Controversial opinion, perhaps, but in my experience My Tasks is one of the most underutilized features in Asana. Time and time again, I’ll hop on with a team or a power-user and discover they’ve created a stand alone project to manage their work.
Is this you? No judgement! Sometimes it’s easier to start from scratch than adjust what’s prebuilt for you in My Tasks. When you treat My Tasks like a project it becomes a true command center that can organize all of your work in one place.
Here are the top five tips I share with new teams getting started with My Tasks:
#1 Gain Context with Default Options
To start, let’s make sure we’re getting the right insights from the “My Tasks” view. Head over to Options in the top-right corner and scroll down to explore all the available default fields. My top recommendation here is to toggle on Projects. This simple change allows you to see exactly which project each task belongs to, which can be extremely helpful for managing tasks across multiple projects.
#2 Group Tasks
The “To Do, Doing, Done” default grouping doesn’t work for everyone. Did you know that you can group your tasks by project, custom field, or custom sections? Once you’ve enabled the Projects field, you can try this out by grouping tasks by project. To do this, click on Group and select Projects. Note: This setup can get a bit confusing if you have tasks that are multi-homed, so let’s create a more customized approach in the next step.
#3 Adding Custom Fields
If you work with multiple clients or departments, grouping by project alone might not cut it. To add more specificity, let’s create a custom Client field. Navigate to Customize, then select Fields, click on Add, and choose Create New.
For this example, we’ll use a custom field labeled Client and populate it with names like Green Blender, Purple Mixer, and Internal. With this setup, you can categorize tasks based on each client, allowing you to quickly distinguish between tasks for various clients or internal work. To organize tasks by this new field, go to Group and select your new Custom Field.
#4 Automate Task Organization with Rules
Once your custom Client field is set up, manually updating it could become time-consuming. To streamline the process, you can establish a rule that assigns the correct Client field based on the project.
First, ensure the custom field is visible by adding it to your task library.
Then, within the client project setup (for example, Purple Mixer), go to Customize, select Rules, click on Add, and choose Create Custom Rule.
From here, select When > Task is added to this project and then skip the step for Check If. Within the Do this step, in this example we want to have the rule Set Client to Purple Mixer.
This rule will automatically apply the Client label based on the project each task comes from. This way, every task added to this project is automatically categorized, keeping your workspace organized with minimal effort.
#5 Keep it Simple, Keep it Yours
What’s most important is that your My Tasks section is organized for YOU. We all have different work styles, and the way we work naturally evolves over time. It’s okay to change what’s not working, and to keep iterating on how you use My Tasks to make sure it stays aligned with the flow of your work.
If you’re a My Tasks pro, what ways do you organize? If you’re still spinning your wheels, what functionality feels like it’s still missing for you?