Inbox zero. A myth?
For many months unfortunately it was absolutely impossible for me to get anywhere near the magic number ZERO. It is a daily struggle too. With a time reflection on my side I can see now that this all comes down to really bad habits. First one – keeping emails as reminders. Are you guilty of this too? I used to keep emails unanswered just so that I would eventually answer or do whatever was required. Or even worst – keep them unanswered as you know that it involves a lot of complex work . I would leave them there, in fact pretend they don’t exist for weeks until it was really getting rather ridiculous. If that wasn’t bad enough. I used to email myself reminders. Sometimes as late as just before I was going to bed, because something popped in my head and I wanted to make sure it is on top of my inbox the very next day.
Those really are not in any way constructive habits and they lead to a never ending list of emails that it is almost impossible to get through on a daily basis.
Then I found Trello and I saw the light
Trello isn’t anything new. It has been around since 2014 and I think the true magic lies not in the tool itself but how you use it. I remember looking into Trello a couple of years ago and thinking: “nah, just another fancy tool’. Oh my, how wrong was I!
Mike and I work together. It is important for us to be able to communicate easily and have a track of that conversation. Even though we often are in the same room – it kind of doesn’t work. As by constantly distracting ourselves we knew we didn’t work to our full potential.
The blueprint for success
Over the last few months we have been working on the ideal setup in Trello. I think now – we found the solution. I have created an open Trello board as a template for you to look at and copy. We call it our “Grand Design” because we include EVERYTHING in there. Our personal lives, kids appointments, life and business goals and agenda. It just makes it easy to have everything in one place.
All boards are designed to go from left to right. So that all cards aim to eventually land all the way on the right in the DONE bucket. We review it on a daily basis but to be honest you could do it on a weekly and monthly basis too. This may be a good way to review your progress. You can view and use our Trello template freely.
Do you have any super Trello hacks? Post in the comments – we are always on the lookout to improve our existing processes!