Setting up your Kanban board from scratch
If you’re new to ClickUp, do not start by using one of the built-in templates for Kanban. I’ve made that mistake more than once, and every time, I end up deleting 80% of it because it includes unnecessary automations, views, or fields I didn’t need. It’s better to just start from a fresh space or folder, create a new list, and change the view to Board.
Once you have that board view open, you’ll want to rename the columns to match stages you actually understand. For weekly deadlines, I use:
– To Do This Week
– In Progress
– Blocked or Waiting
– Done (this week)
I add a new board each Monday to keep things fresh. Reusing week-to-week boards sounds smart until you forget to archive old tasks and everything starts overlapping 😬
There’s no right answer here—but keeping weekly boards separate has saved me more than once when I had to figure out why something was “done” but not actually completed (spoiler: it was marked as done last week and got copied over by accident).
Custom fields that actually matter for deadlines
I used to think assignee and due date were enough, but nope. If five tasks are due Friday and don’t get done, good luck figuring out which ones tanked the sprint. So here’s what I ended up adding:
1. **Deadline Type** (dropdown): Client, Internal, Personal Interest, Recurring
2. **Estimated Time** (number): I round up, because time tracking is a lie 🫠
3. **Recurring?** (checkbox): For stuff like weekly updates or finance reviews
4. **Priority** (select): High, Medium, Low, or Chaos (yes, I have a Chaos label)
You can add these as custom fields in List settings > Add Field. Once they’re on the board view, you can filter it by priority or see how many chaos tasks you’ve accidentally accepted again. I usually turn on swimlanes too when I’m feeling chaotic organized.
Just be aware that custom fields don’t copy correctly between lists unless you use templates—so if you manually build a fresh list every week (like me), you’ll need to recreate those fields or save a custom field template.
Linking weekly deadlines to repeating goals
Okay, this is where it gets weird. Say I’ve got a weekly goal to publish one blog post, send invoice follow-ups, and update one client report. They’re the same every week, just with different details.
I tried using ClickUp’s Goals feature to track it, but updating targets manually every week felt like more work than doing the tasks 😩 So instead, I use recurring tasks and add a checklist to each one, linked in the Kanban.
Example:
– Task Name: “🌱 Weekly Growth Tasks – Week of Oct 2”
– Recurs every 7 days
– Checklist inside: [ ] Write blog, [ ] Send invoices, [ ] Update dashboard
I drag that task into the “To Do This Week” column each Monday. Then I split individual subtasks if needed, depending on how overloaded I feel. This worked better for me because I could glance at the Kanban and see the size of each week’s batch—without relying on Goals or Docs links.
Also, recurring tasks don’t behave intuitively. If you change the due date manually or copy something too early, the automation won’t trigger at the right time next week. I’ve learned to only mark these recurring tasks as done—never duplicate them. Otherwise, remind yourself to dig through ClickUp’s weird Recurrence Log under Activity. Yep, it’s buried.
Fitting external tools into your weekly Kanban
This maybe isn’t for everyone, but I’ve got Forms feeding my ClickUp board, and it gets real messy real fast. Clients submit quick-check forms that drop into the “To Do This Week” column. Sounds great, right?
Well. It turns out that if multiple form submissions come in within minutes, ClickUp occasionally collapses them into one task. 😐 Not always, just sometimes. Support told me to add a unique identifier in each form field. So now I add a timestamp or email at the top of each form, and map it to the task name.
This lets me catch duplicates right on the Kanban board if they show up looking too similar. You can also make automations to set Priority or Deadline Type based on form responses.
Oh, and speaking of external tools—pasting Google Docs URLs in the comments area of the task works fine, but embedding documents in ClickUp doesn’t always show the file preview. Sometimes it just says “file not found,” even though the link is public. I don’t use the Docs embed anymore and rely on just pasting clean URLs.
A few things that consistently break
Let’s just be honest here. This is the part where the wheels usually fall off. Here’s what I’ve had repeatedly break in my board setup:
– Tasks sometimes disappear from the board view when filtering by custom fields 😑 I had a day where half my Monday tasks weren’t showing because the filter got stuck between true/false logic
– Automations firing twice when using Recurring + Board Movement together (e.g. “if moved to Done, mark complete”)—it triggers on creation and on movement
– Board columns not loading unless you manually refresh (especially if you keep the same browser tab open for a couple days like me)
– Subtasks not reflecting their parent task status if moved manually—yep, I had a “Done” parent with four open subtasks dragging down the whole week
In other words, when something doesn’t look right, open the same list in Table view to do triage. The board visuals are good for flow, but Table view shows where things went sideways.
Color coding that actually helps you spot problems
Tagging everything used to feel like overkill until I tried color coding based on problem areas. Here’s what I landed on:
– **Red** tags: Tasks I know will be painful, require follow-ups, or have clients involved 🙂
– **Yellow** tags: Weekly recurring things, like reporting or invoicing
– **Blue** tags: Internal stuff that can be pushed if needed
– **Gray** tags: Stuff I dropped in but haven’t committed to doing this week (aka bargain bin)
By coloring them this way, I get a quick visual on whether my week is full of fire alarms, boring routines, or safe deferrable work. You can’t filter tags directly on the Kanban board unless you add them as field filters—but eh, I usually just eyeball it.
If you really want to go deep into filtering, save a filtered view that shows only Red-tagged tasks where “Deadline Type” = Client. That’s my version of a panic dashboard 😅
The one automation that’s worth keeping enabled
I’ve tried setting up recurring automations to create weekly lists, move overdue tasks, comment reminders—the whole deal. Most of them caused more confusion than help. But this one I love:
– **Trigger:** When a task is moved to Done (in Kanban)
– **Condition:** Custom field “Recurring?” is not checked
– **Action:** Archive the task
Without this, your Done column bloats fast, especially if you don’t clear it weekly. But I had to add the “Recurring?” exclusion because it was archiving my recurring tasks that needed to regenerate next week 🙃
You can set this in the Automation panel right from Board view. Just make sure to test it on a dummy task first.
How I stop myself from abandoning the system
Every few weeks, I get tempted to abandon the board altogether and go back to scratchpad notes. Usually because a client calendar changed, or a big thing blew up mid-week, and suddenly the whole plan feels irrelevant.
But I started doing this at the end of every Friday:
– Open board in Compact mode
– Drag unfinished tasks back to the “To Do” or “Blocked” column
– Rename board to include this week’s date range
– Add a quick comment at the top with what didn’t go as expected
It’s basically a mini postmortem inside the Kanban board itself. I’m not doing this to be productive—I just need a way to remember what the heck happened. Then I duplicate the list for the following week.
I still miss things. I still forget to check forms. But at least I stopped blaming myself when the automations glitch or a task jumps columns