Question about tasks and best practices/ workflow

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I have a question about tasks and best practices/ workflow.

I’ve followed David Allen’s GTD for a while and I’m used to thinking that any outcome that requires more than one step is a project.

With Asana that seems to be different so I need to somehow change my thinking a little.

So my mini project is to setup a DMARC record for my domain. There are a number of tasks that need to be done before this can be achieved, including several things I am waiting to hear back about.

Right now I have these tasks set up in Asana in a project called “Business”.

I then have a section called “Single Business Action Items”, and inside of that I have the tasks as individual tasks rather than sub tasks.

Does it make sense the way I’ve set it up, with a section called Single Business Action Items, and then multiple tasks to indicate the various tasks I need to take in order to setup a DMARC record or is there a better way for me to set this up in Asana?

Maybe I should create a section called “Quick Business Projects” or something like that.

I know each person does things differently but I’m interested in what you would do and any advice you can offer around this.

In addition to that, if I have just the ONE task called “Setup DMARC record for my domain” and then all the other tasks set as sub tasks, when I look at the task in the “My tasks” section it isn’t immediately obvious what I have to do to complete the task. I would then need to refer to the sub tasks to see what I need to do which seems cumbersome.

“Setup DMARC record for my domain” isn’t something I can DO because there’s so many other things I have to do to achieve that.

My subtasks are “Contact Keap Live Chat to ask if records are correct for DKIM and email settings” and then “Contact Knownhost to ask them what I need to do to setup DKIM”. With these tasks I can see instantly what I need to do.

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An additional question that just came up after writing the above is - what should I do when I’m waiting for a reply to an email from someone else, or waiting for someone else to get their task done so I can then tick it off?

With the GTD Methodology I would allocate a “Waiting for” tag to the task, but I don’t think I can do that with sub tasks.

So I’m wondering how to best set up mini projects like this.

Do I set them up as tasks, subtasks, projects, or sections?

Thank you

P.S. Sorry if this question is a bit random. I was trying to find the best way to articulate it but not sure I did a great job there :slight_smile:

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@Gavin_Mountford,

My approach would be to create one task “Setup DMARC record for my domain” in your Business project and make all its component actions as subtasks within. Don’t assign the parent task to yourself (or do so for a date when you expect all work to be completed) but instead assign each subtask to yourself, optionally with a due date.

Your mini-project is too small for an Asana project to group them together, so that’s the value of the parent task here: grouping.

You can add dependencies between these tasks but for me that’s usually overkill for my own work, though could be helpful for collaborative work to add clarity.

I don’t see any immediate value for sections like “Single Business Action Items” or “Quick Business Projects;” I think I answered in another thread that general actionable tasks are fine to go at the top of your project not in any section and just use sections for meaningful groupings. (I will often have a “Reference” section in a project, for example.)

For Waiting actions, see my suggestion for a My Tasks > Pending section in:

and remember to check it every few days.

Thanks,

Larry

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