We’ve all felt it. Meetings to prepare for meetings. Meetings. And then debrief meetings to review past meetings. Planning meetings. Status meetings. Overlapping meetings. Meetings on mute. Multi-tasking meetings. Redundant meetings. And, also… redundant meetings. 
The person who requests the meeting may think it’s meant to support our work, but really, the meeting usually just gets in the way of our work.
[For some brief empathetic comic relief re: meetings, click below]
So, what’s the problem? Well, there are lots of problems with meetings. But, one of the most egregious and common is the staggering amount of time we spend on things that DON’T need to be said or done in a meeting — namely, status reports, among other things. And, yet, that’s what drives so much of our meeting time.
However, with Asana, that problem can be reduced or eliminated! If we use Asana reliably to plan, do, and report on our work, we can massively reduce the wasteful status discussions and instead focus our valuable time together on strategizing and problem-solving.
How do we accomplish this? It starts with creating Asana templates and tools built specifically for efficient and meaningful meetings.
Exactly what defines an efficient and meaningful meeting?
In my experience, these are some essential guidelines:
- PURPOSE: Clearly articulated reason for the meeting
- PREPARATION: Communicated in advance, with time for attendees to prepare
- DATA-DRIVEN: Clear, accurate data as the basis for meeting topics whenever possible
- LIVE COLLABORATION REQUIRED: Only meet when the purpose requires live collaboration: strategizing, brainstorming, problem-solving. If the meeting topics don’t absolutely require live collaboration, then, as the saying goes, “that meeting could have been an email”; or in this case, “that meeting could have been an Asana message, task, dashboard, or saved search.”
With those essentials in mind, let’s get you set up with a meeting template built for efficient and meaningful meetings, starting with your 1-on-1s!
Introducing the one-click import link for efficient and meaningful 1-on-1 meetings! Here’s how to load this template into your account:
- Make sure you are logged into the Asana organization where you want the template to go
- Click this link: >> INSTANTLY ADD THE MEETINGS TEMPLATE TO MY ASANA WORKSPACE
The instructions for how to use it are built into the template, but I’ll provide you a high-level overview of the structure and the template setup here as well.
Overview of Structure and Setup Process
The primary purpose of this 1-on-1 meetings project template is to make the standard and time-wasting meeting topics easy to answer with a couple clicks and mere seconds of effort so that the important topics can become the focus of your meetings.
Let’s start with the meeting task template, because that’s the central element of this project.
1-ON-1 MEETING TASK TEMPLATE:
(Est. time to complete: 5-10 mins)
There is a placeholder task waiting for you in the “
1-ON-1 MEETINGS” section, ready to be customized.
Here’s a sneak peek of the pre-loaded agenda, which I encourage you to customize to fit your 1-on-1 meeting needs:
YOUR ACTION ITEM: Follow the instructions in the “MEETING: TOPIC | DATE” task in the 1-ON-1 MEETINGS section to customize the task and then save as your 1-on-1 meeting task template.
SECTIONS:
(Est. time to complete: 3-5 mins)
We’ve included the following sections:
TO SORT(default: open): For tasks or discussion items that get routed to this project, ready for processing (whether to add to the next meeting agenda, to work on, or to hold for future work). Positioned at the top to “catch” all incoming tasks. Because most tasks will be for upcoming work, later work, or as meeting agenda items, I recommend aiming to keep this section empty. New tasks arrive, and you sort or process them.
BACKLOG/QUEUE (default: collapsed): For tasks that have been moved into the “Queue” for upcoming work but are not yet “In Progress”.- 1-ON-1 MEETINGS (default: open): For generating and storing meeting tasks (from our meeting task template)
PTO (default: collapsed): For generating and storing time-blocking tasks like PTO and offsites/work travel.
IN PROGRESS (default: open): For tracking “In-Progress” ad-hoc tasks either from the backlog or delegated by the manager.
DONE/ARCHIVE (default collapsed): For non-meeting tasks that have been completed.- LATER (default collapsed): For tasks that we don’t want to forget about, but are not going to be worked on in the near future.
YOUR ACTION ITEM: Remove any sections you do not intend to use.
PROJECT VIEWS:
(Est. time to complete: 5-10 mins)
Project views are an amazing way to customize Asana to fit your various work use cases with minimal clicks during active daily use.
I’ve included guidance for the following purpose-specific views to help you navigate this project much more efficiently:
- ALL INCOMPLETE: For seeing all incomplete tasks in a single view, regardless of recency or due date
TODAY (WORK DATE): For tasks you’ve committed to work on today (using a custom field I recommend, called “
Work Date”)- DUE SOON: For tasks that are overdue or due within the next 14 days
RECENT/NEW: For newly assigned tasks, regardless of whether they have due dates or not- COMPLETED: For showing recently completed work
In the template, I’ve included the tasks with instructions for how to create and customize each of these views.
YOUR ACTION ITEM: Follow the instructions in the "
PROJECT SETUP CHECKLIST, in the subtasks under the subtask section “PROJECT VIEWS”.
RULES (ASANA AUTOMATIONS):
(Est. time to complete: 5-10 mins)
“Rules” are simply Asana automations, and they are a fantastic way to take any repeating or predictable pattern and automate it. As an example scenario, for a team meeting tracker, once a meeting is given a due date, auto-add these 3 collaborators. In this template, we can add a few rules to make meetings tracking work smoothly for you.
NEW TASK → ASSIGN ME: For seeing all incomplete tasks in a single view, regardless of recency or due date- (Optional rule in My Tasks) NEW TASK ASSIGNED → ADD TO PROJECT: If you’d like all the employee’s assigned tasks to automatically show up in this project so that you can see all assigned work as you discuss and plan together, you can go to the employee’s My Tasks and help them set this rule up.
- (Optional) PTO REQUEST → CREATE APPROVAL SUBTASK: Because planning for upcoming PTO/OOO time is usually a key part of a 1-on-1 manager-employee work relationship, you can add a rule to automatically generate an approval subtask for every PTO request that your employee creates.
Wrap-up
Congrats! Once you have added the template and followed the instructions, you are now set up for extremely efficient and meaningful meetings, including with 1-click access to the data for how last week went, what next week looks like, and follow-ups from previous meetings!
You can now roll out this same template for all 1-on-1 manager-employee pairs in your org. You can also adapt this for managing team meetings, project meetings, portfolio meetings, client meetings, and more!
Or, if you’d like help customizing this setup to your team’s specific needs,…
YOUR ACTION ITEM: Reach out to your Asana rep or head on over to the Asana partner directory and set up a…. Well… I hesitate to say it, but, a meeting (an efficient and meaningful one, of course) to get some help from the people who’ve done this dozens or hundreds of times.
Kudos for taking a very important step toward productivity improvements in work management for you and your team!
BONUS IDEAS FOR EVEN MORE POWERFUL MEETINGS MGMT:
Handwritten notes to Asana text and tasks (great idea from @David_Jane):
Building on your excellent insights, I’d like to add one more, inspired by the new Studio AI.
- If you take handwritten notes or make drawings, simply take a photo of the page(s) and upload it to a task. Studio AI (via Rules) can then transcribe your notes, format them as needed, and even generate subtasks automatically.
