How do you use Asana for Meeting Agendas?

[Margo]

• New project for each meeting
• Same project that you reference every week

[Clint_Solomon]

My meeting project has been pretty rough, with just a running list of tasks from each meeting, separated by sections with the meeting date. I’d like to be a bit more organized with things, but am not sure how to utilize the meeting agenda template for repeat meetings. What happens to previous meeting tasks? Trying to figure out a way without creating a new project for each meeting. Any tips?

[Joel_Charles]

Just my experience - nothing that says this is the best way…

1. I only setup a Project for a meeting if it is a recurring meeting (i.e. weekly manager meeting, monthly 1-on-1 meeting, etc). Other ad hoc meetings often are related to an existing Project, so I may go into that Project and create a Section for “10/15 Meeting Agenda” then put agenda items under there. After the meeting I delete (or complete) the Section
2. So for recurring meetings I create a Project devoted to it. I then create several Sections: 1 for the next meeting, 1 for the meeting after that, 1 for the meeting after that. I keep it about 2-3 meetings out into the future. The I create a Section called “General Tasks” and a section called “Upcoming Topics.” Sometimes I’ll have another Section or two but the above is my norm.
3. Meeting Agenda Sections: I’m able to put down the agenda items for the next meeting, and also start to work on the next meeting or two, as agenda items may float between dates. When the meeting is done, if there were items not discussed I just drag them to the next Meeting Agenda Section.
4. General Task Section: in the meetings, when tasks come up I put them in the “General Tasks” section. This keeps the Meeting Agendas cleaner and puts all the actual To-Dos in 1 area.
5. Upcoming Topics Section: lastly, when random stuff comes up either in the meetings, or in other conversations, and I want to “bookmark” it to make sure it comes up, I’ll just throw it in the Upcoming Topics Section. I use this section when I am making each Agenda, and I can easily just drag from this “pool” and drop the topics onto an actual meeting agenda for a given date.

[Clint_Solomon]

Thanks @Joel_Charles! Does your General Tasks section tend to balloon over time?

So for your meeting sections, do you add a new section each week for each meeting date or do you have 2-3 standing sections, with “Next Meeting” being the most current?

[Joel_Charles]

Soooo sorry for delayed response! I’m not a big fan of the “next meeting” header as I like to use specific dates - its just that much clearer. So let’s say it’s a monthly meeting, I’ll keep the section headings updated a few months out, like I’d have an 10/1 Agenda, 11/1 Agenda, 12/1 Agenda… and then often during meetings we hit some topics that we table for later, so I’ll drag it right then into one of the upcoming meeting sections. It allows me to always have holding areas for topics for a few meetings out, and then when it comes to meeting time I’m rarely starting from scratch because there are already topics that have been dropped in there. And after the October meeting I’ll look over any topics not addressed and drag them somewhere - into an upcoming month or into the general “Upcoming Topics” section. And then I delete the 10/1 Agenda heading because that’s past (or you can complete it).

As to General Tasks, yes, it can get bloated, although often tasks that come up are getting moved into other existing projects. The General Tasks is my general practice but it varies - sometimes I need a few more sections to categorize the general tasks.

[Joel_Charles]

There’s an actual example of mine: so I didn’t clean up after last week, but what I’ll do is go through, complete the items that we addressed from 9/21 agenda, as well as from today’s agenda. Some items may get moved to next week’s section or I may create another section for the week after. But then I have a catch-all section for topics I haven’t assigned to specific meeting yet, and then the General Tasks section.