Asana for (Almost) All the Things

Asana is my one-stop-shop to keep track of all things professional and personal. I like to eliminate as many extraneous tools as possible where Asana can do the full job or enough of it to make it the best solution.



Economies of Scale

The more one keeps in Asana, the more powerful it becomes. For example, the Asana search box and advanced search can find a multitude of information, future or historical. And @mentions to better link content become possible when more information is all contained in Asana.

Asana Instead of a Spreadsheet

As an Asana Services Partner consultant, I don’t bother with Google Sheets or Excel to track my hours, billing, and payments with my clients. I can do that easily all in Asana so that everything can exist in one tool. I use a numeric custom field (with up to two digits so I can specify quarters of an hour) to log my time closely, set the Due date and time easily with Asana2Go to capture when the work occurred, and use List View column sums to accumulate totals for a period, or use multi-select to see ad hoc sums. Of course, I’m already using Asana for all consulting-related activities and information, so it really streamlines things to not have to go elsewhere for the accounting information because it’s all related.

Asana as My Calendar

I haven’t eliminated Google Calendar but I downplay it greatly so I can see my calendar in Asana’s My Tasks. I wanted to avoid the cumbersome need to repeatedly look in two places (Asana and GCal) throughout the day. I already rely on My Tasks for all tasks and reminders, personal and professional, so a long time ago I included an “Agenda” section in My Tasks. As a result of some auto-task-promotion rules and a little scrolling in My Tasks, I can see everything in one spot: the day’s appointments in Today and key future appointments in Agenda. See my article Your Simple (or Advanced) Strategy for Asana’s My Tasks for more info (look for “Agenda” there). It’s a little extra effort, but worth it to me (your mileage may vary, especially if you are jam-packed with meetings).

As Asana adds new features and more depth to existing ones, more opportunities to double down on Asana present themselves.

Larry

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