I need some creative thinking from the community.
I have a direct report. Every Monday we set out his priorities for the week. Some are one-off tasks that can get completed, others are longer tasks on which he may only make some progress, and of course some he may not get to at all over the course of the week.
And generally on Friday afternoon he’ll get ready for the next week by laying out what he thinks his priorities should be, in preparation for our Monday review. Which means that by the time we review, tasks have been moved around.
We haven’t been able to come up with a workflow or system that lets me (or him) easily track which of the weekly priorities got worked on.
This week he tried tracking his actual time worked in the default field, but we couldn’t figure out how to make use of that data. Especially as next week some of those tasks will still be ongoing, so the time will be added but not new.
Can anyone share some strategies or workflows they’re using to achieve this?
What about placing all those tasks in a project, potentially with time tracking, and then review that project’s content at the end of the week?
Are you bothered by the fact that you won’t see how long he worked on something THAT week and not overall?
Sorry if I misunderstood.
I agree that using a project and multi-homing tasks would be my first option.
The other option is to use start and end dates and then use that with an advanced saved search to filter what you want to see.
If you could give an example of how it currently looks like it could help.
Thanks for the quick input, both of you. I knew I could count on @Bastien_Siebman for some input 
@Paul_Grobler here’s a screenshot of what it currently looks like. We have a “Task Pipeline” section where we keep potential tasks to work on, and then every Monday move some items into “This week.”
I can see how the dedicated project for “This week” could work. I’m thinking
- Every Monday, go through our 1-on-1 project and set the priorities in the “This week” section.
- Once that’s set, select all items there and add them to the “This week” project.
- Through the week, he works, tracks time, makes comments, etc…
- The next week we start with a review of the “This week” project. Discuss, recap, and then remove everything from the project
- Start back at step 1
Does that match what you’re thinking?
I might ask him to track time in Toggl instead of Asana, so we can more easily see how he’s spending his time each week. It seems the Asana time tracker is useful for looking at total time dedicated to a specific task/project/portfolio, but doesn’t provide good visibility into how a person is using their time across all their work. Toggl seems to be better for that.
With this view I would suggest using a custom field to mark all tasks for that week. Then add a filter to show only the tasks with the custom field for that week.
Then after the week you can review all the tasks, clear the custom field, and add the field to the newly decided tasks. You can then use this field to create a report for the time tracking.
Hi @Liohn_Sherer
Just want to add my ideas.
I would do what you have already 1:1 Project but only add tasks to it for that week in a do this week column - he can move them into a working on and then complete column (bit like a personal sprint and keeps it focussed on what they are). Keeping the others in his my tasks so that is their pipeline - you can always as the manager have an advanced search for yourself so you can see what his tasks are over the coming months. He can then in advance of the following week, go through his my tasks and add them to the 1:1 project in advance of your meetings. I would use the estimated & actual time custom fields to show how long these tasks should take and compare how long he has spend on them. Completed ones you can remove from the project each week.
That makes more sense. I started thinking the same last night, but was debating between a Custom Field and a Tag.
Any particular reason you went to a Custom Field instead of a Tag?
