My Trello Workflow for Generating Blog and Product Ideas

I use this Trello workflow to generate more ideas for blog posts and new products than ever did with lists. As I’m now pumping out ideas every day, publishing a weekly blog post, and thinking of side hustles, this workflow has been critical to maintaining my velocity.

And it’s incredibly simple. Originally, I heard about this workflow on the IndieHackers podcast. When the interviewee discussed it, a lightbulb went off in my head. Even though I have always admired Atlassian, Trello never stuck as one of my tools until now.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Create a board, “Blog Post Ideas”.
2. Then create lists to separate the stage of the idea. Here they are from left-to-right:

• Rough Ideas
• Promising Ideas
• Finished
• Published

Note: For my product ideas board, the lists are different because a product’s work isn’t done after the V1 is completed.

• Rough Ideas
• Promising Ideas
• Work in Progress
• Completed
• Failed
• Successful

Finally, regardless of your workflow, you can try these tips and tactics to generate more ideas.

• Add your idea the moment you think of it. If you use Trello for iPhone, they have a wonderful offline mode and sync.

• Please don’t judge your ideas right away. Ideas are vulnerable babies that should be allowed to grow.

• Jot down as many relevant notes as possible. Since we don’t usually start and finish executing an idea in one sitting, it’s important to write as much as you need to recontextualize later.

• Use short, staccato thoughts with bullet points to get everything out on paper. I found if I tried to make my thoughts too eloquent, I would spend precious attention making it sound nice, which is ultimately less important than writing the relevant details. Write the idea down while it lasts.

This blog post was originally posted on nicknish.blog.