ClickUp – How to Solve Your Business Organisation Problems
You know how you always have a hundred different things to do? And another 50 that you want to do if you get time. Oh and that twenty or so items that you need to review because they are due to be updated…
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Stop!
There’s just no way you can keep all of that in your head. Let’s be honest, you shouldn’t even try, even if you have a computer-style brain and can manage.
So what do you do to solve your business organisation problems? Well, the answer for me is an app called ClickUp. Want to meet it?
What is ClickUp?
ClickUp falls under the heading of a project management tool. Think things like Asana or Basecamp. Or maybe Trello. But the cool thing about it is that it actually combines the best of these different tools and adds some other fun features.
At first glance, the number of options available can make ClickUp a little overwhelming. It did for me, I tried it and went back to my old three-prong system. Then a blogging friend showed me her editorial calendar and it got me thinking.
Suddenly, my entire business was running from ClickUp. It isn’t the only tool I use but it is the central hub. I schedule client work, content marketing, email marketing, updating of posts and even a few personal jobs in there.
Basic structure
The best way to get to know ClickUp is to dive in but it is best to understand the basic structure before you do.
There are seven basic levels to ClickUp, but I don’t really use checklists (the bottom one) much. The seven levels are:
- Workspace – highest level covers the business and personal stuff. Each is separate but you can have multiple
- Spaces – public or private, customise the workflows and features in each, ideal for different business departments or areas of your business
- Folders – group lists together, customise to your needs, can be private or shared with guests
- Lists – tasks live here and act as tabs within folders and spaces, each can have custom settings. Tasks must belong to one list
- Tasks – action items containing details and can be changed in location or even add to multiple lists. These are your ‘to-dos’ from other tools
- Subtasks – smaller tasks within the task to break down big projects, have their own assignees and due dates. Has the same traits as parent task and space.
- Checklists – simple nested subtasks with either done or not done but can’t have a due date. Work on tasks or subtasks
Here’s an example from my workspace.
The Editorial Calendar with the yellow icon is the Space (level 2) and within it are three folders – Content Creation, Email Marketing and Editorial Jobs. Within Content Creation, there are four lists, one for each of my active blogs. There are lists in the other two areas.
At the bottom is ‘SEO one time jobs’ which is a list that doesn’t belong to a specific folder. These are odd, one-time jobs I need to do relating to content marketing.
Setting up Spaces, Folders and Lists
What makes ClickUp so versatile is the way you can then customise these areas. There are a whole range of options on how you set out your Spaces, Folders and Lists.
For example, in the Content Creation folder, I have a ‘board’ option. This is your classic Kanban, Trello style look where you can set up different status. In mine, I have:
- Ideas
- Next month
- Outlined
- Graphics done
- To be created
- Scheduled
- Awaiting video
- Video created
- Published
A blog post moves along the statuses depending on what I’m doing. So they start as ideas then move to next month when they are due to be written within the next month or so.
Once they are outlined, they go to Outlined and then once graphics are made, to Graphics done. To be created is where this post is currently sitting as I’m writing it. Then it will go to scheduled.
Once it is live, it will either go through the video statuses if I’m making a video or straight to Published. This is what ClickUp called a ‘closed’ status and you can hide these if you don’t want to see them.
Subtasks also have the same status options as the tasks. You can also change your settings on the board to show these. They can be expanded from the original task or as completely separate tasks entirely.
Another example of statuses in action on a board is in my Email Marketing folder. This one is for the emails for this blog and has:
- Ideas
- Outlined
- Ready for scheduling
- Scheduled
- Sent
With these, scheduled is a ‘done’ status while sent is a closed status. This isn’t a massive issue but can help you organise if there are still tasks to do after something is scheduled.
List views
Another popular view to use in ClickUp is the List view. This is more like classic Asana in looks and function.
The same statuses work in List view as in Board view but they simple show one after another where there are tasks live in them. So if your brain works better with a list of tasks and their status showing in the coloured tab at the top, this will be perfect.
Calendar view
Calendar view is great to see what you have happening in a month or what tasks you have for a single day. I use it a couple of ways.
In the Content Creation folder, I use the calendar with a month’s view to see what content is being created when. But it also shows me what tasks are to be done when. This lets me make sure I’m not adding too much to a single day or weekend and spacing out the creation.
You can change calendar from month to week, 4 day or day views. I like the day view under the ‘Everything’ option at the top of the Workspaces to see all tasks I have for that day, regardless of which workspace they are in.
Other views
There are other view options within ClickUp. Some are limited to higher plans. These include:
- Table
- Box
- Gantt
- Activity
- Timeline
- Workload
- Mind Map
Of these, Mind Map is the one I’ve used the most. This is great to use either with tasks you have or on its own and made from scratch. I found it was a great way to map out things like email sequences or look for content gaps.
Page views
The final option is something called Page Views. These are currently four different types of pages you can add to your Folder or Workspace. They are:
- Chat
- Document (Doc)
- Embed
- Form
Here you can add a document or even use the Doc option to create a document. If I wanted to add the Word file for this post or copy and paste the content into a Doc in ClickUp, this is one way of doing it. You can also add docs into tasks.
Embed is handy to do things like embed an Airtable base or a Google doc. Forms are great if you want to collect data from potential customers or send out surveys. And Chat lets you create a Slack type chat area within ClickUp for anyone you have added to your workspace.
Templates – using and making them
Another great feature in ClickUp is templates. You can save almost anything as a template from an entire Workspace to individual tasks.
One of my favourite ways to use it is for blog post tasks. By creating templates with a series of subtasks within the task, I can quickly create a new blog post. The clever thing is that when you create a task from a template, there’s the option to ‘remap’ dates. What this means is that the due dates of the subtasks are changed according to the due date of the parent task – very handy!
You can access templates from the magic wand option when you create a new task from the mini menu in the bottom corner. All of your templates will show up and you can either create the task from there or overlay this onto a task you have already created.
Or you can create a task and use the three dot menu in the centre of the task to access templates. This is where you can also save a task as a template to make new ones.
Ideas on how to solve your business organisation problems
Not only can you use ClickUp in any of the ways you would use Asana or Trello, there are even templates to help you find more ways to put it to use. But to help out, here are some of the ways I’m using it.
Editorial calendar
You’ve seen that one in action and while yours might not be as complicated or have as many lists (multi-blogger here!) the great thing is you can include as many or as few steps as you need. The aim is for it to be helpful, not overly complicated.
General jobs list
I have a list called general jobs and that’s what goes into. You know, all those little reminders like updating plugins or making sure you have conquered your email inbox. I also use it for templates to then save as templates – but still have the original around in case needed.
Recurring jobs
As a digital business owner, there are no shortage of recurring jobs and the repeating task function on ClickUp makes it easy to set these and let it do the work. For example, you can set daily tasks or ignore the weekends. You can set weekly or monthly or yearly even. Plus there’s custom where you can choose the third Thursday of every month as an example.
Client work
I also use it to manage all of my client tasks. I have one folder for Pinterest management and one for Content Writing. Then each client has their own list where I add tasks. This makes it easy to see what client work I have each day – I use go to that Workspace and select the day calendar view.
Personal stuff so it doesn’t get lost
Part of organising your business is organising the non-business stuff that can get lost. That’s why I have a Personal Stuff Workspace. In here are random things like reminders to order prescriptions or move money into different bank accounts. You could even make folders for different areas of life or for each of your kids (and when they get old enough, assign the tasks to them!)
Cost of using ClickUp
ClickUp has a pretty simple pricing structure. There are three main levels them the customise ‘Enterprise level’ that you contact them about.
The free plan gives you unlimited tasks and users and 100MB storage. It doesn’t include all of the different views or features but if your business is pretty straightforward, it will work perfectly.
The Unlimited plan adds features such as integrations and guests as well as permissions. It adds features such as dashboards, goals and custom fields. The last is probably the biggest reason for adding this level. I use them in my blog post lists to track everything from if there’s a video to the category of the post.
Then there’s the Business level which adds mind maps, timeline views and time tracking among other features. I’ll be honest, I went with this level because it cost about £80 for the year but there was a discount. And with having all these blogs, the extra feature were worth it!
A simple organisation solution
The more I use ClickUp, the more I love it. And the people behind it are super impressive. There’s not a week goes by where they don’t add or tweak something, so they are constantly making the platform better.
For me, it is the simplest organisation solution for any digital business, whether you are a solo blogger or working with a team selling online products. By using the different features, you can be more in control of your tasks – and therefore of your time!
