Get More Done Without Lifting a Finger (Using Trello)

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Table of Contents

Podcast Description

Hey Trello fans! If you’re not tapping into Trello’s automation features yet to help you get more done without lifting a finger, you’re seriously missing out. But don’t worry – I got you!

Keep listening to learn how to manage tasks effortlessly in Trello, why you should’ve started yesterday and get practical examples for your own Trello boards.

Links Referenced in Episode:

▶ Learn more about the Systems Savvy Society

▶ Check out the Instagram Content Planner

▶ Episode 27: Top Reasons Why You Should Automate Your Online Business

▶ Episode 73: How To Save 7+ Hours Every Single Week

Connect with me:

Website | Instagram

Watch on YouTube:

Episode Transcript

(Note: This is a formatted AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through, but is not an optimized blog post. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

Episode Intro

Hey Trello fans. If you’re not tapping into Trello’s automation features yet to help you get more done without lifting a finger, then you’re seriously missing out. Don’t worry. I got you. Keep listening to learn how to manage your tasks more effortlessly in Trello, why you should have started it like yesterday and get practical examples for your own Trello boards.

Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, your host of the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast, where I’m on a mission to help online entrepreneurs that like you focus on all the right things and kiss overwhelmed goodbye. Here, you’re going to learn strategies that will boost your productivity so that you can scale your online biz and impact lives sooner. It’s your time to shine. So let’s get started.

Didn’t Know Trello Automations Existed

Hey, welcome back to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast I am really excited about today’s topic, because as you may know, I am a huge Trello nerd and I absolutely love geeking out about all of its amazing features that are truly going to help you maximize your efficiency and get more done. But I was on an interview for someone else’s podcast.

You’ll hear about the episode soon if you follow me on my email list or on social media, but it was surprising to know that they were shocked to know that you could even do automations in Trello, like that is one of the most powerful features that Trello has to offer.

And it’s not widely known. And that was very surprising to me, obviously, as someone who lives and breathes Trello and has her entire business managed in Trello. Okay, I’m talking about me in third person, which is a little weird, but whatever I’m going to go with it.

And I was really surprised to see that this might not be as known as I thought it was. And it has actually been the topic of the week inside of my Systems Savvy Society. I just dropped a handful of Trello automation tutorials inside of the Society and members have been going through it and already started seeing results, already started seeing time saved and effort saved.

And so it’s really, it’s really something that I highly recommend that if you aren’t already using Trello, that you look to see what features, what automations you could implement and create to just make it easier for yourself to manage these tasks.

How to Get More Done Using Trello

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode, which is how to get more done using Trello, using the automation feature in Trello, which can actually handle these repetitive tasks for you that you either just want to get off your plate. You don’t want to do it.

You forget to do it all the time, but now if you set up an automation to do it for you, it doesn’t matter because it’s getting taken care of. And so there’s little automation features, there’s little things that you can automate within your Trello boards that is just one to make everything so much easier for you and just take off some weight off your shoulders.

I know that conversation that I had, she was even like, whoa, like I already feel lighter just thinking about the possibilities of what can be automated inside of Trello. And don’t worry, we’re going to dive into some examples, but it really wanted to kind of get that point across that this is something that you can do.

You can automate certain tasks within Trello itself without needing to integrate to other tools. So if you are using Trello, you are a Trello user. Definitely, definitely be sure to go into that little automations button, don’t let it intimidate you.

Why Use Trello Automations?

There’s so many things that you can do, so many tasks that you can automate, and this is especially helpful if you are a soloprenuer or if you’re someone who just has a small team, because there’s really helps you just get all this stuff off of your shoulders.

It helps you get these tasks done without you having to do it yourself. And you can also set it up in a way to help you automate certain tasks to get delegated over to your team members with time saved and less mental energy wasted. So I just really want to say let you know that this is a thing that is possible.

This is something that you could do. And if you’re still not convinced, Like why should you even use automations? Why should you even automate things in your business? Then I highly recommend that you go and listen to episode 27 where I actually talk about why you should automate your business and why automation is not a scary thing.

It shouldn’t be seen as intimidating. It shouldn’t be this thing that gets pushed off until you’re ready. Right. It’s something that can really benefit you now, especially in this time in place where we are feeling so overwhelmed by all of the different things. Go listen to an episode and figure out why you should automate your business and just know that automating your Trello boards is no different.

Saves you time

It is all in giving you the same benefits, like saving you time. by not having to manually track or manually update any status labels that you might be using, or sending reminder emails to yourself or a team member, when they’ve been assigned a task, that’s precious time that you have back in your pocket.

You don’t have to do these tasks manually and yes, you can do this directly from Trello. In episode 73, I actually talk about how you can save seven plus hours a week and spoiler alert, one of those ways is through automation. And more specifically like we’re talking about in this episode using Trello automations. This episode, if you can tell is definitely for my Trello users out there.

Increases your efficiency

Now the next reason why is increased efficiency. So automations can really help you streamline your workflow so that we use can start to focus on these high impact, money-making tasks, money-making activities, because you’re not having to worry about these little tiny tedious tasks, because they’re already being taken care of for you.

So some examples that I gave you are like using the label features, but if you also don’t want to be forgetful with the tasks that you have assigned to yourself. You can set up automations to send you notifications, to assign due dates, to add certain checklist for your workflows for certain tasks and certain boards.

Like the list goes on and on and on. But it can really be set up in a way to increase your efficiency, to help you get more done in less time, to help you improve your focus and all of this in turn helps you focus on the tasks that really matter. Like, does it really make sense for you to have to manually update every single card label? No. Like you shouldn’t be the one doing it. Definitely set up an automation to do this.

Reduces mistakes

By setting up automations, it also helps reduce human error. Let’s face it. Like we make mistakes. I was actually just talking to my son about this. I just got done eating lunch with my son and we actually talked about how you can make mistakes. So he has been helping me with the business recently over the summer.

And he created this form for me on a completely different place where it wasn’t stored in is not easily able to be replicated. So that was a mistake. And I told him, that’s fine. I know I get it. I know that there is going to be mistakes. The more human input you have,

The more chances you have at making a mistake and that’s totally fine. You’re going to learn from your mistakes. However, if you can reduce the amount of human impact that you have in certain tasks, then there are going to be a less room for having mistakes. for example, Let’s say you’re creating your workflow from scratch every single time you’re posting on Instagram.

Or every single time you are let’s say editing a reel has used the example of editing a reel. So maybe you go to your Instagram board and every single time you are manually typing in what the task you’re going to do. I’m going to record the reel. I’m going to edit the reel. I’m going to post the reel. And you do that every single time.

And then one day you’re like, oh snap, I forgot. I also need to make sure that I add captions to the reel so that way people can actually read it instead of listening to it. But you don’t add that to your actual workflow that is automated, that’s automatically adding those checklists to your cards for you.

And one day you forget to add it. And now you’ve posted the real without the captions, which could have easily been fixed if you had added it to your workflow to begin with and set up an automation to already have that checklist available in these cards for you, without you having to spend those couple minutes being like, okay, what am I going to do? And then repeating this every single time. So that’s just one example.

Enhances your focus

And then lastly, I already mentioned this, but you can enhance your focus because you’re having fewer distractions from these tiny tasks that you have to do, which allows you to focus and concentrate more on those strategic decision making and creative projects that every single entrepreneur has to make.

We have so many tasks going on. We have so many projects that we’re working on a daily basis. And the more you can automate, the more time you’ll have, which means you’ll have a better focus to actually work on those things and do them better.

So those are like some big reasons why, if you haven’t started using automations and specifically Trello automations on your Trello boards, These are the reasons why you should start now. Like these are the reasons why you should have, you should be already implementing them in inside of your Trello boards.

Trello Automation Examples

So let’s actually get into some very real examples to help you visualize what this would look like in a real situation.

Using Labels on Client Projects Board

So let’s say you’re a service provider and you have a client projects board. So whenever you are marking, you’re going through this project board for your clients and you have the different tasks that you have to work on.

Well, maybe when you have marked a card, a task card as done. Maybe you have it automated to where it is dragged over to the completed list automatically without you having to sit there and mess with your mouse. Because if for some reason, my mouse can’t click and drag. I don’t know what it is, but these window updates have really been getting to me.

But anyways, so that way you don’t have to like sit there and mess with the mouse, click and hold the card and then drag it. Hopefully you don’t have too many lists because then you’d be dragging for a long time. Right. And drag it over. And then hopefully, you don’t accidentally drop it into the wrong list and now you have to mess with the mouse again, click it, hold it.

And then drag it again until you finally get it to the completed list. Right? Real example, this is what happens to me when I don’t have that automation set up. Well, you can set up an automation that as soon as you add that label, it takes care of it for you. It automatically moves that card over. You didn’t have to sit there and mess with her mouse and try to figure out how to like drag and hold in and move it across and accidentally placed in the wrong list.

And maybe you had an other, another automation set up to where if it gets added to those lists, something else happens. And now it’s a whole thing, right? Like. Whew. Can you tell, like these examples have happened to me. So that’s something that you can do, and that is such a simple automation that will take you less than 30 seconds to create. I promise it will take you so fast.

It will be like, wow. Why haven’t I been doing this? It takes you less than 30 seconds to complete, and it saves you how much time, because how much time, how many times are you actually dragging those cards over? You’re going to like 10 X amount of time that you spent actually creating this automation in Trello, specifically.

Due Date Notifications

Another automation that I absolutely love is to make sure that you are getting notifications for any due dates that you have assigned for yourself or for a team member.

So if you want to make sure that you are being notified, then you need to make sure that you are a member of the card or that you’re watching the card. And so instead of you having to like assign the due date to the card and actually take the extra step of adding yourself to the card, then you can also set up an automation that says whenever this card or whenever. a card gets a due date added to it, assign it to me or assign it to this team member

by adding me to the card. You can set up automations for this. it does it automatically for you. And that is how you make sure that you actually get the notification. There is a little thing with Trello that if you are not a member of the card, if you’re not watching the card, then you may not see the notification pop up on your phone or your desktop. You might not see it.

It might just be there. So whenever you get to it, next time, you will see that you miss a deadline, but you won’t actually get the notification for it. So this is another way for you to make sure that you’re not missing these deadlines by accident because you totally forgot about it. And you forgot to add it to your weekly board.

Adding Checklists Based on Lists

So that’s another automation that loves to do. Another thing that also likes to do is to categorize your content ideas.

I have an Instagram Content Planner. I’ll actually link to that in the show notes. I haven’t Instagram content planner where you can have different lists. So you have a list for your reels, a list for your stories, a list for your posts. And if you’re planning your content, your planning your content for Instagram, your posts for Instagram, maybe you’re using the calendar view, which is how I like to do it.

I use a calendar view and I’ll just use that to create my posts and I’m adding them to specific lists on the board. So that way, specifically will gets applied to it and a specific checklist that gets added to the card without me having to do it myself. All I have to do is go to my calendar view.

I type in the topic on the date that I want to post it on. I added to the list. It’s all within. Like, if you’re a Trello user, maybe you can imagine it. But it’s all there. I’m creating the card. I’m naming it. I’m already selecting what list is going to go on, done and it automatically applies the correct labels to it. It automatically adds the proper checklist to workflow for me to do

and now it’s done. Like, I didn’t have to do any of it myself. So these are just some examples of what you can with Trello automations, like the power of using Trello automations in your Trello boards.

Join the Systems Savvy Society

Like I said, I just dropped a handful of step-by-step tutorials that you can implement inside of the Systems Savvy Society, which is all about helping you create and optimize task management workflows, specifically using Trello. And then we also cover other tools that are going to help you improve your efficiency But we are truly focused mostly on using an enhancing Trello to make everything else in your business more streamlined.

So if you really want more support with that, then I highly highly recommend that you Check us out. And that you join us inside the System Savvy Society at cheerstoproductivity.com/sss. I will absolutely link to that in the show notes. Okay. I will show you exactly how to get these set up step by step.

Episode Wrap-Up

So just to recap, Trello automations are saving you time. They’re boosting your efficiency, they’re reducing your errors and enhancing your focus. So making them essential for you, especially as a solopreneur or someone with a very small team, these are essential for you to really get your workflows optimized.

So definitely be sure to play this episode, if you want to re-listen to the examples that I shared, or if you want the step-by-step, if you have any requests, if you want to be able to ask questions on like, Hey, Is there a way for me to automate this on my Trello board? Or I would really like to know how I can make this process more efficient. Or what do you recommend for me to create, what type of board should I create if I’m trying to achieve X goal?

That’s what this society is all about. And I would absolutely love to support you in that journey. So be sure to check us out, I’ll link to everything in the show notes and until next time. Bye for now.

Thank you so much for listening to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast with me Lucy Reyes. To view the complete show notes and all of the links mentioned in today’s episode, visit cheerstoproductivity.com/75. And before you go, make sure you follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening so you know once the next productive chat is released. Talk soon and cheers to your productivity and success!