Lumen vs Trello for a PhD
Trello is excellent at what it does: cards, columns, drag, done. Plenty of PhD students run their week on it. The doctorate itself, though – four years of milestones, literature, fieldwork, committee gates and a supervisor relationship – doesn't fit on a board.
| Lumen | Trello | |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly tasks | To-dos with due dates, reminders, study links and mentor decisions | Kanban cards – genuinely great for this |
| The four-year arc | Programme Gantt, academic years, milestone statuses, committee approval chains | Boards have no notion of years, milestones or programme structure |
| Literature | Sources with AI summaries, DOI citations, EndNote export, coding with a validity harness | Links on cards |
| Supervisors | First-class mentor view, briefings drafted from your data, decision requests, viva feedback | Invite them to the board (they will not look at the board) |
| Capture | Email and calendar flow in automatically; notes and photos become proposals via AI intake | Email-to-board exists but everything lands as an unstructured card |
| Simplicity | More surface area to learn than a single board | Trello's simplicity is its superpower |
Keep Trello if a board is all you need. The moment you're juggling literature, committee gates and supervisor updates, you've outgrown cards – that's where Lumen starts.