What’s the secret to how I get shit done? In a word—Asana

• What’s an “Asana,” and how does it help me stay organized?
• Why Asana helps teams get shit done
• Asana is too complex for a simple to-do list—but it works for me
• Easy way to start with Asana—daily tasks 
• Asana is fantastic for repeating tasks
• I create tasks that enable me to post daily on Instagram and other platforms
• Knocking off simple tasks each week is a piece of cake
• Only do something once a year? Asana’s got you covered
• Using Asana for each of my blog writing tasks helps ensure I get shit done
• Asana makes it easy to set up (and follow) a monthly plan
• In addition to tasks with due dates, I use Asana to keep reference cards handy
• Of course, it’s not all about repeating tasks
• You need a paid version for the real magic, but you can make the free version work for personal stuff
• What’s your weapon of choice that enables you to get shit done?

What’s an “Asana,” and how does it help me stay organized?

If you’ve read any of my blogs, it’ll be no surprise that I’m very organized. I like patterns and routines and don’t like to miss deadlines or break streaks. I started working for my current employer as a copywriter. Shortly after that, I applied for and got the Marketing Team Lead position. At the time, there were 10 people on my team, and it was my job to keep us organized and running smoothly. That required the right tool for the job—enter Asana.

My manager had previously used this platform and wanted our team to use it. I’d never heard of Asana before, but I soon became very familiar with it. BTW, the name Asana is related to a yoga pose. The software name infers clarity and focus—like a calm, stable yoga pose for your workflow.

As the team lead, one of my first tasks was determining the best way to use Asana to keep our team humming along. It took me a while (and I made my fair share of mistakes), but after 3+ years, I’m pretty comfortable with it. Just like runners and cyclists joke, “If it isn’t in Strava, it didn’t happen.” In fact, my team members and I have a saying:

If it ain’t in Asana, it ain’t getting done.

Most of the other teams in my organization don’t use Asana. But when they submit marketing requests, they do—sort of. I’ve created forms for people outside our team to submit marketing requests. It’s a public form that doesn’t require the person to be an Asana user. But it automatically creates tasks in Asana for us to action—just the way we like it. Asana is how our marketing team functions.

Why Asana helps teams get shit done

Asana is great for so many reasons. You can use it to create both individual tasks and larger projects. Tasks can be part of different projects or campaigns, so you can see them in various contexts. You can enjoy several reporting functions, which are very helpful for me. I can see what tasks are coming up for my teammates to judge their capacity. I also get reminders on what task deadlines are approaching. 

You can view tasks in different formats, such as list, calendar, or timeline views. You can set up task and campaign templates. This ensures your team always follows the same steps/process when completing tasks. Templates make it much quicker for me to set things up as well.

You can also set up automation rules. For example, when someone moves a task to a specific section in a project, Asana assigns it to me. Asana can also move completed tasks to another section or delete them.

You also have the ability to set up dependencies. This means certain tasks are blocked until previous steps are completed. When someone completes a task that’s “blocking” yours, you get notified that your task is ready to work on. This helps speed things up since you’re not wondering if tasks you’re waiting on are done or not.

It’s an excellent platform for team efficiency. I wish my entire organization used it, but that would require a lot of teams to get used to a new way of doing things. Additionally, that would require several people dedicated to managing tasks and projects. As I’ve written about before, a team that runs like a well-oiled machine needs someone dedicated to that role. 

Asana is too complex for a simple to-do list—but it works for me

Asana doesn’t bill itself as a simple to-do list type of app. But since I use it every day at my job, I’m very comfortable with it. So much so that I decided to start using it in my personal life. It may have been somewhat intimidating if I hadn’t used Asana at work. But after using it daily at work, setting things up for my personal use was a breeze.

While I don’t have a team or major projects/campaigns to manage, I still have a use for Asana on a personal level. I’d love to get my family using Asana to manage tasks/chores—but I know that will never happen. 😉

When I began using Asana, it was a big part of my work life. “Add it to Asana” was a common phrase in our meetings to ensure we didn’t forget tasks. It was so common that it became an automatic response. I once had to stop myself from saying it to my wife when she asked me to do a minor DIY task in our kitchen.

Easy way to start with Asana—daily tasks 

I use Asana to manage and track several of my daily to-dos. I almost always start my day with push-ups, Duolingo and stretching. But there are some days that’s not the first thing I do. For those days, I’ve got personal Asana tasks as a reminder to ensure I don’t forget to do them later. That’s helped me complete 2+ years of 100 daily push-ups and maintain an almost 2,500-day streak on Duolingo.

If anything random pops up that needs doing, I add it to Asana. That way, when I’m looking at Asana later in the day or evening, I can see if I’ve missed anything. I’ve always got Asana open in a tab to track my personal tasks (I use the desktop app for work). I view that tab several times a day to either check off items or see if I’ve forgotten any important tasks.

Asana is fantastic for repeating tasks

I’m not likely to forget to do daily tasks, so Asana isn’t essential for them. But setting up tasks that repeat weekly, monthly, and yearly is where Asana excels. For example, I’ve set up reminders for when payments for my credit card are taken from my bank account. It’s a reminder to ensure I’ve got sufficient funds in the account. I’ve also got a reminder to transfer money to my wife’s account at the beginning of each month. This is necessary because Korea doesn’t do joint accounts.

I’ve always been a proponent of breaking big jobs into small tasks. Thus, I’ve set up several weekly tasks to help me manage things in my daily life. Doing a specific task weekly only requires a few minutes. Compare that to a seemingly gargantuan task after six months of work have piled up.

For example, I delete pictures from my phone weekly. This is because Later (affiliate link) sends story images to my phone to publish. Once posted on Instagram, I no longer need them (they’re stored on my computer). Weekly cleanups just help cut down on excess data and clutter on my phone.

Even though Upwork tracks my hours, I got into the habit of manually recording them in a spreadsheet. I started doing this when I was working for several clients at once. I’ve just opted to continue the habit, even though I work exclusively for one client now.

I create tasks that enable me to post daily on Instagram and other platforms

On Fridays, I download and catalogue any pictures I’ve taken or have been shared with me during the week. Doing it weekly means I never forget to add pictures to my collection. The pictures never pile up, making it seem like a daunting task that I’ve got to do. Doing it weekly just takes a few minutes on a Friday.

Fridays are when I schedule my Instagram/Facebook stories for the week. I usually post on Sunday and Thursday evenings. I schedule the posts in Later and add the copy to an Asana task. This ensures I’m not stuck for a post idea on the day it’s supposed to go out. I just need to copy and paste the text into the poll or question I add to my stories, and then post them. Doing this on my computer means I’m less likely to make typos than if I did everything on my phone.

I share weekly wrap-up posts on Facebook and LinkedIn on Fridays. Weekly tasks in Asana remind me to check that those posts have gone out as expected. I’ve got an Asana task to remind me to share that wrap-up post on my personal Facebook page every Saturday evening. If I’m not at my computer on Saturday evening, I will see the incomplete task on Sunday and do it then.

Knocking off simple tasks each week is a piece of cake

I manually mirror my blogs from my WordPress site on Naver, a Korean blogging platform. There’s an Asana task for that where I update my Naver blog views weekly in a spreadsheet.

I have a spreadsheet where I track my SEO keywords and phrases. I update that weekly, including previous blogs I’ve reviewed and updated. Guess what? That’s right, another task reminds me to do that.

I add my Instagram post links to my spreadsheet of pictures. Having those links handy has been invaluable on occasion. Sadly, I didn’t think to start doing this right away. That meant I had to spend a weekend copying and pasting hundreds of links into my spreadsheet. That was not my favourite way to spend a weekend. Adding seven links from the previous week on Sundays only takes a few seconds. This is the perfect example of why I break things down into small tasks—it’s so much easier to manage.

Only do something once a year? Asana’s got you covered

I don’t track birthdays and anniversaries in Asana (that’s what Facebook is for, right?). But I do use it to remind myself of things like yearly subscriptions. For example, the other day, I got a reminder that my annual Grammarly subscription is about to renew. This is a good time for me to assess whether the plan I’m on is still working for me. 

I use another platform that renews around the same time, called Wordtune. Thanks to my Asana reminder, I recently re-evaluated my plan. I decided to downgrade because I don’t use it as much as I used to, saving myself quite a bit of money. It would’ve been so easy for that reminder email to get lost in my inbox.

But I set these recurring tasks a week or two before the subscription is due to renew. This gives me time to reassess things and ensures I don’t miss my chance to act.

Using Asana for each of my blog writing tasks helps ensure I get shit done

I have several repeating tasks for my blogs. Since I write a new blog every month, I created tasks that renew every four weeks. I assign tasks to each day, like 

• First draft
• Revise
• Add pictures
• Review with Hemingway/Grammarly
• Add to WordPress

Spreading small tasks across the week makes staying on track much easier.

I sometimes fall behind because of a night out or a family get together. But it’s easy to determine what I need to catch up on the next day. I post my blogs on Sundays, but in Asana, I have it set to schedule my blog post no later than Saturday. This means I have an extra day to make things up, if needed—but that rarely happens.

With the help of Asana, I wrote a blog a week for my first year and have managed 13 blogs a year since then. This blog was written early, as I’m currently on vacation with my family for the first time in too long. But I moved up the dates for this Asana task to get this blog written and scheduled ahead of time. I’m taking some time off and wanted to unplug completely. I didn’t want the stress of worrying about writing a blog while on vacation.

Asana makes it easy to set up (and follow) a monthly plan

Asana (in addition to Later) is a huge reason I’m able to post daily on Instagram (and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads). I’ve outlined my process in another blog, but basically, I follow this schedule.

• Week 1—Choose which pics to post about
• Week 2—Write the posts
• Week 3—Add the pics/posts to my scheduling platform, Later
• Week 4—Write and schedule my weekly wrap-up posts for Facebook and LinkedIn

Again, I have individual tasks broken down by day for each week to make things easier. As mentioned above, I also use Asana for Sunday and Thursday story posts.

I wanted to keep posting daily even though I’m on vacation. Again, I moved up the dates on my Asana tasks to schedule things ahead of time so I could enjoy my vacation. The only thing I have to do is push my stories live on Sundays and Thursdays. Sadly, Later doesn’t let me add polls or links to my stories in advance.

In addition to tasks with due dates, I use Asana to keep reference cards handy

Another use I’ve found for Asana, both personally and at work, is to use task cards as reference cards. For example, I keep a card with blog topics for each week as an easy reference. I also have all my affiliate links in another card, readily accessible. Since I always have Asana open, that info is never far away. 

For work, I use reference cards in much the same way. For example, we create quarterly newsletters for three different brands. I have all the dates for each brand on a task card at my fingertips. Recently, I wrote about a checklist I use before sending emails. I usually include that checklist in the tasks. But I always have that checklist on hand if I have to send an ad hoc email that didn’t go through the regular process. This reduces the chance of making a mistake or forgetting to do something.

Of course, it’s not all about repeating tasks

When I do have jobs for other clients, I create Asana tasks. These include due dates and links to the relevant files in the task description for easy access. I can add as many steps as needed, with dates, to ensure I stay on track.

Having all this info stored in Asana is great, as I can easily find past work if a client contacts me again. 

You need a paid version for the real magic, but you can make the free version work for personal stuff

My only “complaint” is that Asana’s “good stuff” isn’t available on the free plan. I would love the paid version, but I can make do with the free version for personal stuff. The cheapest paid tier is 139,000 won/year, which I can’t justify for personal use.

At work, we have a paid plan, which is essential for our team to run smoothly. I didn’t want to mix personal tasks with my work instance of Asana. I help keep things separate with two different accounts. As I mentioned, I use the web version for my personal tasks, but the desktop app is always open when I’m working.

With the paid plan, the automated rules are fantastic. I miss those on the free version. They just help me keep things clean and tidy. So my completed tasks don’t automatically move to a “completed” section. I have to do that manually. How? I have a weekly task to remind me to do it. It only takes a minute or two, but the automations are pretty sweet. I also miss being able to set beginning and end dates, as opposed to only due dates in the free version. But these perks aren’t 140,000 won/year sweet.

As often happens, what I expect will be a “short blog” turns into something much longer. Perhaps I’ll go into more details about how I set up these tasks with projects, tasks, and subtasks in a future blog.

What’s your weapon of choice that enables you to get shit done?

Since I was using Asana at work, it seemed natural to use it for my personal tasks as well. Trello, Notion, and Monday.com are pretty popular, but I’ve never felt the need to try them. What do you use for your to-do lists and project management? Let me know in the comments.

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