Today I wanna talk about how to use Trello to organize your life goals and actually get things done.
If you have just one or two goals, you don’t need a system, you just do them. But if you’re like me, it’s very easy to constantly add on things that’s like, oh it would be cool to learn that, oh it’d be fun to do that, oh I should do more of this.
You need a system so that when you do have these ideas, you don’t just throw them out and say no, I’m working on other things. You can record them, but then you can have a moment to sit down and strategically plan out, what are the things I wanna work on now, what are the things that are coming up, and what are the things that I can’t do right now, but it’s a cool idea, maybe one day, sometime, I’ll have some time to work on this. And then the magic happens when a week later, a month later, six months later, you revisit that same list and you say, how am I doing? Of these things that are my current priorities, how many of them can I say I accomplished, or I’m like in a holding pattern. And how many of these things are not actually priorities anymore, which is fine, you can move em’ back. Let me show what I’m talking about.
So this is Trello, it uses the Kanban method. I love Trello, if you haven’t explored it already, you can get a free account. It’s very easy to set up. But, if you prefer analog, this whole thing can be done with a stack of sticky notes and some blank wall space. Whatever work for you, the method is the same.
So this is my Personal Growth board, I call it. And I have these four main categories, a few others one. And it works in progression from left to right. So one day I want to. This is where I drop ideas the second they come to my mind, that I don’t want to forget, but I may not necessarily be ready to move on them. So like, learn basic French. Oh that’d be fun. But, do I actually want to spend three to five hours a week working through an app? No, I don’t. But this is a really important list because it means that I can capture everything that catches my interest, but I can process this and decide whether these are things I actually, can realistically work on.
And then on deck, this is the stuff that I’m like, all right, I want to do this soon, but I don’t quite have the capacity, I have a long priorities list. And so, this is the stuff the second I have a little bit of time or one of these other things gets completed, I can move over. But I’m not like, deeply actively working on this stuff. And then my priorities list is exactly what it sounds like. These are the things that I’m working on that I really want to put kind of ongoing time and attention into.
Then this card up here, this is not a goal itself, these are my overarching goals which I set that just kind of guide why I’m doing all these other ones. So I have it here as a reminder, that I just look at periodically. Do these other specific goals, do they line up with the goals I have for my life? The vision of who I want to be and where I want to be in this world.
And then, this is my long list. And, you know, you can set, you can put due dates, these colors all correspond to labels just so I have an idea, like really quickly looking at this, do I have a good mix of physical, professional, you know. I can do a bunch, a couple different things at a time in each category. But if I have seven physical goals that are happening all at the same time, realistically it’s just not possible.
And then holding pattern, this is, for some this is like a complete, I hired a VA, check, great. But then, most of these are things that are now habits, or things that are pretty regularly in my routine, I don’t call them a goal. Stuff like, meditation, intermittent fasting, yoga, financial planning that I want to continue to do and have them on this list so that I can periodically you know, make sure that I didn’t just, forget about one of these. And if that’s the case, then it would probably have to move over to one of these columns so I can like, implement it back in my life.
I am so thrilled with this method and I am so excited to share this with you because for me it has made such a big difference in my life to capture everything that inspires me, but then take a moment to actually decide, what can I feasibly do, and then hold myself accountable by setting a reminder on my calendar at least monthly to come back and check this and see how am I doing, does this still align with my priorities, can I check anything off?
Sometimes it feels overwhelming, there’s a lot of things on this list. A lot of them require many dozens of hours. But, it’s all about the incremental steps. And so, if I can see these things and spend an hour, or even 15 minutes on some of these this week. In a years time, in three years time, in ten years time, in twenty years time, it’s remarkable how much we can accomplish.
