Reflections on a more Responsible Life and using Trello

My son was 100 days old on Friday. My Chinese in-laws dressed him up in gold bracelets and a red and gold chain necklace, for the first time in his short life he looked bling. It made me think of how we make not only all of the big decisions for him, but also the trivial ones as well. We are omnipotent to him, we comprise nearly enough his whole world, and that is a fair amount of responsibility. 

Transitions in the Life Course

When I was a bit younger, I always envisioned older life as being stuck, bound somehow and held down by the weights of responsibility of making important decisions. Like most young people past the age of twenty-one, I was reluctant to grow up much further. Now that I’m in a position where I’m making important decisions that impact others I feel it’s far from burdensome.

The thing is, when I got married I dedicated my life to another person, which given that we are only aware of having one life, was a big call. I never reflected on the enormity of it then but I now feel something approaching awe at the fact that my wife and I chose to be bonded together and have subsequently brought a new life into the world.

So I now see that proceeding through the stages of life, one gets a reinforced sense of purpose, the stakes become raised and the future becomes more vivid. Rather than lamenting my age as I previously imagined I would, I can at this point say I am happy with the progress. Yet, there can always be improvement, hence my recent life planning exercise.

Following on from setting eight goals to work towards for the next three to five years, I have been using Trello to manage the tasks involved. The thing is, setting the goals was relatively easy, putting in the dedicated and diligent effort to bring about their achievement requires strategy and determination. 

A Life Planning Strategy

Basically, Trello is a flexible, project management app which one can use for personal development and life planning. It works by setting up boards of categories which each include any number of cards (which represent actions in my use of it). Think of it as a to-do list on steroids. I used each of my individual goals as a category and listed the actions I could take as cards beneath the goal. On the same board, I also set up a month and current week category. 

Having brainstormed the activities to put on the cards, each month and by week I move the relevant cards from each goal to the current month or week. Trello reminds me what’s due, coming up and monitors my progress. Once tasks are done, they get moved to an achievements board at the end of each week, in time building up a comprehensive log of my progress.

I’ll elaborate with an example. My goal with the second-highest priority is related to the fact I want to be more assertive and conduct myself with great confidence. This week I moved the actions, ‘map out skills’ and ‘foster inherent value’ to the current week category. To be able to tick off the actions, I created a Mind map of my abilities and set out how each of them contributes to productivity and helps the team in my current place of work. 

Concluding Thoughts

Time will tell whether Trello supports the achievement of my goals in a way that I can sustain within my lifestyle but for now, I’ll say, so far so good. In general, as we follow the path of life, responsibility increases and challenges grow more complex and demanding. We must grow with these challenges, adapt to the changing situations and come up with more complex solutions.

We also need to be comfortable with, and proud of, who we are. It is my hope that going forward I can act in line with achieving my goals to support my young family and make them proud.