Hello Trello!

Today’s subject has made me come over all poetic as it’s so easy to rhyme. Trello. Yellow. Mellow. Shellow (as in Shellow Bowells[1], magnificently named Essex village where I enjoyed a very fine dinner on my 30^th birthday).

Today I’m talking about the dreaded to do list and how the heck you manage it without it managing you. I’ve turned to Trello. “What is that, Ruth?” you may well ask. I’ll tell you. It’s a web-based Kanban-style list-making application[2].

When I first went freelance, I had just the one client. I wrote two articles for a Christian charity magazine three times a year. I had no need for a to do list as my life consisted of looking after three children under 6 while trying to write lucid prose.

Over the years, my to do list was upgraded to notes on the back of an envelope. Trouble was, I kept losing the envelope. I started a to do list on my computer but even though I’d enjoy a couple of seconds of enormous satisfaction every time I deleted an entry, the list never got any shorter.

Last year, by now writing for three charities and developing a list of private clients, I really needed to get organised. I tried an online platform which sent me a daily email. Where the software went wrong was in not having real consequences. For example, “Complete tax return 2018/2019, 275 days overdue,” didn’t make me sit up and think “Good heavens, I really must file my tax return even though I’ve still got 3 months to do it.”

Then one day – hello! And so, we return to my poetic opening paragraph. Trello[3] has a way of doing things which chimes with my own creatively spontaneous (for which read last-minute) working style.

Firstly, and this is key, it’s super easy to set up and use. It has to be. I’m not in the first flush of youth and technology for the sake of it has never been my thing.

I’m a visual person and that’s the second reason I get on so well with Trello. It invites you to open a new board (like a noticeboard up on the wall) which you name. Then you can change the background if you like. It gives you lots of colours and photographs to choose from which is fun. And you’re off, adding cards (months or projects, whatever you need to track) and colour coding each task.

My More Than Writers Trello board takes me up to August, with each month having a title and some notes and a due date. In principle (and we’ll see how this plays out), I should never miss a deadline again.

Thirdly, the easy-to-read and friendly style of presentation means that I am back in control of my writing world again. In my mind, I can wander from one noticeboard to another, looking at what comes next, pondering the subject and sticking virtual Post-It notes on to my boards as thoughts race across my brain. To me, Trello looks like a large, cosy room, a virtual library if you like, to which I’ve got access 24 hours a day. It’s a writer’s dream.

I asked God to send me more work and he answered me so generously. I have to stop and think now when people ask me who I’m writing for. It is the most wonderful thing – I feel like a “proper” writer. And proper writers need to be organised. No more envelopes or scraps of paper.

Hello!

Images by Pixabay

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[1] An actual place, I kid you not.

[2] I had no idea what that meant either. Posh to do list, in essence.

[3] Other online organisational platforms are available