Build a Trello board that actually matches your brain
Here’s where I always mess up the first time: I build a perfect Trello board that looks good but doesn’t match the way I actually think. If it takes ten clicks and a full scroll to see what I need to do today — that board is going to sit there like an abandoned Roomba. So let’s talk about how to build it in a way that matches how your brain jumps around.
Start ridiculously simple. Don’t even touch labels or automations yet.
Set up these lists:
– INBOX (everything messy you don’t want to forget but don’t want to deal with now)
– NEXT (stuff you actually intend to do this week)
– WAITING (things stuck because someone else has to do something)
– TODAY (you look at this tomorrow and move 1-3 things from NEXT into HERE)
– DONE (optional, mainly as a way to trick yourself into feeling accomplished)
I know it sounds embarrassingly simple, but this exact setup is what finally stopped me from rewriting my system every ten days. The critical part is having a real INBOX. Any time something interrupts your brain (Slack pings, ideas while brushing teeth, a barely coherent grocery list), toss it into a messy Trello card in that list.
Another trick that helped: add a prefix to your card titles to visually group them without fiddling with tags. Stuff like:
– 🚫 [BLOCKED] — can’t move until Boss replies
– 🧠 [IDEA] — might never do, just feels good to see it
– 🧺 [HOUSE] — domestic stuff I won’t care about in 24 hours
You can search Trello later like “label:IDEA” or “blocker” depending on how wild your prefixes go. Honestly, just typing the titles like this has saved me more stress than any Butler automation ever has.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Link cards to actual dates with Google Calendar
Here’s exactly what doesn’t work: manually copying due dates from your Trello cards into Google Calendar events. You will forget and they will rot. Trust me, I did this for three months and every single meeting with myself was ghosted.
Instead, you need something that syncs one-way — from Trello over to your calendar — and treats the card’s due date like an actual scheduled block. You could use Trello’s built-in Calendar Power-Up, but that view is still “pull-based” (you have to remember to open it). I prefer having things pushed into my calendar.
To do that:
– Go to Board → Show Menu → Power-Ups → Calendar
– Enable that Calendar and grab the secret iCal feed URL they give you
– Paste that into Google Calendar using “Add by URL”
Now here’s the detail they don’t explain: Trello’s calendar feed updates super slowly. You might change a due date and see the wrong thing in Google Calendar for hours. It’s frustrating at first, but once you understand that it’s only good for daily/week planning (not hour-by-hour), it’s fine.
If you need something faster and more real-time, you can:
– Use a Zapier zap so that when a card is moved to the TODAY list, it creates an actual calendar event for that day
– Have each list represent a day of the week instead of a status
Personally, I get overwhelmed when my calendar gets too cluttered with fake events, so now I only auto-create calendar events if there’s an actual meeting or physical appointment attached. For tasks, I keep them inside Trello’s list system and just review them next to my calendar.
Use Butler to automate card movement
Butler inside Trello is weirdly powerful, but also weirdly limited — like a dog that can do backflips but refuses to fetch. Here’s one of the few automations I’ve gotten to consistently work without causing myself chaos:
“Every day at 7am → move all cards with label ‘TODAY’ into TODAY list”
But here’s the better version:
“Every card added to TODAY list → remove label ‘TODAY’ (since this list already IS today)”
Otherwise, you end up with a card called ‘Pay Bills’ that has both a TODAY label and is in the TODAY list, and the redundancy will drive you slightly insane.
Little detail I forget every time: Butler can only run scheduled commands if you’re on a paid plan. Free plan only gets card-based triggers (like “when I move this…”). So just use card movement automations, and don’t bother setting up recurring ones unless you’ve checked your plan tier. I spent 45 minutes trying to debug a schedule that literally wasn’t allowed to run 🙁
Also keep an eye on the log. Butler loves to silently fail. You’ll think your morning automation is running and it hasn’t fired once in a week.
Create a weekly review checklist card
I’ve tried putting my review checklist in Notion, in a Google Doc, even in a paper planner at one point. The only one that stuck for more than a month was when I put it straight into Trello.
Make a card called “📝 Weekly Review” and pin it to the top of your NEXT list. Inside the card, write out a checklist like this:
– Review INBOX and archive junk/cards I’ll never touch
– Move cold cards to LATER or ARCHIVE
– Drag 3–5 cards into NEXT for the upcoming week
– Is there anything in WAITING that should be followed up?
– Did I actually finish anything? Move it into DONE
Then — and this part matters — set a due date on that card every Friday at 4pm. Even better, automate it with Butler to reset the card’s due date every week. That way your review doesn’t slowly drift into oblivion because you forgot one week.
I also attach a Calendar link inside the card to actually block out the 30 minutes during which I’ll do it. Otherwise, no chance it happens.
Make your card titles brutally obvious
This isn’t a formatting tip — it’s a survival tactic. If you name your card something vague like “Website updates” you will never know what it means two days later, and it will rot in the NEXT list forever.
Instead, write card titles like:
– “Fix broken link on about page”
– “Send invoice to Rachel for March”
– “Decide AirBnb location for Minneapolis trip”
The trick is to imagine your future self coming into this Trello board half-tired or half-distracted. Will they instantly know what a card means, or will it just look like yesterday’s to-do tweet? Treat it like a text message to your Friday brain.
I used to try to add extra instructions inside the card’s description field, but honestly, I never clicked into them. I now put all the critical info straight into the title: deadlines in parentheses, any names involved, even shorthand like “(priority)” or “(urgentish)” in the title.
Feels messier on first glance but… better mess you can work with > clean mess you forget exists.
Sync incoming emails or forms into Trello
This is one of those setups that sounds overkill at first — until you do one test and realize it’s actually incredible. Here’s the problem it solves: you read an email with a task in it, and then—poof—it’s gone because reading ≠ remembering.
Use Trello’s email-to-board feature (each board gets a custom email address) to forward actionable emails directly into your INBOX list.
Or, if you want something smarter:
– Set up a Zapier zap: When a Gmail email comes in with a certain label (“ToTrello” or “FollowUp”), create a card in Trello
You can use that for client requests, quote forms, customer issues, etc. I also have one that takes Google Form submissions and makes a card with the response pre-filled, assigned to myself, and tagged (I use 🧨 as default label when something needs attention).
Note: Zapier sometimes randomly stops working if you rename a Trello list. If you used to have “INBOX” and renamed it to “INPUT” or “Capture,” your zap might silently start failing because it can’t find the target list anymore. Learned that the hard way when three form responses vanished into the void.
How I track recurring tasks without being annoyed
Recurring tasks are one of Trello’s weak spots. There is no native recurring card function. Yes, you can kind of fake it with Calendar Power-Up and due dates, but that never felt stable.
What works better: make a card template with the task and checklist you need, then clone the card on a schedule using Butler.
Example:
– Card template: “📤 Send weekly team update”
– Checklist: draft in Google Docs, add project updates, email by EOD Friday
Then set a Butler rule:
– Every Friday at 8am → copy card “📤 Send weekly team update” to INBOX
Important: name your template card something unique so Butler doesn’t accidentally clone 10 similar cards.
Also note — if Butler ever stops working, hit the log and just manually run the command once. There’s a bug where if one scheduled command fails (calendar outage or Trello API blip), all the subsequent ones stop until you reset them manually. Feels like maintaining a sourdough starter more than a productivity tool, but hey, it’s kinda satisfying when it works.
😛