Common Asana Mistakes to Avoid

Hello, my name is Paul Minors.

Welcome back to another one
of my Asana training videos.

Over the last few years, I've been
very fortunate to have worked with

hundreds of different businesses
and different Asana users.

And what I'm going to show you today are

the most common mistakes that
we see coming up again and again.

This video is actually a remake from
a video I made a couple of years ago,

and I wanted to update it with an even bigger
list of some of the common mistakes that we see.

If you have any questions,
feel free to leave me a comment below,

and if you would like one-on-one
help with setting up your Asana account,

learning how to take advantage
of all the different features,

training and onboarding your team,
then click the link in the description below

to learn more about
my Asana consulting options.

Now the first and maybe
one of the biggest mistakes

that I see people making in Asana,
is not using the My Tasks page.

The My Tasks page
you will find here on the sidebar,

this is the page that shows
you everything assigned to you

from all of the different tasks, subtasks
and projects that you're working in.

Basically, if a task or a subtask
is assigned to you,

if it has your name on it like this, then
it's going to show up on this My Tasks page.

Now the mistake that we see
a lot of people make is

instead of using and working from
this screen throughout the day,

we see a lot of people clicking
through all of their projects

to go and find their work.

They look for anything
with their name on it.

Or, maybe they actually even
create a project for their own tasks

and I'll actually come
back to that in a sec.

So you spend a lot of time hunting around
just trying to find your work.

But the best practice in Asana is
to use and work from the My Tasks page.

I have separate videos all about how to use
this screen to give you a brief overview.

You can see what I've done here is,

I have some sections to
show what I'm working on today.

I can see what I have
coming up later this week,

and then even some tasks that are starting
to populate my next week section here.

I've even got some rules
that help me to automatically move

tasks through these sections
as the due dates fall due.

But go and check out my other videos

to learn more about
how to use this My Tasks page.

Okay.

The next mistake we see people making a lot
is assigning too many tasks to yourself

including non-tasks, or really
things that shouldn't be in Asana,

for example, articles or books
you might want to read.

I think a lot of that type of thing
can clutter up Asana quite a lot.

So here's an example in my demo account.

You can see this is looking really messy.

I've got loads of stuff jammed into
my Recently Assigned section.

My Today section is full.

There's a lot of things
that are overdue here.

I'll come back to that.

But really the volume of work is too much.

And this happens a lot with new users
because what I find tends to happen is

when you get started with Asana,
you're really excited so you jump in,

you create loads of projects and loads of
tasks for everything that you need to do,

which is great in theory except that now you
have all these tasks on your My Tasks page,

and you quickly start to feel overwhelmed
and just drown in the volume of work.

Now there are a couple of ways
you could manage this slightly better.

One is as I showed you before
on the My Tasks page, you could use sections

like I've done, Today, This week, Next week,
and even I have Later down here.

And you move tasks into the various sections
to hide them.

So I actually, when I'm working
in Asana on a daily basis,

often don't even look at
This week and Next week.

I put tasks into This week and Next week
obviously based on the due date.

You can see I have here
tasks due tomorrow and Friday.

Anything due more than a week away,
you can see I have quite a lot in here,

I hide in this Later section.

And so that helps me to keep
my My Tasks page

really nice and clean
and minimal and organized.

And it really helps me to focus on
only what I have to do today.

Another option is and this is
where you might want to think about

and have a conversation with your team
about how you're going to manage the work,

but another thing we see
clients do sometimes is,

only assigning tasks to yourself
when they fall due.

So what I could do here is

with some of these tasks that
are occurring later on in the project

I might actually leave
this unassigned for now,

and then only assign this when
the task is now ready to be worked on.

So we move through the project in phases

and assign blocks of tasks
when it's time to work on them.

That's going to make it

so that people are less overwhelmed with
a huge volume of tasks on their task list.

I would also caution you

to not use Asana for things that
aren't task based or task related.

I've seen clients do funny things where

they put things like articles or even emails
that they want to respond to into Asana

as a way of trying to collect
everything in one place.

And again the intention is there, it's good.

it's "I want to have
everything in one place,"

but then Asana is full of not just
tasks which you need to work on

but also articles that
you may or may not read someday,

or an email that you need to respond to,

and I would argue that those types of
things really don't belong in Asana.

The next very common and very big mistake

that we see people making,
is not checking the Inbox

and really not dealing with
the notifications correctly.

So the Inbox in Asana
up here on the sidebar,

this is where you get notified
about all tasks

that you are a collaborator on
down here at the bottom.

So anything I'm a collaborator on
I'm getting notified about,

whether it's a task like this
where the due date has changed,

or maybe a task that's being completed
like this one,

or if somebody is commenting on a task,

I'm getting notified about anything
that I'm a collaborator on.

Now the mistake we see people make is,
number one, not checking this Inbox enough.

If you don't check the Inbox, this is where

important updates and just work in general
slips through the cracks.

You end up in a situation
where somebody says

"Hey Paul, you know, you never gave
me feedback on that task" and I say

"Oh, I didn't even see, it's probably
because I wasn't checking the Inbox."

So the first best practice is to be
checking the Inbox a couple of times a day.

You'll actually see there'll be
a little orange dot up here

when there's a new notification
in the Inbox.

Checking it regularly is going to mean
that you're more up to date with

the task updates, comments, and questions
that teammates are sharing with you.

And then the next best practice is
to archive the notifications as you go.

So you can click
this little archive button here.

Once you've dealt with a notification,

you've either looked at it
or you've responded with it,

you click that archive button.

I'm going to go ahead and archive all,

but this is the screen we want to get to

on a daily basis, which is Inbox zero.

This means that I've dealt with
all of my notifications

and I'm completely up to date.

I would also recommend if you
are working from the Inbox as I suggest,

managing your notifications
and turning off email updates

for activity updates and maybe
even mentions and summaries.

You don't really need the email notifications
if you are checking this Inbox regularly.

Another mistake we see from time to time

is leaving tasks open
and not completing them.

So not using the Mark as complete button
up here or checking the tick here.

When I ask clients about this

the excuse or reason people often
give me is they'll say something like

"Well, I did the work
but I didn't want to lose the task."

You know, "I still wanted to chat
with the person who assigned it to me.

I wanted to get some feedback before I was
confident in fully completing the work,

and so I left it open."

So again, I understand the intention
it's there, it's good,

but the better way to manage a situation
like this is mark the task as complete.

As the assignee, that's your responsibility.

Sometimes people feel like
"Am I allowed to complete the task?"

if they're not the one that actually
created it or assigned it in the first place.

There's often a bit of hesitation
about being able to complete it,

but in my view as the assignee,

it's your responsibility
to actually complete the task.

The assignor,
the person who gave you the task,

they will get notified in their Inbox
that you've completed it.

They can then review the work.
They can go back with any questions.

They could even reopen the task
if they're not satisfied

and there's something else
that still needs to be done.

But you completing the task
in the first place,

sends a clear signal that you're
saying this is now done.

Another common mistake
along the same lines is

changing the assignee back
and forth as the work changes.

So what we see from time to time is,

maybe somebody assigns me a task,
so they put my name on it up here,

and then when I'm finished with the task,
when I think that I've done the work

I then change it back to the person
that assigned it to me.

And yes, the intention there is,

you're saying "I've done the work
so I'm going to assign it back"

because they now need to check the task.

The issue with doing this though

is that you lose visibility of
who's responsible for this task.

If you assign the task back and forth,

it's very easy to get into a situation where
maybe it isn't assigned to the right person

because you've assigned it
to the person that assigned it to you

you've assigned it back and they actually
want you to go and change something else.

But they forget to assign it back to you.

So the whole assigning back and forth
thing I think just opens up a can of worms

and it creates a lot of
opportunity for human error

to result in the task just
falling through the cracks.

Again, the best practice is,
leave the task assigned to the person

who is ultimately responsible
for doing the work.

When that person is finished, they mark
it as complete like I mentioned before,

and the original assignor can then
jump in with any comments, questions,

or feedback, or again, they can simply
reopen the task if they need to.

Another very common mistake I see
all the time is leaving tasks overdue.

So this happens where you've got
a bunch of tasks assigned to you,

let's collapse that in my Today section,
I had the intention to do this work

but for whatever reason
I didn't get it done that day.

That's fine, you know, stuff happens,
emergencies come up,

so we can't always get
all of our tasks done.

But leaving the tasks here on your
My Tasks with the red overdue dates

I think is just just results
in the tasks building up over time

this task list gets very messy,

and it very quickly leads you to feeling
quite overwhelmed by all your work.

I think a better way to deal
with overdue tasks is,

instead of leaving them overdue like this,
at the end of the day,

and you should make this part of your
shutdown routine at the end of the day,

is I look at anything
that I have left on my task list

that I just didn't have time for,
and I change the due date.

So I'll say "Okay,
let me do this maybe tomorrow"

or maybe "I'll come back to it on Monday,"
and I change the date.

And then I'll sort it accordingly.

So if it's next week maybe
I'll put it into my upcoming

and then I've got rules that will automatically
move it into today when it's due.

So the long and short of it is

don't let it go overdue
or don't leave it overdue.

Update the due date to reflect

when are you actually going
to come back and work on it again.

That way, you can avoid having
this massive list of overdue tasks,

and you've actually now got a clear plan of
when you're going to come back to it later.

The next common mistake we see all the time

and this is the reason a lot of clients
reach out to us in the first place,

is that maybe as the owner of the business,
they have dumped Asana on their team

without any really formal
introduction or training.

This is a mistake that's not
unique particularly to Asana,

but with a lot of tools and apps
that different businesses choose to use,

is the business owner says "Right,
we're going to use this tool" like Asana

and they leave it up to their team
to figure out how to use it

"let's just work it out as a team".

And what we tend to find happen is

you'll see some people are good at figuring
it out because they're quite tech savvy,

but inevitably there are people
on the team who aren't very tech savvy,

who can't figure it out on their own
and need a little bit more help.

So you end up with this kind of
half adoption half usage of Asana,

where some people use it other people don't

but the people that don't are
dragging down the entire team.

So what we recommend and this is part
of the service that we provide is

thinking about why are we using
Asana in the first place,

and actually talking to your team
and saying this is why we're using Asana,

here are the problems we think it's going
to solve,

and how we expect everyone to use it.

If you need help with training
and onboarding your team,

then check out the Master Asana
program on my website

which lets you book private 1:1 consulting
sessions with experts on my team.

You get access to weekly
group coaching calls,

and you even get access to a full
online course that I've developed

that guides you through how to build
out your Asana account,

how to plan your Asana role out,
and how to train your team correctly.

Something else we recommend when
rolling out Asana to your team is

identifying an Asana Champion
or what I call the Chief Asana Officer,

basically somebody on your team

who's ultimately going to be responsible
for Asana's rollout and adoption.

Unless you have somebody
that's ultimately responsible for,

it we find that everyone tends
to use it in their own different way,

and so the purpose of having
that Asana Champion is

they're someone that can help
to train and onboard new employees

and there's someone that can work
with different team members and departments

to make sure we're
all using it consistently.

Another common mistake we see, and this is
the result of not using the My Tasks page

that I talked about at the beginning,

is creating a private project for your work
instead of using that My Tasks page.

So because people often don't
understand how to use this My Tasks page,

what they do is they'll
create a project a bit like this,

where they say, you know, "Paul's tasks".

And then what they do is they create
their own task list in this project.

But you don't actually need to do this

because the My Tasks page
is like your own private project.

If I create a task directly
on here so "This is a task".

If I don't put this in a project,

this is just going to be private
to me, nobody else can see this.

I can also choose to view My
Tasks as a list like this,

or I can use the board layout,
or even the calendar view.

So this is in a sense
my own private project

and creating your own private project like this
separately is sort of a waste of time.

The next mistake we see all the time is
people not using due dates.

This one is really confusing to me
because putting a due date on a task is

one of the most important bits
of information about the task.

You know, a task should tell you
what you need to do,

who's doing it, and when is it due.

When I'm working with a client and I ask
"Why didn't you put a due date on that?"

the reason people often give me
is they'll say something like

"Well, it didn't really have a strict deadline.
it's just something we need to do soon."

In situations like that I actually recommend
still putting a due date on the task.

Even if it doesn't have a strict
or hard deadline that you need to hit,

it's still good to use the due date
as a way of setting your intention,

and saying "I'd like to do this by Friday".

Even if you end up changing the due
date and pushing it back to next week

because other more important work comes up,

it's still better and it's a more effective
way of working to have a due date

that you maybe even change later,
versus having no due date at all.

The issue with having no
due date on a task is,

you might find that lots and lots of tasks
that which none of them have any due dates,

all build up and there's no sense
of urgency or way of prioritizing the work,

whereas if you use put some kind
of due date on the task and say

"I'll do this one today, this
one tomorrow, this one Friday,"

again even if that changes later,
that's going to be more efficient,

more effective compared to not putting
any due date on the task at all.

The next mistake we see coming up
a lot is when people are too vague with

task details and really just not
providing enough information about a task.

So an example of that might be
simply having a very vague task name

maybe not even putting
an assignee or a due date on

and not elaborating here in the description

or not including things like attachments
and documents that are relevant.

You want to really be thinking about

when you assign a task how is
the other person going to know what to do.

"Am I providing enough information
so that when they click on this task,

are they going to know what to do

without having to come back to me
and ask lots and lots of questions?"

So here's an example,

this is a task that I assign
to my virtual assistant Judy.

It says exactly what she needs
to do "Create WordPress post".

And she can see it's a subtask
of this earlier video that I made.

And I've actually included a big old
checklist of everything she needs to do.

So this is how I use Asana

to store
standard operating procedures or SOPs.

You can check out my video on this
and how I use templates for SOPs.

You can click the video up here.

So you can see from
Judy's point of view,

when she receives this task,
she knows what she needs to do.

She can click back to the parent task

and she can see what parent
her subtask is related to.

And she's got this checklist here
of everything she needs to do.

So hopefully, she can just do the task,

she doesn't need to come back to me
and ask any clarifying questions.

Okay, and finally the final mistake
we see a lot coming up with Asana users,

is using too many channels
for communication.

And what I mean by this is not just Asana,

but also other tools and apps and services
that you use for communication.

All tend to overlap quite a lot,
and there's not enough distinction

about when to use different
tools and services.

A common example might be
something like Slack.

We work with a lot of clients
who use both Asana and Slack,

and they're often because there's lots
of different ways we can communicate

obviously we've got email as well.

We often find there are conversations
happening in multiple different places

and so the advice we often give is that

you need to clearly define
when to use each tool.

For example, with Asana we recommend
if you're talking about a task or a project

which by default is probably
most of the conversations you're having

should be task or project related.

Then really that's a conversation
that should be happening inside Asana.

And the benefit of doing that is then
we can keep the conversation

linked with the actual
work that we're doing.

So when I click on a task
I can see the conversation taking place.

I don't have to go switching over to
Slack to go and find the conversation.

But if I've got
some of the conversation in Asana,

some of it's happening in Slack where
I've got different threads going,

on maybe I've got a couple
of email threads going,

I've now divided the conversation
up among multiple channels,

and it's really hard to make sense of "where
are we at?" and "what do we need to do next?"

So when you adopt a tool like Asana,

because this is one more tool
that you can use to communicate in,

you want to clearly define to your team
when do we use a sign of a communication,

and how does it fit, and how do
we use it alongside other channels

and other tools that we can
communicate in like Slack,

email, instant messaging,
texting, and so on.

And so there we go.

Those are some of the common mistakes we see
people making again and again with Asana.

As I mentioned before, if you have
any questions leave me a comment below.

And if you would like one-on-one
help with setting up your account,

training, and learning how to get the most
out of Asana and onboarding your team,

then check out the link
in the description below

to learn more about our
Asana consulting options.

One more time,
thank you very much for listening,

and I will catch you in the next video.