Why I love Asana
Coffee (mine’s a flat white please!), my Macbook, and Asana – three things my business just could not function without. I have tried my fair share of organisational tools and project management systems – every time someone mentions a tool I haven’t tried before, I immediately run off to try it out. But Asana is the one that I keep coming back to. It’s the one I recommend to everyone, whatever your business is, no matter what stage you’re at!
So, why am I such a massive Asana fangirl?
Different Levels of Organisation – Teams, Projects, Tasks and Subtasks
When I tell you that I spin a lot of plates at one time, I need you to imagine an entire IKEA hall full of them. Between the work for my clients, several businesses that I run, and my own projects, if I didn’t have a way to organise the mess in my brain, I would implode, and all of those plates would come crashing to the ground.
And I know I’m not the only business owner out there who feels like this!
With Asana I am able to organise everything I do into different levels – teams, projects, tasks and subtasks. For example with client work, each client has their own team, separated into various projects, with a layer of tasks that need completing underneath it.
These different levels mean that when I need to focus on a specific project or area of my business, I can see all the work that needs doing for it, and don’t end up getting overwhelmed and sidetracked by other things. It’s the hub of my business and I can keep everything I need in one area and allow my brain some well-needed thinking space.
Delegating to my team
I have an incredible team. And of course, I often need to allocate them tasks to do, which I can do directly from Asana. One thing I love about Asana is that I can choose exactly what I share with each person; whether that be a client or a member of my team, they only have access to what I choose to show them. This serves two benefits: it keeps things private and confidential as needed, but also means my team don’t get overwhelmed by seeing a whole load of things they don’t need to worry about. In fact, they can choose to only see the section titled ‘My tasks’, and have a clear overview of what they need to complete and the deadlines.
I also have my Asana accounts set up so that each project has a section at the top that includes all of the key information they need including links, branding, our goals for that project and much more!
Switching between different views
So many people love Trello for the board layout. But it lacks a lot of functionality. Other people work better from lists which is why Google Docs, notebooks, and paper planners are so popular.
Everyone works differently and sometimes, we ourselves work differently depending on the project, or even just how we feel on a particular day!
For some things, such as future project planning, it can be useful to use the calendar view, especially when you want to see what your next month or quarter looks like at a glance. For other things, you might want a simple list view or a board view – it’s totally up to you. You can set each project up differently, or switch between the views with one click, depending on what you need.
As an added bonus, when your team members log into their accounts, they can view the projects in a way that suits them best too!
Automating recurring tasks
There are some tasks I have to do every day, every week, or every month and if I had to write these into my to-do list every time, I wouldn’t have any time to do any of the tasks. Thankfully, I can just set these up once and change the settings for it to reoccur as often as needed. It will automatically show up in ‘My Tasks’ when relevant and it means that things such as checking my social media analytics don’t get forgotten about (because honestly, I swear I blink and it’s the last day of the month again!).
The satisfaction of ticking things off
Obviously, ticking things off your to-do list is always amazing, but Asana offers you the chance to have animations to celebrate each time. So yes, sometimes I am a little motivated to finish a task by the promise of seeing a little unicorn whizz across my screen on a rainbow. Whatever works.
Asana is the best project management system I have tried because it’s intuitive and easy to use, but allows me to personalise things to my business. The set-up can be quite involved, but once you’ve got your system established, you have created a one-stop hub for your business that will house everything you need in one place. Boom!
