My Productivity Toolkit
Image by Jack Mohr for Above Watches
In my previous article, I mentioned an app called Trello. I love it. For those of you who don’t know it’s an app where you have boards and you can make lists on the boards - it’s pretty basic but can be super powerful if you use it right. It has some great features for paid and unpaid users and teams. I believe it also has integration with Slack and other team communication software.
I used to be a media/press photographer and the team I worked with would put “article suggestions” in one list/collum, “in progress”, “canned” and “live” all in separate lists. As most of the team would work remotely it was a great way to work as everyone would be on the same page. The managers would be able to assign articles to different team members to work on and they’d be able to give updates on the progress of each article.
There are heaps of templates on the Trello site which goes over some ideas on how you can use it.
I use it a few different ways. So I have a few different boards.
2021 Personal Goals
2021 Business Goals
Drivegap (my car community)
Thoughts Collected
Upcoming Projects
2021 Personal Goals - tip: make them achievable.
As you can see, I have all of my “low-level goals”, which are my goals for six to twelve months. These are overarching goals for the year, they are the ones that drive all my other minor and major goals for each quarter.
I then have my first-quarter goals, second and so on. I mark all of my goals green once completed then I go and move them to the completed section. As you know I think accountability is crucial to sticking on track with any sort of goals, and having due dates just push me harder to achieve them, so writing them in quarterly collums is a great way to visualise where I'm at.
Within each of these tabs, I'm able to write each goal and add in a short description. It’s become a list. Within each board, I can have as many lists as I want but I usually keep it to 4-6 lists otherwise it starts to do my head in. My business goals always correlate with my personal goals.
Thoughts Collected
Another way I use Trello is by using it as a massive progress bar, what do you mean by that you probably ask. Well I'm about to get into that
As you can see, (left to right) I have article ideas, in progress, completed, posted then bin. It's pretty self-explanatory, but any sort of article ideas I have (whether that be at 10 PM or 7 AM when I’m eating breakfast) I just put them in there. As the idea grows I start to write some dot points on the contents of the article. If I decide to write it I move it into In Progress once it's completed I move it into completed. At the time I'm writing everything in Google Docs so I just link the file in the description so it's easy to access for me later - yes you can attach files but I find it easier to link as it's always up to date Once the article is live on my website, social media and medium then I move it over to post. If for whatever reason I decide to delete an article I move it to the bin and leave it there, I do this in case inspiration hits and I want to start again or if the information from it could be used in another article.
So from here, I've shown you two ways I use Trello, there are honestly unlimited possibilities to how it can be used and for all of my other boards, I use it the same way as the two examples above.
You're going to hate me.
I switched from using Trello a couple of months ago, at the time I was researching alternative options. The main reason I was even looking at switching was that I wanted a platform that could do a little bit more than just boards, lists and whatnot. Trello is pretty basic but it's also powerful within a limit, and don't get me wrong I would still recommend it to anyone - especially those who are after a task tracker, ideas board or anything like that.
Notion - It's all in one space
I switched to Notion.
Notion is a big blank workspace for everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. It's super powerful and I'm probably using it to about 10% (if not less) of what it can truly do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA7si7AmPkY&t=178s
I still have my work boards as I did with Trello, except now they're all separated into each project/business/my personal life. Within each of those workspaces, I'm able to create pages that correlate with different parts of pages across Notion. As you can see below, inside my Thoughts Collected workspace, I have two items, Article Progress and Articles.
In article progress, it's the same as Trello, I have my progress board and I use it in the same way as Trello - so I won't bother re-explaining it.
Now, in the articles workspace, I have a few pages of the articles I've started to write, for example, this one. Instead of using Google Drive and Google Docs like I was previously I've been writing all of my articles here. The reason is that I find it simpler to have pretty much everything in one place, it's just as powerful as any document editor and it's super pretty (so bonus points). What's awesome is I can link all of my in-progress articles to the pages of the article itself, instead of dropping a hyperlink in the description. I'm not saying that Notion is a replacement for G Drive or G Docs, as honestly, I couldn't live without either of them or my Google Workspace (legit could not live without them), all I’m saying is that when I'm project planning, writing or doing anything creative like that - I want to have it all in one app or workspace instead of spread across G Drive, Trello and whatever else.
As I said, Notion can be super powerful, I've seen people use it as a wiki for their business or workplace so team members can look up procedures or certain items. If you want something more advanced than what I'm using it for, there is so much content on youtube about how advanced you can go with such a simple tool.
For my Photo Project Ideas, I'm able to jot down a few ideas on a page, I can then add galleries of concept images and insert youtube videos on tutorials on how I can achieve this look.
If you haven't already picked up on it, I love that with Notion all my projects, ideas, articles, work boards are in one place. It's also synced instantly to the cloud, which can be super useful as I usually use my Macbook Pro when at the office or in my home office, but then when I'm travelling or out and about I can use it on my tablet and get the same experience, or I can jot down a couple of quick ideas as they come to mind on my phone - and everything is exactly as I left it on another device, or I could sign-in on a web browser if I'm using somebody else's computer. Did I mention it's free? Yes, completely free unless you want some more advance features (eg. version history, admin tools etc) or your team is larger than 5.
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