Trello and This Is Us
Getting organized with Trello, and sharing This Is Us
Good morning.
If you just started following this Substack, welcome. I encourage you to visit the Archive for past issues.
This is going to be a shorter post today, but I’m trying to write daily in January to help establish the habit. I typically only publish on weekdays but am sneaking in this Saturday morning issue because I wasn’t able to write at the end of the week.
With your encouragement and support, we are making progress in identifying the focus of this blog. Thank you.
I want to provide as much value to you as possible so today I’m going to do something a bit different:
Pull back the curtain and discuss how this blog comes together and one of the tools I’ve started to use. If you are also a writer, you may find this helpful.
In the beginning, I wrote as ideas came to me. Without explicitly planning to, I found myself focusing each published post around one theme or topic — and then cutting everything beyond that. Somedays I would ✂cut and paste the “extra” content into OneNote; other days I would simply delete it.
A variety of formats work in media and I’m not suggesting this is the right approach or even the approach I will always use. But in the beginning, I believed it was more important for me to develop the muscle memory of writing consistently than to write less frequently for longer.
But what to do with those other ideas that danced through my head? Also, what to write about today? Blank page. Blinking insertion bar. I now knew the pressure a journalist must feel writing on a deadline.
As I was writing my last post, I decided to get more organized. Meet Trello.
I’ve used Trello for a variety of things over the years and am a big fan of its Kanban board interface. I created three columns:
Ideas for Posts
In Process
Published
Now, anytime I have an idea of something I may want to write about, I simply add it to the left column.
When I sit down to write, I scan that column and can select a topic to flesh out further, moving it to In Process.
Finally, once it’s published, I move it to the right column.
That’s it. Simple yet powerful.
If you are also a writer, I would love to hear your process.
Usability upgrade: I’ve added Previous | Next links at the end of each post that show up when reading on the web.
Each week, I strive to share one media discovery with you. This week: This is Us. It’s an American TV show (NBC) that debuted in 2016 and ran for six seasons (Wikipedia). It’s an amazing, masterful, complex and nuanced narrative of storytelling. If you’re not already a fan, watch this trailer:
We came to it more recently and watching an episode on Friday night has become a weekly tradition in our home. Last night’s episode was particularly good. In one part, one of the characters, Randall, was working on a college entrance essay, answering the question of who had the most impact on his life. He said (emphasis added):
I was left at a fire station by my birth father. I was found by a fireman who took me to a hospital where doctors showed me to my father, who showed me to my mother. My story is unique and I feel like it's like that for everyone. Strangers can be your most impactful people. Acquaintances can be your most impactful people. Family can be your most impactful people. And that's why I can't pick the person who has had the greatest impact on my life and why I think your question is flawed. But if you insist on me answering and its the only way I can gain entrance into your storied university, I choose the fireman.
— Teen Randall, This is Us Six Thanksgivings season 3, episode 8 (source)
Watch | Episode summary (Deadline)
This really struct me. So as we head into the weekend, who has been impactful in your life?
Until next time,
-bp