Trello for Life Outside Work

[Thomas Bowskill]

I'm curious in all of the day-to-day activities that people use Trello for, as I've been hooked on JIRA/Confluence for a decade with my work, and in the past year I've found a place for Trello, which is the organisation of my personal life!

The ways Trello has infiltrated my day-to-day:

Shopping List

Every day, as I get off the train, I open Trello to check what is on the family shopping list. And, as I'm often prone to not quite understanding the ask, my wife attaches pictures to the items in the "Get" column. I drag over to the "Got" column when done. So simple and it's been a massive aid; as soon as we run out of something it goes on Trello -- my 4-yo now also tells me to "add it to Trello" ^^'

Spending Time

Another board at home is the list of tasks we have to do that requires our time -- anything that needs more than an hour, really. We have a custom label field for priority (colour coded = Red as high, to green as low) as well as another custom field with the estimated time required to complete the job. Really helpful knowing 1) which jobs we have time to do, and 2) which jobs we keep avoiding and should really look to get someone else to do. Columns are "To do", "Done", "Not going to do"

Spending Money

Naturally, we want more than we can afford, so creating a list of all the significant cost commitments has helped us work out which things matter the most, and which items are too low down on the priority. Everything we want to get we add here, and review them together, with the visibility of all the other things we want to do -- again, there is a colour-coded custom field for priority and one for cost of the item. Columns are "To get", "Got", "Not going to get"

Vegetable Deliveries 

Probably the nerdiest one and not something I do per-se: I chat each week to the man who delivers our vegetables. He runs the team that manages distribution in our part of the country, and he was talking about how hard it is to manage his to do lists. A few weekly chats later and he's a Trello convert. I love the accessibility of Trello.

So nothing I've done is revolutionary -- probably quite primitive boards -- but it's had a great impact. Really interested in any other examples of how people use Trello to organise their life. And any tips people have for how I could further improve my use of the product :)

[Vickey Palzor Lepcha]

I am on Free Version of Trello so I have limitations interms of the number of boards that I can have yet I have been using it for quite sometime now for a lot of stuffs.

1) Bills - I manage all my bills via one board , due dates that it has lets me complete things on time.

2) Office - I keep all my office meetings on this board.

3) Learning Path - I try to manage what I am to achieve in terms of learning new skills .

I try to use Trello with SLACK  alot  . I think I will have to learn more about plugins in JIRA.

[Jimmy Seddon]

@Thomas Bowskill couldn't agree with you more when it comes to a shopping list.  A number of time we only end up using a single card with a checklist, but my wife and I use a divide and conquer approach as we don't get everything at one location.  Being about to interact in real time about what we have found to determine the best price and then see what has been picked up and what is still remaining is extremely helpful to us.

[carrie_eandm]

I didn't even think about that - comparing prices in real time. Thanks for mentioning that tidbit!

[Thomas Bowskill]

That's a new addition to my cards now, thanks -- great idea to store down prices for things so we know what the expected price is

[carrie_eandm]

@Thomas Bowskill I love the fact you have the whole family engaged with Trello. I'm excited to have kids so they can tell me the same thing! 

I have a few other uses for Trello myself (outside of work):

• I have one board for my journal (daily gratitude) that I can record events, feelings or just snippets from days or photos that I can look back on.
• I have one board for my book library. I always look at books when I'm out shopping and forget what titles I have at home already - so this is helpful to use as a reference. It also has a rating system of whether I enjoyed the book or didn't finish it.
• When planning trips, I use another board to track all the trip details: departure, arrival, hotel info, excursions, dining, etc. 

Another good use is for holiday gift tracking! Brittany Joiner documents her use here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-articles/How-Trello-Keeps-Me-Sane-With-Holiday-Gift-Giving/ba-p/1209337

If you're looking for even more ideas, check out the community here. You can also look through the Trello Templates and see if anything there strikes your fancy!

[Thomas Bowskill]

Holiday gift tracking has been implemented and is making the buying season much easier.

Book library I would use but I love Goodreads 

And thanks for the Trello templates resource -- going to get my geek on with that!

[Esme Crutchley]

Thank you for this thread @Thomas Bowskill it's awesome!

I have 63 boards, and 38 are work meaning 25 are personally mine. Although, I use Trello on my own, so technically they're all mine!

I have boards for everything!

This is a sample of the boards that I have and I use all of them!

Annual Celebrations - where I put Christmas presents and birthday presents

Car - all things for the car - MOT, servicing, receipts and things like that

Esme's Books - a record of all the books that I've got/read and what I thought about them, and which ones I'm missing (the next part of a trilogy etc)

Filmography - where I put links to IMDB for all the films that the Hubster and I watch and what we think about them

GNU - this is the death board - we put things on this board for family members regarding power of attorney and their wishes for end of life. This is a really random board, but it's something that, as we get older, we need to talk about, so why not make a board for it

House Vision Board - this is where all the things we like for the house, from kitchen utensils to wallpaper, anything we like, goes in here. It's split up into rooms so that we can see how a room might look/work when we finish it

How Tos & Hacks - anything that's useful, how to work a specific Chrome extension, how to save iMessage as PDF, anything useful, goes in here

MTG 2019 - Hubster and I are getting into Magic: The Gathering, so we made a board for it for when we want to start making out own decks. This board is there, front and centre, but not used at the moment. I know that people use Trello for D&D, so we thought we'd start one for MTG

Take-Away or Nay - because Just Eat tells you where you ordered, but not what you thought about the meal, we keep a board that we can note down everything about the meal, the price, what we had, what we thought about it and anything else pertinent

Tax Return 19-20 - I think this is kinda obvious! Any emails with statements/bills, get added to this, any receipts, bank statements, anything useful goes in here.

So that's a little sample of things that I have Trello boards for, some I use every day and some only occasionally, but I do use them all, and with Butler, they all feed into my Desktop Board, so dates when the car MOT or insurance is due, feed into my Desktop, any tech payments (Trello, Nord, Kaspersky) that have due dates, feed into the Desktop. I use the Desktop as my control centre/command hub, every - single - day!

Just thought I'd share my random boards! Although I don't use it for shopping lists, for that I use something else (that shall not be named!)

Hope that this makes other people who have random board feel that they're not alone!

Esme :)

[Thomas Bowskill]

Amazing!

Love, love the takeaway one! Every time we order from restaurants we always end up trying to remember what was good. I see that as a card per restaurant with a list of the different meals.

While morbid, the death board is actually quite a good idea... 

And on a side note: thanks for reminding me my MOT is due :D

[Esme Crutchley]

Thanks @Thomas Bowskill

We have a massive problem with remembering what we like and don't like from a take-away, hence making a board! Also, it's good for working out when our favourite (or not so favourite) chefs might be working - random I know, but for take-aways, they don't always have the same chefs working, so if we order on say a Wednesday night and it's awesome, but a few weeks later we order on a Saturday and it's not so great, it might be because they're snowed under or something like that, but it might also be something we can see if there's a pattern with (remembering that correlation doesn't equal causation). Odd, but it works for us!

The death board is a new addition. I was going to call it death note but then Hubster reminded me that in the film (and books), if you write someone's name in it, they die - maybe not the best plan! So we called is GNU, after Sir Terry Pratchett (my favourite author), which has an STP quote background 'no one is really dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.' Because I have an ageing grandfather, mother & father in law, we use it to keep notes on things they might say when we're talking about something else, like maybe someone they want us to notify or something like that. I agree it's morbid, but it doesn't have to be, and by doing this, we can keep a record of things that happen, if they fall out with someone and they don't want them to be told and things like that, so that we can make sure we observe their wishes.

I'm glad I was able to remind you that the MOT is due! Get that booked in!

:)  

[edwin vasquez]

I've been using it for my chores and things I have to do in my personal life. It helps me track everything I need to do and it allows my significant other to see what I have completed with out her having to ask me. 

[Thomas Bowskill]

That's exactly how I started -- keep joking with my other half that she's going to instate yearly reviews based on the cards I've completed!

[edwin vasquez]

Haha. Yearly reviews?! Let me make sure my wife never sees this. :-D

[Danny]

I use a board for design requests and for tracking requests before going into a scrum of scrums stand up with all teams (this works well when morning requests are coming in).

Thanks,

Danny 

[Peter Jessen]

I travel far too much for work, so keeping in sync on schedule, shopping, etc. with my fiancee and daughter can be a bit crazy. We're creating a common Trello board so they can remind me when my daughter has dance, school stuff, etc. and I can enter cards for all of my upcoming trips and which cities I'll be in.

[Mo Beigi]

I've used Trello for years as a personal TODO list. Initially I was using various TODO apps out there but they were quite meh. Using Trello as a TODO list was second nature for me as a developer. I eventually moved my TODO list to Jira though as I needed some automation but I imagine Trello would work really well for a lot of people! I should make a post about this at some point...

[Emily Koch]

I'm definitely in the "using Trello to manage spending and saving" bucket. I put a list of large purchases I need into a column, and add due dates for recurring payments like insurance. Then, I move them as appointments or installations are scheduled, or when I'm ready to purchase a specific item.

[Katherine Kelley]

Using it to help me manage lots of big/small tasks etc related to Elder Care for a family member. As this is my 3rd relative I've been tasked with this and I've also had to do manage 2 estates through probate stuff - Trello has become invaluable. 

I am using it also to organize craft/hobby projects, gardening ideas, personal care routines, my medical/health stuff (appt I need to make, etc), family tax organization, managing the myriad of home/house stuff, list goes on. I have shared it with family folks who are using it to plan big events.

Has lots of applications and with further improvements and tweaking - I'm hoping it will continue to be my virtual doppelganger/assistent. My piles of lists and paper that never got harnessed into my planner are NOT envious at all over my increasing use of Trello. 

[Katherine Kelley]

And I created a 'dump' list for when too lazy to look up where it should go when I have a new idea or card. It sits all way to left to make access super easy.

I wanted images for each list so I made a card that 'sits' at top with an image corresponding to that list and I call it a 'CoverCard'. Now maybe the paid versions allow lists to have images, etc but free one don't think so this is my work around. I am very visual oriented with my tasks/life in general so I do need as much visual cues as possible while balancing not overloading too much text to have to decipher at quick looks.