I don’t have to be the one to tell you that as a business owner things can get chaotic - from trying to get more customers, filming content, learning SEO, all while creating your art, it’s a lot. There is always something to do to help your business. One simple thing you can do now to bring some calm into the chaos is implement a tool to help keep you organized. In this post we’ll cover a few of my favorite (free!) organization tools.

Keep Tasks Straight with Trello

Trello describes themselves as a “visual tool that empowers your team to manage any type of project, workflow, or task tracking.” With Trello you can add files, checklists, or even automation - it is a tool that can be customized to meet your needs. I have used Trello through many phases of both my professional and personal life. I love the way I can customize Trello to work for me and it’s visually easy to understand.

How Trello can be used for any Maker:

Everyone has a to-do list and on that to-do list there are a variety of priorities of each task. Trello can help you not only get your to-do list out of your head and onto (digital) paper but can help you organize and tag your tasks. Here is an example to do list board you could use for your own business to start getting organized today!

Trello is comprised of a series of columns and cards within those columns. You can customize the columns and cards for whatever serves you best. In this example I’m using this board for my to-do list, so I have To Do, Doing, and Done columns. These allow me to see what needs to be done, what’s currently on my plate, and see my accomplishments.

When you click into a card on the board you can customize the card even further:
Add a label to quickly understand which bucket the card falls into
If you’re working with a team, you can assign the card
Add a due date to keep yourself accountable to completing the card
A short or long description so you/your team knows what this is about
Attachments are great to add to quickly find related resources
Checklists are great if the card is a bit beefy, a checklist will allow you to make progress
Automate the card to repeat on a certain date
There is even more you can do with a card, such as automations, power-ups, covers, and more!

Trello Plans

Trello has 4 different plans which they offer, Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. See plan details here. Each plan you get a bit more features and boards, personally I have used the Free plan and see others use the Free plan and I’m not missing the paid features.

Vision Planning with InVision

InVision started out as a tool for designers but has quickly gone up the ranks in becoming a nifty whiteboard tool, Freehand, with features to get the most out of your brainstorming sessions. InVision is a whiteboard which allows you to draw, write, insert sticky notes, boards, stickers and more. Again this is a tool I have used throughly professionally and personally and I find InVision is a great tool when you are stuck and need a good brainstorm session. It starts moving the gears and getting those ideas down.

How InVision can be used for you:

Freehand is a very flexible tool that can be used for a wide variety of scenarios. One use case if for goal setting sessions to get those creative juices flowing. You can reflect at past goals and set goals for the future.

Insert the retrospective template and reflect at what went well since the last goal setting session, what didn’t go so great, and what could have been done differently. Going through this exercise will help expose learnings for when you set new goals.

Add sticky notes packs to start categorizing and writing down any/all goals for the next time period. Don’t be shy throwing everything out there. After your ideas are written out go through each one and see if that is something you want to solidify as a goal.
See my blog post about setting goals here to learn more about why goals are important.

InVision Plans

InVision has a few different plans for Freehand, their whiteboard, see details here. They have Free, Pro, and Enterprise plans. With the Free plan you can only have 3 Freehands, if you think you’ll need more boards than that the Pro plan might be best for you since it have unlimited Freehands.

Honorable Mentions

The following tools can also be helpful depending on where you’re at on your journey.

Trunk - a simple inventory management system tool. Can connect and sync with Etsy, Faire, Shopify, and more.
Coda and Airtable for the likeness and ease of a spreadsheet but runs like a database.
Monday.com and Notion for project planning/timeline visualization.

Free Tools to Help Keep You Organized