Best Practices for Sections in My Tasks?

[alisonpalmer]

Hey Asana folks, do you have any tips for organizing Sections in My Tasks? I don’t find that the default sections (Recently Assigned, Do Today, Do Next Week, Do Later) resonate with my user style; if the due date is already set it seems to me that organizing section in time phases is redundant.

I tend to use categories (like Planning vs. Implementation, for example) in my projects, but for My Tasks I’m obviously going to need something broad enough that covers both tasks in projects and one-offs. I’m thinking of breaking the sections into categories based on my key job functions, but was wondering if any longtime users have strategies they really like?

[Danielle-GenD]

Hi @alisonpalmer welcome to the forum.

Depending on what plan you are on, you could use custom fields and then use that to trigger the sorting rule. So have a Categories custom field in your projects that mark the task as “planning” then have that same custom field in your my tasks. I have seen people use similar.

Additionally, I have some people using a priority grading system 1-5 so that it is done on priority as opposed to due date (priority being a much debated field on this forum )

[lpb]

@alisonpalmer,

In addition to @Danielle-GenD’s good answer, consider these suggestions for the approach I’ve landed on after 11 years, and a survey of other popular options:

Your Simple (or Advanced) Strategy for Asana’s My Tasks

I’ve just published the article linked above to Medium (free access). I hope both existing Asana users grappling with My Tasks version 2 (currently being deployed), as well as new users to Asana, will check it out because it was written with all of you in mind. This comprehensive article on My Tasks: Outlines a simple but highly functional My Tasks setup with brief, step-by-step setup and use instructions, Explores an advanced My Tasks approach–the one I actually use–that I feel is unique …

@alisonpalmer

if the due date is already set it seems to me that organizing section in time phases is redundant

Asana’s (and my) view of this differs from yours. Two tasks may have the same due date, but if one requires you to work on it for a month to ensure it’s ready on that due date, then I wouldn’t be very successful using just a Due date sort!

Thanks,

Larry

[alisonpalmer]

That’s a great point about resourcing - I think where I struggle is it’s not always clear how long something will take. But your comment helped me realize that’s a missing step in my workflow and now I’m considering adding a pointing/Tshirt sizing process

[Paul.Harren]

Hello @alisonpalmer,

You can read on my approach to My Tasks in this post:

I made a new task level in the Asana hierarchy (and other goodies)

Hello Asana Community, I’ve been a longtime Asana user, about 6 years at this point. Using the platform mainly as a soloist, I’ve iterated countless times my use of “My Tasks”, the description box, and in general pursued maximum visual efficiency of work and information. I have laid out light overview of my system. Please read on and let me know if I can answer any questions. —Paul Note: My Asana approach leverages espanso, a free/open-source alternative TextExpander. Espanso makes certain e…

Hope this helps!

—Paul Harren

[Becky_Manson]

Following this post as loving the ideas coming through.
I have been using asana a couple years now, but My Tasks section sorting is above me… it is a total mess so I just use the calendar view in my tasks and move things into the calendar and around so I can see what I am working on each day rather than using the list view.