Bear with me. The default priority custom field in Asana contains High-Medium-Low.
Apart from the fact that they should not have colored them all (but only color High), I believe having a Medium and Low priorities adds complexity where things used to be simple.
Something is usually either urgent, or is not. It is a high priority or a normal one. And, for the sake of clarity, when something has a default value, use an empty value! Your Asana project will be clearer, with less words and colors, and the actual high priorities will pop on the screen.
My revised version of the priority field? A single value « High » in red. Nothing else.
Avoid use of a Priority custom field (as found in many Asana-provided project templates, unfortunately); itâs often not really meaningful and extra work to set such a value for every single task. (Sometimes projects can be set up to allow the tasks to appear in rough priority order.)
Instead, consider an âUrgent?â custom field with a default value of blank and a single other option of either or âUrgentâ in red. (Often with similar on/off custom fields I use the lighter-weight value of just but in this case it likely helps to see the word âUrgentâ.)
Since priority is now reduced to just a single value, Basic (free) Asana accounts could use a tag instead of custom field, and this may even be desirable for paid accounts too because itâs even more lightweightâno devoted column required. That tag value could either be âUrgentâ or simply .
Hope those ideas help some,
Larry
PS I canât believe I had to encourage @Bastien_Siebman to use an emojiâ
It depend on where you are using them. In a project / product back log these are create for understanding customer prioritise as a starting point. You then only promote the high priority ones.
Often when scoping out work it is necessary to set the level of want for an item. This helps determine itâs priority in sprints as well as descoping if time/budget constraints come in or additional scope is requested.
If any of the above I can easily provide as list of low priority items to be descoped or moved to a different version.
I can also prioritize resources based on what has been identified higher priority. It may have impact on other projects but isnât urgent. It may be a nice to have but should never be coded above other work.
So many different reasons to set priority on tasks. Nothing is ever black and white or Urgent or Not.
For your use case why bother at all with a priority level? Just put urgent tasks at the top with the expected due date. Urgent means now or this week. No need to also call it out via a field.
There is zero manual work with Rules.
Also, having the levels allows for a lesser scoped item to move up to a higher priority if budget suddenly allows or use case changes. Then you can rule a chain reaction accordantly.
Agree that any of this denotation for the âdoersâ is pointless, but for the âplannersâ it is vital.
Came across this post again⊠Mainly because I was interested to see what Name of the Field that was used.
I wanted to create a New Field to handle A Priority Theme but couldnât call in âPriorityâ because I canât add a field called that to my Organisation because Asana already has oneâŠ
So I have mixed Larry and Bastien and came up with this;
Field Name: Urgent
Drop Down Values: Hell Yeah Nah Maybe
Not
For Me this should give me a bit of combination of Priority and Impact, it also mixes in MOSCOW. Must is Hell Yeah, Should & Could are Nah Maybe and Wonât is Not.
Will see how I go⊠Now the fun job updating all the current projects.
or âUrgentâ in red. (Often with similar on/off custom fields I use the lighter-weight value of just 
but in this case it likely helps to see the word âUrgentâ.)
Hell Yeah
Nah Maybe