How to use Trello as a work-from-home daily planner

Jack Wallen shows you how to use Trello to make your daily work-from-home life more productive and efficient.

Trello has quickly become my go-to management system. Notice that I didn’t say project management system. Why? Because after using the platform for a while, I realized it was capable of much more than managing projects. Trello can be used for workflow, automation, inventory management, task and deadline management, collaboration, time tracking and even recipe planning. With just a little imagination, the sky’s the limit with Trello.

SEE: Hiring kit: Project manager (TechRepublic Premium)

While scouring the Trello template market the other day, I happened upon something that could be a real boon for those that work from home. The template of which I speak is called the Work From Home Daily Planner, and it helps individuals plan, collaborate and monitor their work-from-home days.

Although you could probably set up your own custom board to serve this exact purpose, starting out from a pre-configured template is a great way to hit the ground running. Let’s get Work From Home Daily Planner installed and see how it works.

What you’ll need to use Trello as a daily planner

To use this template, the only thing you’ll need is a working Trello account. Of course, you’ll need an account that allows you to create new boards in a workspace. But that’s all you need.

How to add the template to Trello

Navigate to a workspace and create a new board (Figure A).

Figure A

Click Create New Board, and then, in the resulting popup (Figure B), click Start With A Template.

Figure B

When prompted, click Explore Templates. In the resulting window, type Work From Home Daily Planner in the Find Template search bar. On the template page (Figure C), click Use Template.

Figure C

When prompted, give the board a name, select the workspace to house it, and click Create (Figure D).

Figure D

Once the board is created, you’ll be immediately taken to it, where you can see how well it’s laid out to help better organize your work-from-home week (Figure E).

Figure E

As you can see, the default layout for the template is very well planned.

One thing you should consider is adding the Calendar Power-Up to your board, so you can easily visualize your cards in a calendar format. To add the Calendar Power-Up, click the Power-Ups button, click Add Power-Ups, search for Calendar, and click Add.

With the Calendar Power-Up added, if you click the button to launch the calendar, you’ll see your cards listed per their due dates (Figure F).

Figure F

The rest of the Work From Home Daily Planner board is fairly self-explanatory, so it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes to get up to speed with how it works. Add new cards for each day list to get your work-from-home week planned.

If you’ve struggled to keep your work week running smoothly, and a conventional calendar isn’t cutting it for you, I have faith that this Trello board template will be just the thing to keep your daily grind humming along.

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