💡 I feel overwhelmed, what can I do?

I feel overwhelmed what can I do? Yes, Asana allows you to get rid of most emails to bring clarity. But many bad practices or lack of clean-up can generate an overwhelming feeling. Here’s how to address the situation.

:one: Remove notifications from tasks due today, in the profile settings > hacks

:two: Clean up your My Tasks view

:three: Unfollow projects and tasks massively, using the profile settings > notifications > Manage project notifications + skimming through the Inbox

:four: Setup task auto-promotion using Rules in My Tasks and push to Later anything due in the future

:five: Use my Tip of iceberg trick if applicable: only assign yourself on the next task for a big project, not on all tasks

:six: Use Parking projects to store unimportant or unurgent tasks, and if possible unassign from yourself

:seven: Use a fire emoji :fire: on urgent tasks to make them stand out

:eight: Challenge custom colors impacting your clarity within projects

:nine: Delete stuff you’ll never do. If it’s important, it will come back.

:one::zero: Delegate as much as you can to the appropriate person

Anything I missed?

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The :fire: emoji for urgent tasks is right down my alley. These are great for organization. Thanks @Bastien_Siebman !

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I’d add:
:one::one: Achieve “Inbox Zero” by archiving notifications

For read/replied notifications, we can immediately archive them. For notifications that require some actions, we can create a follow-up task to track them in My Tasks.

Before:

  • Need to check two places (Inbox and My Tasks) to understand what needs to be done
  • Scroll endlessly to find the information received last week

After:

  • Only need to check in My Tasks
  • Find the information in My Tasks, in Projects, or with Search

I found that many new Asana users don’t know that they can archive notifications in Inbox.
I learned the importance to emphasize archiving at @paulminors’s webinar “Training: How to ease your team into Asana” in 2016, and ever since, I do so whenever I onboard new members, so that they are less likely to be overwhelmed.

P.S. This is a great topic! May I get your approval for translating it for the Japanese community?

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Of course!

Probably the same people that don’t archive emails. Yuk :frowning:

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Thank you @Bastien_Siebman! Done :slight_smile:

Great ideas @Bastien_Siebman!

For the users feeling overwhelmed by notifications, I would personally add:
:one::two: Use “Do not disturb” as a way to remain in control of your day.

For me, dedicating time slots to review my Asana notifications is making me feel less impacted than if I’m monitoring them constantly through the day.

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However, shutting down notifications for a while, even if it allows you to get things done, will also let notifications pile up even more :sweat_smile:

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