1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,653 Hello, my name is Paul Minors. 2 00:00:01,677 --> 00:00:04,908 Welcome back to another one of my Asana training videos. 3 00:00:04,932 --> 00:00:08,206 Over the last few years, I've been very fortunate to have worked with 4 00:00:08,231 --> 00:00:11,256 hundreds of different businesses and different Asana users. 5 00:00:11,281 --> 00:00:13,371 And what I'm going to show you today are 6 00:00:13,395 --> 00:00:16,800 the most common mistakes that we see coming up again and again. 7 00:00:16,878 --> 00:00:20,660 This video is actually a remake from a video I made a couple of years ago, 8 00:00:20,685 --> 00:00:25,722 and I wanted to update it with an even bigger list of some of the common mistakes that we see. 9 00:00:25,842 --> 00:00:29,004 If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment below, 10 00:00:29,029 --> 00:00:32,888 and if you would like one-on-one help with setting up your Asana account, 11 00:00:32,913 --> 00:00:36,200 learning how to take advantage of all the different features, 12 00:00:36,224 --> 00:00:40,176 training and onboarding your team, then click the link in the description below 13 00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:42,774 to learn more about my Asana consulting options. 14 00:00:42,948 --> 00:00:45,949 Now the first and maybe one of the biggest mistakes 15 00:00:45,974 --> 00:00:50,289 that I see people making in Asana, is not using the My Tasks page. 16 00:00:50,734 --> 00:00:54,329 The My Tasks page you will find here on the sidebar, 17 00:00:54,480 --> 00:00:57,813 this is the page that shows you everything assigned to you 18 00:00:57,838 --> 00:01:02,039 from all of the different tasks, subtasks and projects that you're working in. 19 00:01:02,039 --> 00:01:04,721 Basically, if a task or a subtask is assigned to you, 20 00:01:04,745 --> 00:01:09,240 if it has your name on it like this, then it's going to show up on this My Tasks page. 21 00:01:09,302 --> 00:01:12,115 Now the mistake that we see a lot of people make is 22 00:01:12,139 --> 00:01:15,495 instead of using and working from this screen throughout the day, 23 00:01:15,519 --> 00:01:19,092 we see a lot of people clicking through all of their projects 24 00:01:19,116 --> 00:01:20,718 to go and find their work. 25 00:01:20,742 --> 00:01:23,114 They look for anything with their name on it. 26 00:01:23,138 --> 00:01:26,229 Or, maybe they actually even create a project for their own tasks 27 00:01:26,253 --> 00:01:28,523 and I'll actually come back to that in a sec. 28 00:01:28,745 --> 00:01:33,146 So you spend a lot of time hunting around just trying to find your work. 29 00:01:33,198 --> 00:01:38,055 But the best practice in Asana is to use and work from the My Tasks page. 30 00:01:38,300 --> 00:01:43,147 I have separate videos all about how to use this screen to give you a brief overview. 31 00:01:43,172 --> 00:01:45,088 You can see what I've done here is, 32 00:01:45,112 --> 00:01:48,395 I have some sections to show what I'm working on today. 33 00:01:48,479 --> 00:01:50,771 I can see what I have coming up later this week, 34 00:01:50,795 --> 00:01:54,804 and then even some tasks that are starting to populate my next week section here. 35 00:01:54,828 --> 00:01:58,020 I've even got some rules that help me to automatically move 36 00:01:58,020 --> 00:02:01,340 tasks through these sections as the due dates fall due. 37 00:02:01,467 --> 00:02:03,445 But go and check out my other videos 38 00:02:03,469 --> 00:02:06,179 to learn more about how to use this My Tasks page. 39 00:02:06,204 --> 00:02:07,131 Okay. 40 00:02:07,156 --> 00:02:11,594 The next mistake we see people making a lot is assigning too many tasks to yourself 41 00:02:11,618 --> 00:02:15,678 including non-tasks, or really things that shouldn't be in Asana, 42 00:02:15,703 --> 00:02:18,959 for example, articles or books you might want to read. 43 00:02:18,959 --> 00:02:22,743 I think a lot of that type of thing can clutter up Asana quite a lot. 44 00:02:22,972 --> 00:02:26,852 So here's an example in my demo account. 45 00:02:26,876 --> 00:02:29,316 You can see this is looking really messy. 46 00:02:29,340 --> 00:02:33,379 I've got loads of stuff jammed into my Recently Assigned section. 47 00:02:33,379 --> 00:02:35,124 My Today section is full. 48 00:02:35,148 --> 00:02:37,322 There's a lot of things that are overdue here. 49 00:02:37,346 --> 00:02:39,239 I'll come back to that. 50 00:02:39,239 --> 00:02:42,047 But really the volume of work is too much. 51 00:02:42,071 --> 00:02:45,609 And this happens a lot with new users because what I find tends to happen is 52 00:02:45,633 --> 00:02:48,981 when you get started with Asana, you're really excited so you jump in, 53 00:02:49,005 --> 00:02:53,599 you create loads of projects and loads of tasks for everything that you need to do, 54 00:02:53,640 --> 00:02:58,905 which is great in theory except that now you have all these tasks on your My Tasks page, 55 00:02:59,227 --> 00:03:04,017 and you quickly start to feel overwhelmed and just drown in the volume of work. 56 00:03:04,091 --> 00:03:07,708 Now there are a couple of ways you could manage this slightly better. 57 00:03:07,732 --> 00:03:12,220 One is as I showed you before on the My Tasks page, you could use sections 58 00:03:12,244 --> 00:03:17,040 like I've done, Today, This week, Next week, and even I have Later down here. 59 00:03:17,064 --> 00:03:21,153 And you move tasks into the various sections to hide them. 60 00:03:21,177 --> 00:03:24,698 So I actually, when I'm working in Asana on a daily basis, 61 00:03:24,722 --> 00:03:27,809 often don't even look at This week and Next week. 62 00:03:27,833 --> 00:03:31,223 I put tasks into This week and Next week obviously based on the due date. 63 00:03:31,247 --> 00:03:34,375 You can see I have here tasks due tomorrow and Friday. 64 00:03:34,620 --> 00:03:39,720 Anything due more than a week away, you can see I have quite a lot in here, 65 00:03:39,720 --> 00:03:41,744 I hide in this Later section. 66 00:03:41,833 --> 00:03:44,846 And so that helps me to keep my My Tasks page 67 00:03:44,870 --> 00:03:48,299 really nice and clean and minimal and organized. 68 00:03:48,299 --> 00:03:52,159 And it really helps me to focus on only what I have to do today. 69 00:03:52,319 --> 00:03:56,071 Another option is and this is where you might want to think about 70 00:03:56,095 --> 00:04:00,672 and have a conversation with your team about how you're going to manage the work, 71 00:04:00,752 --> 00:04:03,745 but another thing we see clients do sometimes is, 72 00:04:03,769 --> 00:04:06,835 only assigning tasks to yourself when they fall due. 73 00:04:07,016 --> 00:04:08,660 So what I could do here is 74 00:04:08,685 --> 00:04:11,977 with some of these tasks that are occurring later on in the project 75 00:04:12,002 --> 00:04:14,776 I might actually leave this unassigned for now, 76 00:04:14,801 --> 00:04:18,767 and then only assign this when the task is now ready to be worked on. 77 00:04:18,791 --> 00:04:21,415 So we move through the project in phases 78 00:04:21,439 --> 00:04:25,248 and assign blocks of tasks when it's time to work on them. 79 00:04:25,272 --> 00:04:26,736 That's going to make it 80 00:04:26,761 --> 00:04:31,081 so that people are less overwhelmed with a huge volume of tasks on their task list. 81 00:04:31,208 --> 00:04:32,784 I would also caution you 82 00:04:32,808 --> 00:04:37,230 to not use Asana for things that aren't task based or task related. 83 00:04:37,254 --> 00:04:39,457 I've seen clients do funny things where 84 00:04:39,481 --> 00:04:44,239 they put things like articles or even emails that they want to respond to into Asana 85 00:04:44,263 --> 00:04:47,447 as a way of trying to collect everything in one place. 86 00:04:47,471 --> 00:04:49,507 And again the intention is there, it's good. 87 00:04:49,531 --> 00:04:51,909 it's "I want to have everything in one place," 88 00:04:51,933 --> 00:04:55,282 but then Asana is full of not just tasks which you need to work on 89 00:04:55,306 --> 00:04:58,109 but also articles that you may or may not read someday, 90 00:04:58,133 --> 00:05:00,258 or an email that you need to respond to, 91 00:05:00,282 --> 00:05:04,188 and I would argue that those types of things really don't belong in Asana. 92 00:05:04,212 --> 00:05:06,443 The next very common and very big mistake 93 00:05:06,467 --> 00:05:09,300 that we see people making, is not checking the Inbox 94 00:05:09,300 --> 00:05:12,660 and really not dealing with the notifications correctly. 95 00:05:12,739 --> 00:05:15,581 So the Inbox in Asana up here on the sidebar, 96 00:05:15,606 --> 00:05:18,229 this is where you get notified about all tasks 97 00:05:18,254 --> 00:05:21,660 that you are a collaborator on down here at the bottom. 98 00:05:21,660 --> 00:05:25,638 So anything I'm a collaborator on I'm getting notified about, 99 00:05:25,662 --> 00:05:29,639 whether it's a task like this where the due date has changed, 100 00:05:29,639 --> 00:05:33,017 or maybe a task that's being completed like this one, 101 00:05:33,042 --> 00:05:35,597 or if somebody is commenting on a task, 102 00:05:35,622 --> 00:05:38,999 I'm getting notified about anything that I'm a collaborator on. 103 00:05:39,023 --> 00:05:43,634 Now the mistake we see people make is, number one, not checking this Inbox enough. 104 00:05:43,658 --> 00:05:46,297 If you don't check the Inbox, this is where 105 00:05:46,321 --> 00:05:50,502 important updates and just work in general slips through the cracks. 106 00:05:50,526 --> 00:05:53,022 You end up in a situation where somebody says 107 00:05:53,046 --> 00:05:56,659 "Hey Paul, you know, you never gave me feedback on that task" and I say 108 00:05:56,683 --> 00:06:00,558 "Oh, I didn't even see, it's probably because I wasn't checking the Inbox." 109 00:06:00,582 --> 00:06:04,842 So the first best practice is to be checking the Inbox a couple of times a day. 110 00:06:04,866 --> 00:06:07,701 You'll actually see there'll be a little orange dot up here 111 00:06:07,726 --> 00:06:09,972 when there's a new notification in the Inbox. 112 00:06:09,997 --> 00:06:13,758 Checking it regularly is going to mean that you're more up to date with 113 00:06:13,783 --> 00:06:17,986 the task updates, comments, and questions that teammates are sharing with you. 114 00:06:18,120 --> 00:06:21,963 And then the next best practice is to archive the notifications as you go. 115 00:06:21,987 --> 00:06:24,618 So you can click this little archive button here. 116 00:06:24,642 --> 00:06:26,732 Once you've dealt with a notification, 117 00:06:26,756 --> 00:06:29,758 you've either looked at it or you've responded with it, 118 00:06:29,782 --> 00:06:31,500 you click that archive button. 119 00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:33,580 I'm going to go ahead and archive all, 120 00:06:33,605 --> 00:06:36,064 but this is the screen we want to get to 121 00:06:36,089 --> 00:06:38,759 on a daily basis, which is Inbox zero. 122 00:06:38,759 --> 00:06:41,265 This means that I've dealt with all of my notifications 123 00:06:41,289 --> 00:06:42,723 and I'm completely up to date. 124 00:06:42,747 --> 00:06:46,762 I would also recommend if you are working from the Inbox as I suggest, 125 00:06:46,786 --> 00:06:50,211 managing your notifications and turning off email updates 126 00:06:50,235 --> 00:06:53,660 for activity updates and maybe even mentions and summaries. 127 00:06:54,108 --> 00:06:59,137 You don't really need the email notifications if you are checking this Inbox regularly. 128 00:06:59,243 --> 00:07:01,557 Another mistake we see from time to time 129 00:07:01,581 --> 00:07:04,338 is leaving tasks open and not completing them. 130 00:07:04,362 --> 00:07:08,829 So not using the Mark as complete button up here or checking the tick here. 131 00:07:08,853 --> 00:07:10,710 When I ask clients about this 132 00:07:10,734 --> 00:07:14,974 the excuse or reason people often give me is they'll say something like 133 00:07:14,999 --> 00:07:18,947 "Well, I did the work but I didn't want to lose the task." 134 00:07:18,972 --> 00:07:22,763 You know, "I still wanted to chat with the person who assigned it to me. 135 00:07:22,788 --> 00:07:27,831 I wanted to get some feedback before I was confident in fully completing the work, 136 00:07:27,856 --> 00:07:29,617 and so I left it open." 137 00:07:29,699 --> 00:07:32,831 So again, I understand the intention it's there, it's good, 138 00:07:32,855 --> 00:07:37,668 but the better way to manage a situation like this is mark the task as complete. 139 00:07:37,692 --> 00:07:39,952 As the assignee, that's your responsibility. 140 00:07:39,977 --> 00:07:42,839 Sometimes people feel like "Am I allowed to complete the task?" 141 00:07:42,864 --> 00:07:46,522 if they're not the one that actually created it or assigned it in the first place. 142 00:07:46,547 --> 00:07:50,187 There's often a bit of hesitation about being able to complete it, 143 00:07:50,212 --> 00:07:52,097 but in my view as the assignee, 144 00:07:52,122 --> 00:07:55,475 it's your responsibility to actually complete the task. 145 00:07:55,499 --> 00:07:57,904 The assignor, the person who gave you the task, 146 00:07:57,928 --> 00:08:01,278 they will get notified in their Inbox that you've completed it. 147 00:08:01,302 --> 00:08:04,597 They can then review the work. They can go back with any questions. 148 00:08:04,621 --> 00:08:07,307 They could even reopen the task if they're not satisfied 149 00:08:07,331 --> 00:08:10,017 and there's something else that still needs to be done. 150 00:08:10,041 --> 00:08:12,554 But you completing the task in the first place, 151 00:08:12,579 --> 00:08:15,634 sends a clear signal that you're saying this is now done. 152 00:08:15,695 --> 00:08:18,437 Another common mistake along the same lines is 153 00:08:18,461 --> 00:08:21,995 changing the assignee back and forth as the work changes. 154 00:08:22,199 --> 00:08:24,120 So what we see from time to time is, 155 00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:28,151 maybe somebody assigns me a task, so they put my name on it up here, 156 00:08:28,175 --> 00:08:32,922 and then when I'm finished with the task, when I think that I've done the work 157 00:08:32,946 --> 00:08:36,244 I then change it back to the person that assigned it to me. 158 00:08:36,292 --> 00:08:37,996 And yes, the intention there is, 159 00:08:38,020 --> 00:08:41,029 you're saying "I've done the work so I'm going to assign it back" 160 00:08:41,054 --> 00:08:43,045 because they now need to check the task. 161 00:08:43,070 --> 00:08:44,785 The issue with doing this though 162 00:08:44,810 --> 00:08:47,658 is that you lose visibility of who's responsible for this task. 163 00:08:47,682 --> 00:08:49,837 If you assign the task back and forth, 164 00:08:49,862 --> 00:08:54,745 it's very easy to get into a situation where maybe it isn't assigned to the right person 165 00:08:54,770 --> 00:08:57,753 because you've assigned it to the person that assigned it to you 166 00:08:57,777 --> 00:09:01,588 you've assigned it back and they actually want you to go and change something else. 167 00:09:01,613 --> 00:09:03,910 But they forget to assign it back to you. 168 00:09:03,935 --> 00:09:08,089 So the whole assigning back and forth thing I think just opens up a can of worms 169 00:09:08,114 --> 00:09:10,519 and it creates a lot of opportunity for human error 170 00:09:10,544 --> 00:09:13,232 to result in the task just falling through the cracks. 171 00:09:13,320 --> 00:09:17,167 Again, the best practice is, leave the task assigned to the person 172 00:09:17,191 --> 00:09:20,193 who is ultimately responsible for doing the work. 173 00:09:20,217 --> 00:09:24,019 When that person is finished, they mark it as complete like I mentioned before, 174 00:09:24,043 --> 00:09:27,600 and the original assignor can then jump in with any comments, questions, 175 00:09:27,600 --> 00:09:31,787 or feedback, or again, they can simply reopen the task if they need to. 176 00:09:31,980 --> 00:09:36,850 Another very common mistake I see all the time is leaving tasks overdue. 177 00:09:36,874 --> 00:09:40,555 So this happens where you've got a bunch of tasks assigned to you, 178 00:09:40,579 --> 00:09:45,400 let's collapse that in my Today section, I had the intention to do this work 179 00:09:45,425 --> 00:09:48,408 but for whatever reason I didn't get it done that day. 180 00:09:48,540 --> 00:09:52,010 That's fine, you know, stuff happens, emergencies come up, 181 00:09:52,034 --> 00:09:54,983 so we can't always get all of our tasks done. 182 00:09:55,191 --> 00:09:59,981 But leaving the tasks here on your My Tasks with the red overdue dates 183 00:10:00,362 --> 00:10:04,099 I think is just just results in the tasks building up over time 184 00:10:04,124 --> 00:10:05,940 this task list gets very messy, 185 00:10:05,965 --> 00:10:10,448 and it very quickly leads you to feeling quite overwhelmed by all your work. 186 00:10:10,582 --> 00:10:13,815 I think a better way to deal with overdue tasks is, 187 00:10:13,840 --> 00:10:17,274 instead of leaving them overdue like this, at the end of the day, 188 00:10:17,299 --> 00:10:21,084 and you should make this part of your shutdown routine at the end of the day, 189 00:10:21,108 --> 00:10:23,624 is I look at anything that I have left on my task list 190 00:10:23,648 --> 00:10:26,546 that I just didn't have time for, and I change the due date. 191 00:10:26,570 --> 00:10:29,545 So I'll say "Okay, let me do this maybe tomorrow" 192 00:10:29,569 --> 00:10:33,540 or maybe "I'll come back to it on Monday," and I change the date. 193 00:10:33,540 --> 00:10:35,207 And then I'll sort it accordingly. 194 00:10:35,232 --> 00:10:38,013 So if it's next week maybe I'll put it into my upcoming 195 00:10:38,037 --> 00:10:42,633 and then I've got rules that will automatically move it into today when it's due. 196 00:10:42,657 --> 00:10:44,913 So the long and short of it is 197 00:10:44,937 --> 00:10:48,706 don't let it go overdue or don't leave it overdue. 198 00:10:48,730 --> 00:10:50,345 Update the due date to reflect 199 00:10:50,369 --> 00:10:53,718 when are you actually going to come back and work on it again. 200 00:10:53,742 --> 00:10:56,966 That way, you can avoid having this massive list of overdue tasks, 201 00:10:56,990 --> 00:11:01,358 and you've actually now got a clear plan of when you're going to come back to it later. 202 00:11:01,382 --> 00:11:03,536 The next common mistake we see all the time 203 00:11:03,561 --> 00:11:07,003 and this is the reason a lot of clients reach out to us in the first place, 204 00:11:07,028 --> 00:11:11,587 is that maybe as the owner of the business, they have dumped Asana on their team 205 00:11:11,611 --> 00:11:14,940 without any really formal introduction or training. 206 00:11:14,940 --> 00:11:17,980 This is a mistake that's not unique particularly to Asana, 207 00:11:18,004 --> 00:11:21,916 but with a lot of tools and apps that different businesses choose to use, 208 00:11:21,940 --> 00:11:26,221 is the business owner says "Right, we're going to use this tool" like Asana 209 00:11:26,245 --> 00:11:29,838 and they leave it up to their team to figure out how to use it 210 00:11:29,862 --> 00:11:31,918 "let's just work it out as a team". 211 00:11:31,942 --> 00:11:33,711 And what we tend to find happen is 212 00:11:33,735 --> 00:11:38,122 you'll see some people are good at figuring it out because they're quite tech savvy, 213 00:11:38,146 --> 00:11:41,854 but inevitably there are people on the team who aren't very tech savvy, 214 00:11:41,878 --> 00:11:45,586 who can't figure it out on their own and need a little bit more help. 215 00:11:45,610 --> 00:11:49,312 So you end up with this kind of half adoption half usage of Asana, 216 00:11:49,336 --> 00:11:51,642 where some people use it other people don't 217 00:11:51,666 --> 00:11:55,429 but the people that don't are dragging down the entire team. 218 00:11:55,453 --> 00:11:59,177 So what we recommend and this is part of the service that we provide is 219 00:11:59,201 --> 00:12:02,013 thinking about why are we using Asana in the first place, 220 00:12:02,037 --> 00:12:05,797 and actually talking to your team and saying this is why we're using Asana, 221 00:12:05,821 --> 00:12:08,409 here are the problems we think it's going to solve, 222 00:12:08,433 --> 00:12:10,397 and how we expect everyone to use it. 223 00:12:10,421 --> 00:12:13,331 If you need help with training and onboarding your team, 224 00:12:13,355 --> 00:12:16,141 then check out the Master Asana program on my website 225 00:12:16,165 --> 00:12:20,673 which lets you book private 1:1 consulting sessions with experts on my team. 226 00:12:20,697 --> 00:12:23,252 You get access to weekly group coaching calls, 227 00:12:23,277 --> 00:12:27,109 and you even get access to a full online course that I've developed 228 00:12:27,134 --> 00:12:30,492 that guides you through how to build out your Asana account, 229 00:12:30,516 --> 00:12:34,128 how to plan your Asana role out, and how to train your team correctly. 230 00:12:34,152 --> 00:12:37,940 Something else we recommend when rolling out Asana to your team is 231 00:12:37,964 --> 00:12:42,247 identifying an Asana Champion or what I call the Chief Asana Officer, 232 00:12:42,272 --> 00:12:44,122 basically somebody on your team 233 00:12:44,147 --> 00:12:48,298 who's ultimately going to be responsible for Asana's rollout and adoption. 234 00:12:48,322 --> 00:12:52,264 Unless you have somebody that's ultimately responsible for, 235 00:12:52,288 --> 00:12:55,465 it we find that everyone tends to use it in their own different way, 236 00:12:55,489 --> 00:12:57,861 and so the purpose of having that Asana Champion is 237 00:12:57,885 --> 00:13:00,973 they're someone that can help to train and onboard new employees 238 00:13:00,997 --> 00:13:05,073 and there's someone that can work with different team members and departments 239 00:13:05,097 --> 00:13:07,560 to make sure we're all using it consistently. 240 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:12,270 Another common mistake we see, and this is the result of not using the My Tasks page 241 00:13:12,294 --> 00:13:14,444 that I talked about at the beginning, 242 00:13:14,468 --> 00:13:18,479 is creating a private project for your work instead of using that My Tasks page. 243 00:13:18,780 --> 00:13:22,680 So because people often don't understand how to use this My Tasks page, 244 00:13:22,680 --> 00:13:26,993 what they do is they'll create a project a bit like this, 245 00:13:27,017 --> 00:13:30,017 where they say, you know, "Paul's tasks". 246 00:13:30,041 --> 00:13:34,873 And then what they do is they create their own task list in this project. 247 00:13:34,897 --> 00:13:37,064 But you don't actually need to do this 248 00:13:37,088 --> 00:13:40,458 because the My Tasks page is like your own private project. 249 00:13:40,482 --> 00:13:45,433 If I create a task directly on here so "This is a task". 250 00:13:45,457 --> 00:13:47,474 If I don't put this in a project, 251 00:13:47,498 --> 00:13:51,422 this is just going to be private to me, nobody else can see this. 252 00:13:51,446 --> 00:13:54,829 I can also choose to view My Tasks as a list like this, 253 00:13:54,853 --> 00:13:58,235 or I can use the board layout, or even the calendar view. 254 00:13:58,259 --> 00:14:01,592 So this is in a sense my own private project 255 00:14:01,617 --> 00:14:06,881 and creating your own private project like this separately is sort of a waste of time. 256 00:14:07,560 --> 00:14:12,477 The next mistake we see all the time is people not using due dates. 257 00:14:12,501 --> 00:14:16,705 This one is really confusing to me because putting a due date on a task is 258 00:14:16,729 --> 00:14:20,298 one of the most important bits of information about the task. 259 00:14:20,322 --> 00:14:23,519 You know, a task should tell you what you need to do, 260 00:14:23,519 --> 00:14:25,983 who's doing it, and when is it due. 261 00:14:26,007 --> 00:14:29,993 When I'm working with a client and I ask "Why didn't you put a due date on that?" 262 00:14:30,017 --> 00:14:33,025 the reason people often give me is they'll say something like 263 00:14:33,049 --> 00:14:37,283 "Well, it didn't really have a strict deadline. it's just something we need to do soon." 264 00:14:37,308 --> 00:14:42,121 In situations like that I actually recommend still putting a due date on the task. 265 00:14:42,145 --> 00:14:46,233 Even if it doesn't have a strict or hard deadline that you need to hit, 266 00:14:46,257 --> 00:14:50,410 it's still good to use the due date as a way of setting your intention, 267 00:14:50,434 --> 00:14:53,040 and saying "I'd like to do this by Friday". 268 00:14:53,040 --> 00:14:56,700 Even if you end up changing the due date and pushing it back to next week 269 00:14:56,724 --> 00:14:58,949 because other more important work comes up, 270 00:14:58,973 --> 00:15:03,236 it's still better and it's a more effective way of working to have a due date 271 00:15:03,260 --> 00:15:07,072 that you maybe even change later, versus having no due date at all. 272 00:15:07,096 --> 00:15:09,641 The issue with having no due date on a task is, 273 00:15:09,665 --> 00:15:14,779 you might find that lots and lots of tasks that which none of them have any due dates, 274 00:15:14,803 --> 00:15:19,786 all build up and there's no sense of urgency or way of prioritizing the work, 275 00:15:19,811 --> 00:15:23,327 whereas if you use put some kind of due date on the task and say 276 00:15:23,351 --> 00:15:26,530 "I'll do this one today, this one tomorrow, this one Friday," 277 00:15:26,554 --> 00:15:30,473 again even if that changes later, that's going to be more efficient, 278 00:15:30,497 --> 00:15:34,323 more effective compared to not putting any due date on the task at all. 279 00:15:34,347 --> 00:15:38,940 The next mistake we see coming up a lot is when people are too vague with 280 00:15:38,940 --> 00:15:43,685 task details and really just not providing enough information about a task. 281 00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:48,634 So an example of that might be simply having a very vague task name 282 00:15:48,659 --> 00:15:52,271 maybe not even putting an assignee or a due date on 283 00:15:52,296 --> 00:15:54,979 and not elaborating here in the description 284 00:15:55,004 --> 00:15:59,614 or not including things like attachments and documents that are relevant. 285 00:15:59,639 --> 00:16:01,573 You want to really be thinking about 286 00:16:01,597 --> 00:16:05,478 when you assign a task how is the other person going to know what to do. 287 00:16:05,502 --> 00:16:09,634 "Am I providing enough information so that when they click on this task, 288 00:16:09,658 --> 00:16:11,275 are they going to know what to do 289 00:16:11,300 --> 00:16:14,896 without having to come back to me and ask lots and lots of questions?" 290 00:16:14,945 --> 00:16:16,214 So here's an example, 291 00:16:16,239 --> 00:16:19,435 this is a task that I assign to my virtual assistant Judy. 292 00:16:19,617 --> 00:16:23,264 It says exactly what she needs to do "Create WordPress post". 293 00:16:23,288 --> 00:16:27,300 And she can see it's a subtask of this earlier video that I made. 294 00:16:27,300 --> 00:16:31,680 And I've actually included a big old checklist of everything she needs to do. 295 00:16:31,680 --> 00:16:33,662 So this is how I use Asana 296 00:16:33,686 --> 00:16:37,278 to store standard operating procedures or SOPs. 297 00:16:37,302 --> 00:16:41,328 You can check out my video on this and how I use templates for SOPs. 298 00:16:41,352 --> 00:16:43,622 You can click the video up here. 299 00:16:44,040 --> 00:16:46,088 So you can see from Judy's point of view, 300 00:16:46,112 --> 00:16:49,241 when she receives this task, she knows what she needs to do. 301 00:16:49,265 --> 00:16:51,888 She can click back to the parent task 302 00:16:51,913 --> 00:16:56,134 and she can see what parent her subtask is related to. 303 00:16:56,399 --> 00:16:59,843 And she's got this checklist here of everything she needs to do. 304 00:16:59,867 --> 00:17:01,874 So hopefully, she can just do the task, 305 00:17:01,898 --> 00:17:05,459 she doesn't need to come back to me and ask any clarifying questions. 306 00:17:05,459 --> 00:17:10,002 Okay, and finally the final mistake we see a lot coming up with Asana users, 307 00:17:10,026 --> 00:17:12,808 is using too many channels for communication. 308 00:17:12,832 --> 00:17:15,618 And what I mean by this is not just Asana, 309 00:17:15,642 --> 00:17:20,561 but also other tools and apps and services that you use for communication. 310 00:17:20,585 --> 00:17:23,784 All tend to overlap quite a lot, and there's not enough distinction 311 00:17:23,808 --> 00:17:26,132 about when to use different tools and services. 312 00:17:26,156 --> 00:17:28,814 A common example might be something like Slack. 313 00:17:28,838 --> 00:17:32,220 We work with a lot of clients who use both Asana and Slack, 314 00:17:32,220 --> 00:17:35,551 and they're often because there's lots of different ways we can communicate 315 00:17:35,576 --> 00:17:37,452 obviously we've got email as well. 316 00:17:37,477 --> 00:17:41,415 We often find there are conversations happening in multiple different places 317 00:17:41,439 --> 00:17:43,340 and so the advice we often give is that 318 00:17:43,364 --> 00:17:45,755 you need to clearly define when to use each tool. 319 00:17:45,779 --> 00:17:50,368 For example, with Asana we recommend if you're talking about a task or a project 320 00:17:50,392 --> 00:17:54,352 which by default is probably most of the conversations you're having 321 00:17:54,376 --> 00:17:56,438 should be task or project related. 322 00:17:56,462 --> 00:17:59,944 Then really that's a conversation that should be happening inside Asana. 323 00:17:59,975 --> 00:18:03,279 And the benefit of doing that is then we can keep the conversation 324 00:18:03,303 --> 00:18:05,922 linked with the actual work that we're doing. 325 00:18:05,946 --> 00:18:09,798 So when I click on a task I can see the conversation taking place. 326 00:18:09,822 --> 00:18:13,367 I don't have to go switching over to Slack to go and find the conversation. 327 00:18:13,392 --> 00:18:15,963 But if I've got some of the conversation in Asana, 328 00:18:15,988 --> 00:18:19,799 some of it's happening in Slack where I've got different threads going, 329 00:18:19,799 --> 00:18:22,516 on maybe I've got a couple of email threads going, 330 00:18:22,540 --> 00:18:25,980 I've now divided the conversation up among multiple channels, 331 00:18:25,980 --> 00:18:30,258 and it's really hard to make sense of "where are we at?" and "what do we need to do next?" 332 00:18:30,282 --> 00:18:32,792 So when you adopt a tool like Asana, 333 00:18:32,816 --> 00:18:37,065 because this is one more tool that you can use to communicate in, 334 00:18:37,090 --> 00:18:42,050 you want to clearly define to your team when do we use a sign of a communication, 335 00:18:42,075 --> 00:18:45,825 and how does it fit, and how do we use it alongside other channels 336 00:18:45,849 --> 00:18:49,020 and other tools that we can communicate in like Slack, 337 00:18:49,020 --> 00:18:52,789 email, instant messaging, texting, and so on. 338 00:18:52,999 --> 00:18:53,843 And so there we go. 339 00:18:53,868 --> 00:18:58,286 Those are some of the common mistakes we see people making again and again with Asana. 340 00:18:58,311 --> 00:19:01,503 As I mentioned before, if you have any questions leave me a comment below. 341 00:19:01,527 --> 00:19:04,631 And if you would like one-on-one help with setting up your account, 342 00:19:04,655 --> 00:19:08,457 training, and learning how to get the most out of Asana and onboarding your team, 343 00:19:08,481 --> 00:19:10,822 then check out the link in the description below 344 00:19:10,846 --> 00:19:13,188 to learn more about our Asana consulting options. 345 00:19:13,212 --> 00:19:15,777 One more time, thank you very much for listening, 346 00:19:15,802 --> 00:19:17,777 and I will catch you in the next video.