📢 Tip on how to organize your work in a variety of ways (My Tasks Filtering Workaround)

[LEGGO]

Currently you are unable to filter in My Tasks v2 (Meet your new My Tasks). For some this might be a challenge because you find it difficult to see your work with both time, scope and priority in mind.

As pointed out in this wonderful blog post, the introduction of boards and custom sections, now offers more flexibility in how My Tasks can work for you. The ways in which this post suggests one might break up their work is by:

• Progress
• Scope
• Work Blocks
• Dates

Well… for some, this is a challenge. What if I care about them all can’t can’t choose? Do I have to choose? It isn’t always easy or convenient to re-structure your system to see work differently (by scope over time, or priority over scope, etc). @Bastien_Siebman recently posted to LinkedIn to share how users can temporarily do something to jumpstart their My Tasks when feeling lost. I loved this post, but as he put it, this a temporary effort to produce a more functional, manageable system long-term. In my case, and perhaps many others, more context is always needed to offer the right level of clarity on the work needing to be done. So how might one provide the right level of context?

For some time now, I have managed a separate home base project that I call: When Bored , See Board (shown below) - a bit ironic given this is my main view for work which then suggests I am always bored #fakenews. This is what it looks like:

I can use the project filters to see my work just as I would in My Tasks v1 (Today, Upcoming or Later) while sorting the cards in the board view to have high priority on top but then allowing the Sections (Columns) to be the scope (type of work). This allows me to clearly evaluate what REALLY is the priority because for me… scope, time and priority on its own doesn’t dictate what needs to be worked on first! A combination of those things absolutely does!

Here are the due date filter options available on projects (yet not currently available in My Tasks):

Unfortunately, this system only offered me to control what I add to this board. It would require a lot of work to manually seek any work to be added that was assigned to me by others. Fortunately, with My Tasks v2 there is an introduction to Rules. So now, I can have anything that is added to My Tasks be added to this Board as a Rule.
Disclaimer: To use Rules in this fashion it requires a Business or Enterprise plan. The other wonderful alternative would be introduce Flowsana into your productivity toolkit

With the new Clockwise integration, I could even take into consideration work blocks and use that to help me determine exactly WHEN the work can get done!

My ideal scenario would be if Asana would Offer the same filtering capabilities and Custom Fields within the My Task experience

@LEGGO

Preferably, these custom fields would be unique to tasks when viewing from My Tasks or if viewing them outside of My Tasks the fields would be separated/collapsed in some way to show they were not associated directly with the project that the task was being viewed within. This allows My Tasks to be a unique experience while not adding clutter when viewing items from a different contextual lens (the difference between the work that needs to be done in a project vs the work that needs to prioritized by me)

[lpb]

@LEGGO

Fortunately , with My Tasks v2 there is an introduction to Rules. So now, I can have anything that is added to My Tasks be added to this Board as a Rule.

It’s important to note that this will require Asana Business or Enterprise plan to set up this automation, so I don’t think this approach is suitable to Basic and Premium plan users, right @LEGGO?

Another detailed article not mentioned above but related to these same topics of different My Tasks approaches is one I wrote some weeks ago, in case it’s of interest to anyone:

Your Simple (or Advanced) Strategy for Asana’s My Tasks

I’ve just published the article linked above to Medium (free access). I hope both existing Asana users grappling with My Tasks version 2 (currently being deployed), as well as new users to Asana, will check it out because it was written with all of you in mind. This comprehensive article on My Tasks: Outlines a simple but highly functional My Tasks setup with brief, step-by-step setup and use instructions, Explores an advanced My Tasks approach–the one I actually use–that I feel is unique …

Thanks,

Larry

[LEGGO]

@lpb

It’s important to note that this will require Asana Business or Enterprise plan to set up this automation,

Correct, @lpb. I added this disclaimer to my post. Thank you.

@lpb

Another detailed article not mentioned above

Also thanks for replying with this. I actually meant to call out this post in addition to the blog. Sorry for that miss. I enjoyed the read myself.

[Phil_Seeman]

@lpb

this will require Asana Business or Enterprise plan to set up this automation

Or Flowsana.

[LEGGO]

@Phil_Seeman

Or Flowsana

Updated the post

[Rashad_Issa]

Great tip and post @LEGGO

[Rashad_Issa]

Love your blog Larry!

[Bastien_Siebman]

I once had a similar approach with custom field for energy needed (from 1 to 3), business value (from 1 to 3) and time saved later if task done (from 1 to 3) and I would pick a task based on those.