10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)

Lists will describe the stages of the project - Planning, In Progress, On 
Hold, Done
•
Cards describe actual tasks that need to be done
As progress is made on tasks, you’ll move the cards from list to list until they’re 
done.
Trello also lets you assign individual cards to members who are part of the 
board, so it’s really easy to delegate tasks and see, at a glance, who’s doing 
what.
Cards themselves are powerful as well; each card can hold notes, screenshots, 
attachments of any kind, and even tasks lists - which are good for breaking tasks 
down in to actionable steps.
Slack
Slack
is, in my opinion, the best team chat/communication app out there. It 
combines IRC-style “channels,” which are chat rooms visible to everyone on the 
Slack team, with options for private groups and direct messages.
The great thing about Slack is that it removes the verbosity of email; it’s easy to 
pop in, ask a question, and get an answer - just like you’d do over text or 
Facebook. 
However, it also includes a ton of integrations and great notification settings. 
There are apps for OS X, Android, and iOS, as well as a great web app. For my 
Slack team, which is quite large at this point, I’ve set it up so that I’ll get notified 
on my phone if I either get a direct message or have my username mentioned in 
any channel (a la Twitter notifications).
As for integrations, there are tons of apps you can connect to Slack - including 
Trello and Google Docs. This makes it the perfect “home base” of sorts for your 
team. You can configure the Trello integration so that a Slack channel is 
updated whenever cards are moved on Trello, and as project manager you can 
set up notifications for that channel so you stay up to date on the progress of the 
project.

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10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)
83
The only real downside to Slack, honestly, is that you’ll want to use it for all 
your online communication after getting used to it. It’s that good.
Google Docs
Out of any app I’ll recommend here, I’ll assume you’re the most familiar with 
Google Docs
. It’s probably just as well-known as Microsoft Office at this point.
For writing the first draft of your papers, though, I highly recommend using it 
over Word. Group members can collaborate on the same document at the same 
time, and it’s ridiculously easy to open up said document to review changes. 
Downloading a Word doc is much less convenient. 
You can also use Google Drive as a shared file storage space for any assets/
research your team needs to share during the project. Personally, I use Dropbox 
for most of my team file sharing, but Drive is generally easier to convince group 
members to use since they likely have a Gmail account already.

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84
Fin - Where to Go From Here
Whew! We’ve covered a ton of information in this book, and we’re finally 
finished.
Perhaps now you’re wondering:
“What should I do now?”
To start, I suggest you identify 1-2 main focuses of improvement that you’d like 
to work on in your own life as a student. Maybe you’d like to get more 
organized, or start becoming a better planner. Perhaps you’d like to start 
learning more efficiently.
Whatever it is, write down a goal and then form a plan of action for achieving it.
Beyond that, here are a few things I’d love for you to do:
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