Part Three: Use Trello To Manage Your Home Chore To Do List, Regularly Occuring Tasks

Part Three: Planning Board Automations for Weekly, Monthly, Yearly tasks

In the first session you made two Trello boards from our templates: the Planning Board and the Action Board. In the second session you set up some automations on your Action Board that allow you to claim tasks and complete them.

This time we’re going to go deeper into the Butler Automations, and learn how to send task cards from the Planning Board to the Action Board on a regular schedule. Once this is all set up, you’ll be able to fine-tune your task lists on the Planning Board, and use the Action Board as a rolling to-do list.

Today we’re focusing on the Planning Board

Butler for Trello Due Date Rules

This session focuses on automations triggered by due dates. When we set up the lists in the Planning Board template, we split them by the frequency with which they occur- Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and the Special Focus tasks which rotate through the house on a 6 month cycle. Inside each card, the lists are further broken down by category- Cleaning, Maintenance, and Food. I populated the lists with some ideas, and in the first session you spent some time personalizing them for your household. Each of those checklist items will become a card on the Action board. Those cards will get a label for their category to help you and your housemates organize and assign tasks.

First Rule: Weekly Tasks

When you open the Butler Automation this time, instead of Create Rule, find Due Date in the left sidebar and click that. Then, click Create Command.

We’re going to set up a basic automation form, and then duplicate it to add variations beginning with the Weekly Tasks.

Start with this trigger: “The moment a card with a name containing Weekly Tasks is due…”

Then add some actions. The first one is simple: “Move the due date to the same day next week”

The next action is a little more complicated. First select Cascade:

Then find “for each checklist item” and click the input box:

and enter the checklist name “Weekly Food Tasks.”

It is extremely important when setting up rules that what is entered in the input field exactly matches the checklist name. Even an extra space between or after the words will confuse Butler and make it unable to follow the command. It is good practice to copy-paste, which you can do easily by keeping two browser tabs open.

The end of the command will read “create a new card with title Weekly Food Tasks- {checklistitemname} in list New Tasks on board Action Board, add the black Food label, and set due next Sunday at 5:00 PM.”

Start in Add/Remove using these commands:

and enter the information like this:

Here’s how you get the due date:

Your completed rule will look like this after you click Save:

Use that Rule to Create Some MOre

Just like we did in the last session, copy the rule and use it, with some small changes.

First, change “Weekly Food Tasks” to “Weekly Cleaning Tasks.” You can do that right in the list of actions.

Next, you are going to delete this part of the command:

And then add back almost the exact same thing, except that you change the black food label to the purple Cleaning label. As long as you keep the Automation overlay open, all of these inputs should be filled in and waiting for you.

Your finished command will look like this:

Repeat this process for Weekly Maintenance Tasks:

Copy this procedure for all List and Label combinations:

Monthly Tasks:

This time when you copy the command, we change the new card title to Monthly Task- {checklistitemname}, and we set it due on the last day of this month at 5:00 PM.

Monthly Maintenance Tasks:

Monthly Cleaning Tasks:

Monthly Food Tasks:

Quarterly Tasks:

Quarterly Task- {checklistitemname} and set due in 3 months at 5:00 PM

Biannual Tasks:

Biannual Task- {checklistitemname} and set due in 6 months at 5:00 PM

Yearly Tasks:

Yearly Task- {checklistitemname} and set due in 12 months at 5:00 PM

Set Your Due Dates

Once you have all of these automations set up, you will need to go into your Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly et cetera cards and set the due dates.

- Weekly Task Cards: Set due the next Monday at 7:00 AM.

- Monthly Task Cards: Set due on the first day of the next month at 7:00 AM.

- Quarterly Task Cards: Set due on the first day of either January, April, July, or October at 7:00 AM.

- Biannual Task Cards: Set due on the first day of either January or July, at 7:00 AM.

- Yearly Task Cards: Set due on the first day of January at 7:00 AM.

When the tasks are sent to your Action Board, they line up by due date in the New Tasks list. They will stay in that list until someone claims them or they expire and are replaced by the same card with a new due date.

Trello does have other paths for creating cards on a schedule. Some of these other methods would make fine-tuning the schedule more elegant, for example spreading yearly tasks throughout the year automatically, putting one per month. I decided to do it this way instead for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I want to be able to open the task cards and tweak the verbiage or frequency of tasks easily. Using other methods, I would have to go into the automation programming to make changes, and that would be cumbersome. The other reason is that tasks that have to be done once a year, if they only turn up on the board one month out of the year and are skipped, they may not be remembered until the following year. With this system, they will sit in New Tasks until they are completed or until they expire at the end of the year and are immediately replaced by the next year’s card.

Good Job Creating Trello Automations!

Setting up these automations is a bit of a slog, but once they are programmed in, all you will need to do is to tweak and fine-tune your task lists as you learn what works for your household. You’re doing wonderful work, and I hope you soon see that putting all the planning in place now means getting the work done requires less mental energy in the moment.

Next Session

In Part Four, we’re going to set up automations for the Special Focus Tasks. Once those are in place, your Planning Board and Action Board will be working together to generate your household’s to-do list. It will take away the stress of planning and keeping track of things in the moment, and let you harness your energy toward getting things done. If you have any questions please reach out! I will be happy to answer them. If you comment on this post, you might help somebody else who is feeling confused too!

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