Calling all Forum members: How does Asana squash your work worries?

English Forum News
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We manage sometimes dozens of video productions (which we set as tasks) at a time, across a constantly rotating set of projects.

There are several internal roles involved in the production of each video, and clients using other tools for things like shoot scheduling and leaving feedback on edits.

We’ve be using Asana for years now, but always in a very manual way. For example, a producer having to create new tasks when orders came in, update them when subjects scheduled their shoot, or having to drag tasks between production stages (sections) and make sure we assign the right people to subtasks, add due dates, etc.

We were diligent because we had to be, but Rules, Flowsana and Make (as well as some other SaaS tools) have enabled us to manage most videos projects with the setting of a few custom fields, and the automations now handle the vast majority of our “project management.”

Tasks are created automatically from our invoicing software, it’s always clear what the next action is, who’s in charge, and we only interact with tasks when we have to. Automatically-set relative due dates bring lagging tasks to our attention before they’re a problem, and Reporting gives us overview of the operational health of the company, and a very granular view of where everything is.

Because of all this, our producer will soon spend very little time managing the projects themselves. We all get a lot of reassurance knowing that she always has accurate information to work with, and that clients are getting their videos on time.

We’ve also struggled with keeping tabs on client orders, and how many videos are delivered or owed. We now use Asana as part of our accounting suite to indicate in our system when videos are completed or when we need to bill clients for gear, etc!

I was quite hesitant to go all-in on Asana, and it was a lot of work to get our setup where it is now (thank you Asana forums btw!), but I’m really happy we did. We haven’t even fully rolled it out, but the potential of being able to mostly step away and let the business run itself is definitely there, and that’s very exciting.

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Very nice :muscle:

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Great hacks here @Bastien_Siebman
I used to be a zero inbox person until I realised it is not an achievable objective with my work.

What I do instead to satisfy the same aim is ask my team to assign a su task to me instead of tagging me in a comment.

As long as I have a task assigned to me (with all the workflow built), I know it’s there and my worries are squashed!

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Excellent practice @KimberlyAnn_DiCredic you will reap more rewards from this approach as time goes by. I have been using the same approach for years and it will give you and your team a great sense of achievement :clap:t3::clap:t3::clap:t3:

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Why?

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To do list would always help me to getting everything done. The private notepad has been incredible for this.

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I use the Getting Things Done methodology with Asana, so work worries are a thing of the past.

I use Asana to collect every task, anytime anywhere.
I .process the recently assigned tasks (those I added on the fly, those I got by forwarding emails to x@, those others assign to me) so to clarify what it is about (the next action) and the importance/urgency.
I weekly review my “Next” tasks and all the projects I work on, so that I’m sure every project moves on.
I daily pick the 3/4 tasks I’m going to work for the day (I try to add tasks that I expect to take 4/5 hours of my working day, because there’s always something new coming on the way and not all estimates are going to be correct).

By doing this:

  • I have a system (Asana) I can trust contains everything, so that nothing bugs my mind;
  • I can adjust priorities continuously;
  • I very rarely feel stressed at work.
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Some really great tips to eliminate work worries have been shared in this thread! :star2: It’s so great to hear these tips directly from our Community and Forum users and I can’t wait to implement some of them into my own work day :raised_hands:

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When I am stressed, I organize. Asana gives me a tool to do that for tasks I have, and I can optimize them for the most efficient use of my time. Completing SOMETHING is often all it takes - little wins. Some perspective goes a long way, and being able to check up on disparate projects or things I have to deal with, even on my phone while traveling (or waking in the middle of the night!) is a huge stress reliever.

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