Asana can be used by almost any team to accomplish nearly anything, easily. But only if there’s an appreciation of the interlocking parts of Asana and, in some cases, a deeper understanding of them.
Below are basic, actionable tips and best practices across key Asana areas to help you kick off 2026 by building sound Asana habits and preventing future problems. Some are quicker to implement than others, but all are key to raising your Asana game and will pay back your investment many times over.
My Tasks
Many Asana experts say My Tasks is the most important area in Asana, so it’s worth your time to set it up well. My complete advice, and what I’ve been using myself for years, is: Your Simple (or Advanced) Strategy for Asana’s My Tasks. Don’t wait on this one!
Inbox
Commit to Asana Inbox Zero at least daily. (It’s not like your email inbox–it’s possible, even within the next couple of minutes, as you’ll see…)
Start reducing Inbox overwhelm by clicking your profile image > Settings > Notifications > Project notifications:
Set the three toggles as above, which are your future defaults, then click “Manage individual projects” and set the checkboxes similarly for every project where you’re already a member:
Only turn on “Tasks added” for projects where you are the main “triager” of new tasks added.
In the Asana inbox, if you haven’t really been using it actively, just click the “…” overflow menu > Archive all. You’ve just achieved Inbox Zero!
If you get unwanted notifications, stop the madness by clicking “Leave task” at the bottom right of the task detail pane. You’ll have to do that once for each task where you’re a collaborator but don’t want to be. Soon you’ll start to appreciate the improvement if you keep at it.
Tasks
Tasks are ubiquitous in Asana, so adopting good task hygiene will provide benefits at scale:
- Start task titles with a verb for clarity, like “Draft project brief” not just “Project brief”
- Make the title scannable–short but meaningful
- Add any collaborators who would benefit from notifications when comments are made
- Use subtasks at least for checklists to breakdown a parent task and thereby avoid cluttering the project’s top-level tasks list, but make sure you understand the pros and cons
- Generally a task should be found in at least one project
Projects
See Finding focus in a sea of Asana tasks for a collection of mostly quick-to-implement best practices and tips for any Asana projects.
I included a rules-of-thumb checklist for any project in an Asana workshop presentation. Go directly to the project checklist portion (after an attempt at humor) of the full Tackle (almost) anything in Asana: Step-by-step [Free Workshop Webinar Video from Asana Academy].
Workflows
Designing Asana workflows (standard operating procedures for your organization) is a vast topic, but I feel these are a good starting point:
For a packaged solution that doesn’t require discovery sessions and detailed workflow design, consider:
For custom workflow design:
- I recommend prototyping the final state of your workflow to ensure that your approach will support the full, end-to-end behavior needed for your team’s process.
- Consider the full presentation: Tackle (almost) anything in Asana: Step-by-step [Free Workshop Webinar Video from Asana Academy], as mentioned in the last section, for my best generic workflow design advice.
- If you don’t have a true Asana expert in your organization skilled in both Asana training and workflow design, consider hiring one (it doesn’t have to be me!), even just for a brief engagement.
Conclusion
In 2026, success with Asana will come from teams grounded in strong fundamentals and empowered by thoughtful, well-designed workflows
Thanks for reading,
Larry Berger, Forum Leader, Asana Services Partner, Trilogi Solutions
