My #1 Productivity Tips (+ more!)

Bit of a clickbait? Well, maybe, but it’s also true. Because I will give you my #1 productivity tips and a lot of extra info too. Because I like to talk. *halo*

My Productivity Journey

So I have always been a fan of lists. To-do lists were my jam, whether written in the Notes app on my phone, in my Reminders app, in Evernote, on sticky notes, or on random pieces of paper. I love making lists. I kept lists throughout my school years of the stuff I had to do on given days, because schedules just weren’t good enough—I needed a good logical list to work with.

Bonus Productivity Tip #1: Bullet Journaling

When I was probably 17, my mother introduced me to bullet journaling.

Now, I like bullet journaling. I love the idea of having a bullet journal. And posts like this from Tara @ Tower in the Plains (she has a whole slew of posts on bullet journaling and they’re all awesome so check them all out on that link) were super inspiring.

I love how much scope there is in bullet-journaling. Everything in one place. Lots of room to expand or add stuff. You can fill it with Bible Reading Schedules, Books To Be Read lists, shopping lists, weightloss tracking, and anything you can think of. You can add quotes and legends and everything.

However, I find that bullet journalling is hard for me. It’s a great place to do random mind-dumps, but for everyday to-do lists, I need one simple todo list standing on its own.

Bonus Productivity Tip #2: Paper To-Do Lists.

For a while I used schedules and to-do lists from the amazing Rachel @ Everyday Blooms. That worked very well for a long time.

Lots of listing place, water tracking, places for notes… it was really good.

But after a while I began to find it a problem that I had to a) redo the lists constantly or b) write them in ink so they couldn’t be erased but then be unable to customize them to a certain day.

So what I wanted was something I could reuse constantly and customize as I needed it.

Bonus Productivity Tip #3: Trello

That’s when I decided to use Trello.

I used Trello for school for a while because my mother used it to make our schedules for us. I also used it for packing lists for the same reason. So I was familiar with how it works. I quickly whipped up a to-do list of all the things I had to do and started using it. Over the next few days I perfected my method.

Trello is a free app for phones and computers. With it you create individual boards (see above). In the individual boards you can make individual lists, as seen below:

On each item in that list, you can add things like attachments, checklists, due and start dates, and labels. I like to arrange my stuff by alphabetical order, but you can easily arrange it by most to least important or any way you like.

Now, what I have, is a To-Do list where I put in everything I need to to today. I add everything, even stuff like “put on jewelry.” It helps me remember what I did and also gives me a sense of accomplishment.

The second list is a Done list (I stole this idea from the lovely Erika @ Resting Life) and that is where I move all the items that I’ve completed (you hold a card and move it manually over to the other list.) I don’t mind adding too much stuff on my to-do lists because I can always leave it there for the next day. Every morning I move over the cards from Done to To Do unless its done for good and then I archive it (delete it). I even have a Frequent list where I can save cards that I use frequently but not every day:

For the things that I need to do sometime soon…

For the stuff I need to do sometime soon and is more pressing:

Now, I also have a schedule—

One list for every day of the week. I found that harder to handle because I couldn’t mark off the things as I did them, so I haven’t really used this yet. As you can see, I have checklists on every card for the stuff I have to do that is in that section (ex: devotions—bible reading, bible journaling, prayer, devotionals, etc).