Watch the full video here: http://schurpf.com/getting-things-done-trello-google-calendar-evernote-zapier-project-task-management/?utm_source=fiverr&utm_medium=syndication_lorihil&utm_campaign=Fiverr%20Lorihil A free and modern implementation to David Allen's Getting Things Done using Trello, Google Calendar, Evernote and Zapier – Be in control of your day.

1. Getting Things Done with Trello, Google Calendar,
Evernote and Zapier – Project and Task Management
May 20, 2014 by Schurpf — 14 Comments
Free Mastermind Group for internet business entrepreneurs starts Fri Aug 1st. Join Now
While you are in school you probably get along quite well with a normal calendar and checking your
homework the day before its due. This worked for some of us and seemed also quite the standard when
studying for an exam.
But how do you track your work and tasks now? What is your solution? Most people I know have no real
solution, it is a juggle between emails, projects in the back of your head and our calendar with more task.
All of this causes a big mess and more often than not leads to unimaginable stress.
I am not sure about you, but I have tried countless of project and task managers and all were missing
something. All were missing this extra bit of flexibility and all were trying to impose a system on me that
just didn’t feel quite natural.
As seen on: schurpf.com | Link to YouTube | Subscribe to my channel
Home About WordPress Python Software

2. Getting Things Done by David Allen
All this changed when I read Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen. This was really a live changer for
me and fairly likely it will be for you too. If you haven’t read his book, I highly suggest you do so:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
I am not going too much into details here about the actual system, you really should read the book, but to
get us all on the same page, the system I am talking about looks summarized like this:
Getting Things Done – Tech Solution
After we decided we want to use GTD, we need to find a solution that works well with todays digital world. I

3. want to be able to use the system anywhere I am. Or more specific anywhere at least one person has at
least a mobile phone. This requirement was very important for me since my business mind has affected my
personal life at times. Has it ever happened to you that you are at a dinner and you have this amazing idea,
but you dont have anything to write it down? It sure has to me. Trying not to forget this thought has
definitely made a dinner unpleasant. I will show you later how to completely avoid this.
Let us establish the main elements we need to cover to fully cover the GTD workflow and be able to use it
in a tech environment.
-List system
-Inbox
-Reference location
-Calendar
-Access anywhere
Getting Things done with Trello
The first tool that really just jumped at me when I was looking into what to use in order to accomplish
mimicking those flexible lists was Trello. It allows for very flexible lists and has apps for any device
imaginable. The “anywhere-accessibility” was very important to me.
I personally found it very useful to create multiple boards (Trello expression for a group of lists). Here are
the lists I use:
GTD
Locations
People
Projects
Rare used lists
GTD Main Board
My main board consists of multiple lists and looks like this:

4. I will go into a bit more detail why I have chosen the structure I have.
Getting Things Done Main Board
One of the core ideas of Getting Things Done is the concept of an inbox. Anything that comes to your mind
and more importantly could distract you from what you are doing right now belongs in the inbox. I have my
inbox in the middle of my main board called GTD. This is my daily starting point.
To the left of the Inbox you have a list To Evernote. This list I use to archive any item I would like to keep in
the future but dont need present right now. The cards are automatically synced to Evernote, more on this
later.
The next list is a calendar list. It is a chronologus order of things with deadlines or reminders for the future.
This list is synced to my Google Calendar also more later on this.
To the right of my inbox I have my Today list, probably the second most important list. These are all things I
wish to accomplish today. Often this list gets pilled up a bit and you need to be realist of what you are able
to accomplish.
Next over is my Next Actions list. These are all things I need to do soon, but not today. You will quickly
realize that often you need to prioritize as to what you can really do and what would be nice if you did but
ultimately isn’t that urgent. The next list over is my Waiting For list. I keep all my items in there that I need
to track and am interested in the outcome.

5. The Someday/Maybe list includes items I wish I could do but realistically won’t get to do any time soon. In
my Projects list I keep the names of all current projects to keep an overview. My tags list is something I
came up with mostly to allow search afterwards. What I do is add a tag into the title of every card which will
make it easier to find all results of this tag in the future. The final list on my main board is a Someday
Maybe Evernote, which is essentially an archive to keep all the things I would eventually do in the future.
And this is it for the basic structure. The other boards are more specific for my personal life and work.
Getting Things Done Locations Board
The next board I keep is the locations board.
Any locations specific task goes there. For example I have an IPad list. Those items are typically things that
aren’t very important and would make for a good relaxing part time activity, or are things I can read on a

6. plane or similar location.
The next list is crucial to me, the Errands list. Anything I need to buy or get at some point goes on there.
You can come up with any other number of lists of course, but these are the ones I use.
And there you have it the setup of my lists. The other lists are fairly straight forward and not worth
mentioning, what is interesting though is how I make the entire system sync.
Syncing Trello, Evernote and Google Calendar with
Zapier
The key to making the GTD system sync with each other is Zapier. Zapier is an API app that connects
different services with each other using a Trigger Action pair. This means in short, Zapier connects two
services with each other and makes exchanging data easy.
Creating a Zap to sync Trello with Evernote
Setting up a Zap is rather straight forward. Sign up for Zapier and create a new Zap. Than pick the services
you want to connect with each other. The next step is to authentiacte your accounts (aka give Zapier
permission to access your data). Than you pick the board and list in Trello you would like to move over to
Evernote.

7. In a final step you select which fields you want to sync. Note that I use the name of the card in both the
title and content. This prevents an error you will encounter for cards that consist of only a title.

8. Make sure you test your settings before starting to work with it.
Syncing Google Calendar with Trello via Zapier
This works very similar, you pick the two services:

9. Pick a trigger:

10. The only real change comes with using the date fields from Trello to pass the correct information to Google
Calendar:

11. Et voila, we have all the tools in place to have a highly efficient Getting Things Done system.
Syncing your board with Google Calendar using
Trello’s iCal feed

12. Edit 27 Jul 2014 – Include good comment from Bart
Great article. But you don’t have to use Zapier to put Trello in Google
Calendar. Trello has a calendar feed with all due-dates that you can import in
Google Calendar.
We will look at how to sync an entire board using the Calendar Power-Ups form Trello and an ical feed of
your board.
Note
Please chose only one of the two methods here, otherwise you will get duplicate entries.
This method will sync the entire board, not just a list. If you have a calendar list but also due dates
within other lists, this option may not be for you.
The Zapier list version pushes the card once onto your Google Calendar, meaning any changes you do to
your card after the initial push won’t effect your Google Calendar. In contrast, the iCal feed does reflect
changes to your Trello card in your Google Calendar. However none of the methods are a true sync,
meaning if you update an entry in Google Calendar, you won’t see the changes in Trello.
Enable Trello Calendar Powerup
In your Trello board go to Show sidebar -> Power-Ups

13. pick the calendar
1. Enable the Calendar Power-Up
2. Enable the iCal feed
3. Copy your feed

14. Go to your Google Calendar to import the new feed

15. Past your iCal feed url
Summary
All you have to do is enable the Trello Calendar Power-Up and the iCal feed and copy it over into Google

16. Calendar via Add by Url.
GTD The Idea at Dinner problem
Let us revisit our dinner problem. Picture this, you are at a dinner with somebody (wife, girlfriend,
whathaveyou) and you have this amazing idea. Chances are you will get distracted if you dont immediatly
dump this idea into your system. Ideally you have your mobile phone on you with your Trello installed, but
let’s say you dont, what do you do? Well you could ask the waiter for a napkin, but chances are you forget
about the napkin, so this isn’t totally save. And after all you will have to remember that the napking has
something important. We are still left with remembering something.
Email your GTD system
The solution is pretty cool: Setup an email address that forwards any message straight into your GTD inbox.
Trello has an option to accept emails and create cards from it. Let me show you how to set this up:
1. Get the Trello email

18. Set the correct list where you would like your email to show up and copy the ugly email that
Trello gives you.
2. Setup a forwarder email. This step is crucial, because it is impossible to remember this long
ugly email during a lovely dinner, instead create a new email that you can remember and use
that email to forward any email into your Trello inbox.
I personally have setup a gmail account. To forward an email in Gmail, follow these instructions
3. Verify your email Google will send you a verification code, which if all setup correctly should
appear in your inbox.

19. Name: Email:
Bio Latest Posts
GTD and your email inbox
A few comments regarding your email inbox. Very often your emails represent tasks too. I like to keep those
separate from my Trello list since they are usually smaller tasks. What I have done is created a folder
_Action and _WaitingFor. Any email that needs some work I copy over to _Action, any email I want to track
gets copied over to _WaitingFor. It is important you make a copy. That way you can delete the email from
your _Action/_WaitingFor list without losing the actual email from your inbox. I personally set my threshold
at 20 min. If I think a task will take more than 20 min, I put it into my normal system. Anything shorter I
deal with my email system.
Final Words
Alright, that is my system, I hope you find these pointers somewhat useful. Do you use a similar system?
Please let me know in the comments below. This system is working very well for me but any idea that could
lead to improvment is highly appreciate. Also if you really like this, help me spread the word about the
system via social media
Click to Tweet: For all fans of #GTD, check out this setup with Trello, Evernote, Google Calendar and Zapier
#GTD http://ctt.ec/cu0L7+
Edits
27 Jul 2014 Include Trello Board via iCal feed
Get a FREE copy of my Simple Aweber Integration plugin and my popular Newsletter!
About me

20. I am at hart a valuepreneur with a big entrepreneur drive, passionate programmer, hard
worker and semi retired poker pro. I am dedicated, eager and very goal oriented. My
analytical and rational thinking allows me to be a phenomenal thinker and problem
solver.
Solving problems is what makes me happy.
Contact me for your custom WordPress solution.
Filed Under: Productivity, Tutorial
Tagged With: Getting Things Done, GTD, Trello
Free Mastermind Group for internet business entrepreneurs starts Fri Aug 1st. Join Now
Comments
Lance says
May 21, 2014 at 3:25 am
I like the trello boards. I have a some what simpler setup. I send emails with key phrases
like “will you” “would you” “can you” “could you” and forward them into Evernote where I
heavily use tags and custom searches to filter down my GTD items. The tagging is manual
though which can be cumbersome. I think I’ll give your approach a try.
Reply
Schurpf says
May 21, 2014 at 3:20 pm
Hi Lance, thanks for your reply. Let me know how the approach described here works out
for you. If you find any improvement to it, pls share it. Happy GTD
Reply

21. Steve Young says
May 28, 2014 at 3:13 am
Great post, Michael. What do you do with a Trello card after you’ve accomplished the task?
Do you archive it?
Reply
Schurpf says
May 28, 2014 at 11:12 pm
Hi Steve, thanks for the question. Yes I archive it. Trello has a really handy shortcut: c
Reply
Robb Gorringe says
June 4, 2014 at 7:24 am
I use one board to capture everything: !INBOX. Any relevant task via email goes there.
Then within that board I have the columns: Personal, Business, Misc, Re-Occuring,
Backlog. This is where start dragging stuff over as I collect, organize, and process it, and
then move to another board(s).
My main board is called: .GET IT DONE I try to limit the number of boards I have, but any
big project that is happening right now gets its own board.
Trello is awesome. The only drawback is it’s lack of a killer tagging system, like in evernote.
I keep crossing my fingers for some developer to create it. So, for now… trying to find
things is a bit like walking in the dark with a mini-flashlite.
Robb
Reply
Schurpf says
June 4, 2014 at 10:48 pm
Hi Robb, yeah Trello rocks. The way I try to label things is with tag words. Say I have an

22. idea, than I write: idea … or say I came across something smart, I would tag: wisdom …
But yeah I agree limiting the labels to 6 is probably one of the weakest parts in Trello.
With those small prefix tag words it gets very easy to use filters and get a good overview.
Hope this helps.
Reply
Robb Gorringe says
June 4, 2014 at 11:25 pm
Yes, I’ve tried that too, but then felt like it was more hassle than it’s worth. Labels don’t help
much. Also, when Trello offers things like “Stickers” with giant cartoon kid-like symbols, I
wonder if they really understand who their target audience is.
One work-around I’ve done is signed-up as different users, and then added a unique avatar
like: Calls, Next-Action, etc, and then added them as members to my boards. I simply create
the card and drag the member into it. I can then filter cards by these fictitious “members”.
It’s alot of work to set up, and only works per board. But it keeps it interesting and ninja-like.
Schurpf says
June 6, 2014 at 9:39 pm
Wow, the different users is a really cool idea. I will need to keep this in mind. Thanks for
sharing Robb.
Theo says
June 15, 2014 at 9:32 am
Great post.
I have a list entitled ‘OneNote Trello Archive’, and I want any list items placed in this list to
be sent to a corresponding note in OneNote called ‘OneNote Trello Archive’. How do I do
this?

23. Many thanks in advance,
Theo
Reply
Schurpf says
June 16, 2014 at 4:48 pm
Hi Theo,
Zapier also has OneNote integration. I think what you are looking for is this:
https://zapier.com/zapbook/trello/onenote/32910/trello-new-card-to-onenote-create-note/
Hope this helps.
Reply
Paul says
July 1, 2014 at 3:54 pm
Great article. Trying to switch to Trello for my personal needs and use it as GTD tool, and
your approach seems handy. But I have a question: when items from Trello are synced
with Google Calendar and Evernote, can you safely remove them from Trello list? Thanks
for answer
Reply
Schurpf says
July 1, 2014 at 8:35 pm
Hi Paul, thanks for giving this method a shot. Yes you can if you set it up as above.
Essentially the system is one way onetime sync, meaning it will sync from Trello to Evernote
or Google Calendar once, but any changes after that wont be synced regardless of where
you make it. Let me know if you have other questions.
Reply

24. Bart says
July 27, 2014 at 8:48 am
Great article. But you don’t have to use Zapier to put Trello in Google Calendar. Trello has a
calendar feed with all due-dates that you can import in Google Calendar.
Reply
Schurpf says
July 27, 2014 at 7:52 pm
Hi Bart, thanks for this tip! Added it in here. Appreciate the contribution.
Reply
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Name *
Email *
Website
Comment

25. POST COMMENT
Most Popular
Getting Things Done
with Trello, Google
Calendar, Evernote
and Zapier – Project
and Task
Management
Mouse.py – Control
your mouse in
python
PYHK – Python
Hotkey Module
Simple Aweber
Integration to
WordPress |
Horizontal Aweber
Forms at end of
posts
PageRank.py – Get
google PageRank
with python
PYHK End User
Documentation
Python AHK – Python
automation package
– Automation made
simple
Table2Excel –
Converting a table to
excel
PowerHouse
Mastermind
Ask me anything about
WordPress and I make
sure I blog about it.
Ask me here
Leave your email to be
notified. (required)
Your email
SUBMIT
Ask me
anything
Michael Schurpf
google.com/+MichaelSchurpf1
WordPress expert, Genesis lover and
coder4life
28 followers
Follow
Find us on Facebook
Schurpf
25 people like Schurpf.
Facebook social plugin
LikeLike

26. Free Mastermind Group for internet business entrepreneurs starts Fri Aug 1st. Join Now
All Rights Reserved - Schurpf.com
WordPress
Homepage
Pagination Problem
with WP-PageNavi
About
Hi there, I am Michael Schurpf, a WordPress engineer
and consultant. I love building WordPress sites.
Social Media
Let's get connected!
Get your Solution
Need a custom solution? Contact me and get my take
on it. I am more than happy to answer any questions.
Contact
You can contact me here.