Eyes Wide Open

Through time and experience, I’ve found that every part of life is a project. Almost everything requires steps, planning, and successful completion. I used to carry a planner with a small space for each day, complete with lines for writing. The problem with this planner was the lines; I didn’t want to confine my thoughts to a linear sentence or list. So, I bought a planner without lines. This was great until I wanted to prioritize tasks and move one to the top of the list. Instead of doing that, I just highlighted it, which ended up consuming too much of my time on that single task rather than allowing me to focus on the others.

Then came the issue of forgetting my planner at home, forcing me to jot down my homework and tasks in the notes app on my phone. Suddenly, I had two places to check for things to do. Now, I’m in a weird hybrid of planning—half on the device I’m trying to distance myself from and half messily written in a notebook that I only carry during classes.

My dream planner would be a giant screen that magically appears whenever I need to check it. It would have endless space and allow me to move text around easily. Until such technology exists, I’ll need to find the closest thing to it, and it seems that Trello might be the perfect fit.

I’ve used Trello in the past for group collaborations and clubs to track what everyone was working on, and I loved it. But using it for myself might make me love it even more.

As much as I dislike using my phone—the very thing that distracts me the most—to keep track of my work and projects, it’s the one item I have with me every minute of every day. An online app will ensure I always have a list to reference while being able to edit it wherever I am. My favorite feature so far is the ability to keep notes, thoughts, and details about a project hidden inside it. This will not only be an amazing organizational hack, making me appear less busy, but it may also help address a common problem: the more we see that there is to do, the less we want to do it.

I’m excited to enter this new era of planning, creating, and working. It might be time to say “goodbye” to paper trails and “trello” to a future of getting it done with Trello.