I am not an anxious guy, but from time to time I feel it creeping in. It is no secret Asana has been, is and will be a big part of my life, so naturally I developed a couple of strategies to battle anxiety!
Regain clarity on what is important
Some days are just too much: emails everywhere, unread WhatsApp messages, overflowing Inbox, ridiculous mess in My Tasks… When I feel like throwing my computer out the window, I always apply the same strategy: clearing channels one by one. Each email becomes a task, each WhatsApp message is answered… until the only thing remaining is the My Tasks view. And then I clean it from top to bottom, sometimes several times until I am at peace.
Make sure my personal tasks move forward
When you spend all day in Asana working on professional tasks, you can feel bad seeing your personal tasks did not move forward. That’s why I decided to mix my professional and personal tasks into the same Asana account. I created a personal private project and I am adding a specific emoji (through a custom made automation) to any private task to make it stand out in My Tasks. And I treat them (almost) like regular tasks.
Get energy from my team mates
When you work in a team, not everyone is at their energy peak at the same time. So we decided to create an asynchronous written daily standup to share with the others how our previous day went, what the day ahead looks like, and how we are feeling. When a team mate is anxious about the day ahead, we make sure we help them!
Be honest with non urgent non important work
This has been my biggest personal step forward in the past years: being at peace with non urgent non important work. My own My Tasks view has sections to organise tasks by priority: top priority, important, secondary. The Secondary section is where things go die, and that’s ok!
I hope those strategies help.
