones listed here. The first four that I have on the left side of the screen, Wunderlist, Any.Do, Clear, and Todoist, have all been around for several years, are really quite powerful as a to-do list. And that's what they present themselves. That's their core functionality is to help you track your tasks, to be able to easily add
new tasks and to-dos, to defer them, to prioritize them, and to of course check them off, because that's what feels so good. The last two I have here
in the right column, Evernote and Google Keep, are not necessarily to-do list apps. However, they've become so popular that many, many people are using them as their task manager. Now Evernote and Google Keep, and there are many other apps like them, are not really a to-do list app. They're really a note
capturing application. They're really meant to capture new ideas, to copy and paste information, to do web clippings. Perhaps you want to record
some short narration. You know, you're on the go and you want to whip out your smart phone and record a little bit of text, or a note to yourself. Very, very powerful in capturing notes, and ideas, and images. But they also tend to have some basic to-do list functionality, such as adding a due date, and perhaps adding a checklist. So I know there's many, many
people who are using them as a to-do list. So I thought I'd add
them here on this list. Now the purpose of
today's webinar is not to bash or put down these apps. These apps are, you know, they're backed by very
strong development teams, and product teams. And they've come a long
way since most of them were first introduced. However, I find that
they're not as flexible as I would like them to be. And they're not as flexible
as I find many of my clients, many of the people I speak to, would like them to be. You really need to buy into their system. And that's why I think Trello might be a much better alternative for you as you manage your to-dos. You see, there's three big
problems of most to-do apps, including the six that I just showed. Number one, most of them cannot manage projects. They only manage tasks. Now they manage tasks very well. But if you can't see your
projects at the same time, if you can't align your tasks, you know, your day to day work
with your bigger projects, you may be losing an opportunity to work at your productive best. It's important that we can
see both our big projects, the big goals that we're working towards, and making sure that our tasks
align with those projects. And most to-do list apps don't allow you to add or include projects. And if they do, it's very clunky, and you can't see them at the same time. Another problem of most
to-do list apps is that they lack the ability to
add a variety of details. Now a pretty basic piece of functionality would be to include a notes section or a description section. But often, to-do list apps leave them in just a text-based format. That's all you can do. You can copy and paste text. If you try and paste a link to a website, it's just going to convert that to text. You can't attach images. You can't attach documents. Most of them are very, very limited as to what you can add to that task. And that's a shame. Often when we're wanting to set up a meeting with someone, or we're working on a project that has many different moving parts, we might want to have a variety of notes, a variety of different details including images, including attachments, including links that we can click on and then go to that website. And this is where many
to-do list apps fail. And lastly, there's often limited customization in to-do list apps. You really need to buy into their layout, the way that they're going
to display your tasks, perhaps the way that they're
going to order your tasks. Often it's very limited as to your ability to prioritize
or to highlight a task. Many to-do list apps have an important emoji, or star, or underline, or color. But it's just one level. Either something's important or it's not important. And you may be able, you may want to, excuse me, you may want to customize more deeper than just one color, or just one level. So that's where Trello comes into play. Trello of course has its
roots in project management. Not only for collaborating
with teams and other members, but also for managing
personal projects as well. But I find Trello just might be the best to-do list app out there. So, for the remainder, or for the bulk of the
remainder of the time we have in today's session, I'm actually going to be in the Trello app itself, and show you some of the features, show you some of the functionality here. Now, I want to state two things here. Number one, I am not affiliated
with Trello in any way. I'm not sponsored by Trello. I am simply a fan and a
passionate user of Trello. I really think it's one
of the most flexible productivity tools out there. Number two, I'm not gonna go into the basics of how to use Trello today. If you're brand new to Trello, if you have not used Trello in the past, I would recommend that you check out some of my previous videos, which can show you some of the basics and how to add tasks, and add cards, and add lists, and so forth. You might be interested in
a separate video for that. But today, we're just gonna look at Trello through the lens of a to-do list. So I've got a very
basic Trello board here. I've got my first list, which I've entitled To-Do. And of course in Trello
you can add as many of these lists as you would like. And that's a very powerful feature when you're managing your tasks. And also when you're
managing your projects. Beyond lists, Trello has something called cards. My tasks, these hypothetical tasks
that I've included here are my cards. And one of the great things is that everything is drag and drop, right. I can reprioritize this, or order this in the way that I like. But I've kept it really,
really simple here. I've kept it really basic
to start things off. Now of course Trello can do most of, if not all of the standard
things that a to-do list can, such as adding a due date. Gonna add a to-do date to this one here. You see it adds it right here. Just for an example, I'm gonna pretend that this
due date was in the past. And you'll see, it gives a nice color change here, a nice little pinkish red
showing me that that's overdue, and that I should have gotten
to that earlier in the week. So you know, pretty standard stuff, right. You can type in your tasks and you can add a due date. Well Trello is very, it's very easy to add tasks in Trello. If you're using your desktop, or if you're using a tablet, it's just hitting the enter key. And I don't have to click anything else. I don't have to click this add button. I don't have to click a
checkbox or anything like that. It's very, very quick and easy to add additional tasks as well. But let's see how we can improve our to-do list even more
by adding more lists. So I'm going to add a projects list. And like I just said a moment before, most to-do lists will
not allow you to do this. You may be able to manage
a few different lists. But you'll often have to view
them on separate screens. You can't view them at the same time. Well I'm gonna add just a few hypothetical projects here for us to look at here. Maybe a product launch. Let's say a sales kickoff. And I'm also thinking of
hiring new staff, okay. So the value of having your projects on the same screen as your to-dos is to see if the things that
I want to accomplish today or the things that I want
to accomplish this week are in line with my projects. When we keep our projects
on a separate screen, or in a separate application, often there's a big disconnect between the things that
we're working on day to day, and the big goals, or the big things that
we're trying to accomplish for our organization or for our team. So it can be really, really valuable for you to have your
projects and your to-dos on the same screen. And although I'm demoing
this on my desktop, you can see both of these on your tablet. You can actually see both of these on your smart phone as well. It might be a slight swipe to the right. But you can have them on the same screen. You don't have to open up a new one. You don't have to close down these to-dos and then go into the projects list. You can see them at the same time. And that is very, very valuable. You might want to go even a step further and add additional lists. So I often recommend having a notes or an ideas list. So this would be a list where, you know, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about
redesigning the website. Not sure about it. But I'm gonna come back to that. I'm gonna think about marketing ads. You know, these are things that
I haven't committed to yet. They're not an official project. They're not a to-do. These are just things
I want to come back to. Maybe it's an email, an interesting email
that I've come across. And I'm gonna put that in as
a part of my notes or ideas. You could have a really nice workflow. I'm just gonna rearrange
some of these lists. So it's gonna be notes and ideas first, projects, then to-dos. And again, this could be
really powerful to refine your to-do list. So maybe things start in
the notes or ideas list. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna ponder these ideas, you're gonna think about
them for a couple of days, or maybe a couple of weeks. And a few of them
graduate to be a project. And now from these projects, you're gonna determine
what are the key tasks, or what are the key to-dos. Again, it's all on the same screen. You can see a nice workflow here moving from left to right. Now of course, you can add multiple lists. I've seen some people prefer
having a to-do future list. So how that would work
is that maybe this list, the to-do list is for today. But maybe these things are things that we want
to do later in the week, or they're not as urgent. These are the things I
want to focus on right now. And if I get all of them accomplished, well then maybe I'll go to this list. But I can have a nice separation between the things that I should be doing and the things that I could be doing. Of course at some point, you're gonna have too many lists. I would recommend not
going higher than four, or maybe five lists if you're gonna use this Trello
board for your to-do list. But just some of the ways that we can set up our Trello board as a productive to-do list. So let me bring that
to-do back to the front for our example here. So we've got, you know, we've got some nice,
clean tasks listed here. We know what we want to do. We've got some to-do dates. But let's say we want to add
some additional information. So the great thing about Trello is that if you click on the card, you can add as many great details or further descriptions as you like. Here in the edit description area, I can grab some text. Let me go grab some text here. I'm just gonna copy and paste this. Paste it in here to the description. Now, in many to-do list apps, this will convert everything to text. But you'll see here, I actually have an active link. I can click on this link and go directly to that website. So you can put in links. You can put in email addresses and then it will open
up your email client. You can put in that
information right here, all the gory details of that task. But yet, you can keep your
to-do list nice and clean on the front side, or the high level of your task list. You can see here that
it's added a little icon. It's showing me that I've
got some further notes. I've got a description in there. But I don't have to stop
at just the description. Maybe for this phone call with Steve there's a particular attachment
or document I'd like to add. Well Trello makes it
very simple with that. Here I'm uploading a PDF document. It's now attached. It's now a part of this card. So while I'm having this
phone call with Steve, I can just click on this and open up this PDF document. It doesn't have to open
up my Adobe PDF reader. I can stay right within my to-do list, review the details of that document, and it's right there. I don't have to go fumbling in my folders. I don't have to go search
for that important document. I can attach it right to that task. How about an image? Maybe you're a graphic designer. Maybe you deal with images and you want to have it available to you as a part of that task. Well I'm just gonna hit paste and it's going to attach that image directly to this card. Now when I need to review
that image or images, it's right a part of that task. But when I close, when I close the details of the card, again, the front facing
aspect of my to-do list is nice and clean, right. It's not cluttered. I can still see what other tasks
I want to accomplish today, what other things I need to
evaluate my time against. But when I click on a card, I can have my detailed notes, my links, images, attachments. I can add as many additional
details as I'd like. Let's open up another card and let me show you an
example of adding a checklist. So in Trello you can add a checklist to any of your cards. And I find this has been very valuable as I manage my own tasks. So let's say when I'm meeting
with a particular client, there might be a certain number of steps that I want to always do
with that particular client, or maybe that type of client. So let's say, you know, the first step is review the last email, or review the last conversation. Ask about maybe the current
status of the project, and maybe the last thing
I always want to make sure before that meeting is over is confirm the next meeting. So I can have this all set ahead of time. And so I've got a nice
checklist right here within that task. So maybe that meeting with
Jeff isn't happening today. Maybe it's happening tomorrow. Whenever that meeting happens, I can open up that card and as we're discussing, as we're having that conference call, I can say yep, we reviewed that last email. Yes, I've asked him
about the current status. He's given me a status update. And before we close that call, I just want to make sure that we've got something else on our calendar. So having a checklist as a
part of some of your tasks, of course not all of them, but particularly when you
are meeting with individuals, or their might be a process that's associated with that task, having a checklist can
be very, very powerful. And again, Trello does a nice job of identifying that for us. Here you see it's nice and green showing me that I've completed all the steps in that checklist. If I go back and uncheck something, you'll see that the green is gone and it shows me that there's
two out of three things completed there. One other feature I'll show as part of the detail functionality, some of the customization
you can add to your task, are adding labels. Now as I mentioned before, many to-do list apps will give you very limited options with labels. It's either you can star it, or you can un-star it. Well really you're unlimited with the number of colors or the number of labels that
you can add to your task. Let's say I want to put red on this task. That's a high priority. That's something that I
want to get to right away tomorrow morning or later in my day today. I can add that color. Maybe you want to group
them by other meetings. Red means that it's customer related. Green means it's internal. However you like to
customize your to-do list, you can do so. You know when it comes
to personal productivity, you'll often hear me say
that we need to focus on the personal side of it. That's how you're gonna
be at your effective best. That's how you're going to work and be at your productive best. That's one of the big advantages of using Trello as your to-do list. You can customize your
to-do list in so many ways. Just like I showed you a few moments ago, you can drag and drop your lists in an order that works for you. You can pick where these to-do lists go. Maybe some of these to-do
lists need to go back on the ideas page. Maybe this writing the
report for the finance team, it's not a necessity. I'm gonna put it back here
in the incubator stage so I can drag tasks
along my different lists as a part of it as well. One additional feature
I want to share with you is the ability to forward emails directly into your to-do list. Now this is a feature that is found on many other to-do list app managers. But if that's something that
is a requirement for you or something that you would like to do, I want to take a moment
just to show you how you go about doing that. So under the menu here in Trello, and if we're at the main menu, you'll need to click on the more option. You'll see that there is a heading titled email to board settings. Every single Trello board has its own unique email address. Now don't worry about
what this looks like. I know it looks like a mess. You only need to copy this once and add it as a contact
in your email client. But then you can forward emails, or send brand new emails. Maybe you have that wonderful thought, or that wonderful task pops into your mind while you're dealing with email. You just need to forward
it to this email address and it will appear in your Trello board. Now you can customize as
to where you want to put those forwarded emails. So for example in my case, I'd like it to show up in
my notes and ideas area. And I also get the choice to determine if I want it to be first on the list at the top of that list, or do I want it to show at
the bottom of that list? I'm gonna say bottom for now. Now whenever I forward
an email to this address, or if I create a brand new email, it's going to appear in
this notes and ideas list. Maybe you don't want it to appear here. Maybe you want it to appear
directly in your to-do list. A very powerful feature
allowing you again, another way to add tasks
very, very quickly. So just some of the powerful ways that you can use Trello as a to-do list, give you some more flexibility, give you some different
ways of managing your tasks, but also managing your projects
on the very same screen. Something that most other to-do list apps are incapable of doing. So as always, I want to reserve a little bit of time for questions at the
end of today's session. If you haven't asked already, you can continue to use the live chat, or the hashtag StopTheBusy. I have a few here that I see already. The first question, is Trello available for both
iOS and Android devices? Yes, the answer is yes. Doesn't matter if it's a tablet, or a smart phone. It's available on both of those platforms. But also on your Apple watch. It's also available on your Kindle if you use that as a part
of your productivity. And of course all the major browsers, Trello is supported on as well. So yes, across all of your
devices you can use Trello. And I might add, Trello is probably one
of the very best apps that I see that transforms, or is dynamic across all apps. Most to-do list apps started
their lives on a smart phone. They started on a small mobile device. And then they branched out to the iPad, or they branched out to the desktop. And I find really at the desktop level is where many of them
fail quite miserably. They're clunky. You know, the layout is very, very poor. Trello is almost seamless between your desktop to your tablet, to your smart phone, your small mobile devices. Another question here is, if I wanted to try a
traditional to-do list app, which one would you recommend? It's a great question. I'm not gonna highlight any
to-do list app in particular. If you want to try a to-do list app, my recommendation would be to download two or three at once and then to spend roughly 20 or 30 minutes with each of them. Spend, you know, 20 minutes
adding some fictional tasks, crossing them off, deferring them, adding due dates, doing all the things that you want to do with that to-do list app. You know, play around with it for a bit before you start adding actual tasks. And do that with all three. It's best to do that
within a short timeframe. Maybe at the same sitting, or within the same couple of days so that you can make that comparison. Yeah, try out some new apps. But take the time to try out some of the fictional things
that perhaps I showed you in today's webinar. Adding projects, adding due dates, and see what works for you. Because you might find a
traditional to-do list app that does work very
well with your workflow and your way of being productive. Well I want to thank you
so much for your attendance in today's session. I'm gonna leave you
with one last question. Do you want to be more productive? If the answer is yes, I would recommend that you visit the Simpletivity.com website. You can find out more about our services and sign up for our newsletter to get tips, and new techniques on how you can be at your productive best. I would also recommend that you subscribe to the Simpletivity YouTube channel. I upload a new video each and every week, a new tip, or a new technique to help you
be at your productive best. Thank you again for your attendance, and I hope you have a
very, very productive day.