Hi Community!
This week I was revamping one of my Asana projects that has been getting more complex over time, and I have to admit… my attempts to keep optimizing it and making it more powerful ended up turning it into a bit of a Frankenstein 
. What started as a clean and simple setup slowly turned into a towering structure of subtasks, dependencies, custom fields, calendar views, and more.
As I sat there untangling the mess I had created, I suddenly laughed. A sweet childhood memory had popped into my head. I thought, “Wait a minute… I’m just like that character from that cartoon.”
The cartoon was only a vague memory, but the metaphor was too perfect and I had to track it down. After a bit of digging, I found it. It turns out it was from a German cartoon called Janosch’s Storytime (The Old Bear Tales in Brazil), which aired in the 90s and featured an old bear telling whimsical little fables with deeper meanings.
In this particular episode he tells the story of Schnuddel, a cheerful little character who decides to build a house. They start off simple, but quickly adds more and more rooms, one for every little idea and purpose. Before long, the house grows higher and higher, with rooms stacked all the way up into the clouds. But the higher the house gets, the less stable it becomes. Eventually, it collapses under its own weight.
The episode is called Wolkenzimmerhaus, which translates to A House of Rooms in the Clouds.
Sound familiar?
That’s exactly why this memory came back to me. My project had become a house of rooms tasks (and sections, automations, dependencies, and more) in the clouds. It had grown so much that it was no longer working as smoothly as I wanted.
So I took a step back, looked at what really needed to be there, and started rebuilding with more intention. I’m still using all the same powerful features and automations, just not all at once and not without a clear purpose. It turns out that keeping things lean and smart is what really helped me get back on track.
If this article were an Old Bear fable, the moral would be: “Intention is everything. Projects are puzzles, not towers. Let each piece find its place.” 
And that brings us to today’s TGIF prompts. Share whichever one sparks joy for you! 
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Have you ever overcomplicated a project or workflow? What helped you simplify it again? Any tips to share? (I might borrow some ideas for future EDU content 
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Or let’s take a nostalgia break. What was your favorite cartoon growing up? (Or now, because cartoons are for everyone.)
Happy Friday, everyone!
