I’ve been using Asana for quite some time now, and with all of the active development it has going on it is reminding me of how Evernote does things. In fact, I’ve been using Evernote more lately as well, meaning that a large chunk of my productivity lives in Asana and Evernote. Evernote is housing a lot of ideas and audio notes (not to mention a current experiment going on over at Lifehack, where I’m giving The Secret Weapon the ol’ “30 Days With” treatment), while Asana takes care of pretty much everything else.
Here are some of the things that I’ve been tinkering with in my Asana setup:
- Since you can now sort tasks by Priority or by Date, I’m applying the appropriate sorting technique to my Projects as I see fit. Part of my Lifehack setup seems to be getting the Date treatment (mainly the daily duties), while the important stuff is sorted by Priority. I like that by clicking on one tab or antoher I am able to shift between urgent and important – and in such a granular way.
- I find that Asana gets my tasks assigned to Projects very quickly from my Inboxes, mainly because the Inboxes are hidden for the most part. Every morning I go through my various Workspace Inboxes and either assign a task to a project or I take care of it on the spot. Then I go back in at the end of the day and do the same thing. I don’t “live in my inbox” at all with Asana, because the user interface gets it out of your way – whether you want it to or not.
- I’m using the x@mail.asana.com option of getting tasks out of my email client a lot more frequently now. And depending on what email address I send it with, that tells Asana which Inbox it should go to. This gets me out of my email inbox a lot faster as well, knowing that I’m putting things in their proper places to deal with later right from my mail client.
But the thing that is really missing from Asana for me right now is a better iOS app. In fact, it’s one of the pain points I bring up in my Home Screen post over at David Sparks’ MacSparky blog when I answer a question about what app I’m still missing:
“A proper mobile app for Asana, my task management app of choice. It’s not quite as robust as it needs to be, so I’m anxiously awaiting an update so that I can have a more full-featured Asana experience in my pocket.”
The one positive about not having that yet is that I’ve become really adept at using Asana’s email option, as mentioned above. I can only imagine that when Asana does ship an improved iOS experience that it is going to be all I want and more. After all, they’ve been doing that ever since they started on this path….why would they stop now?
New to Asana? Have you been using it for a while and want to get more out of it? Then purchase the book I co-authored with fellow Asana aficionado Jeremy Roberts called Do Better With Asana. It’s the ultimate Asana resource that features tactics, tips, and tricks that will turn you into an Asana action figure. Buy Do Better with Asana directly here or through Amazon.
Photo credit: Lars Hammer (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
