I get asked a lot how I stay on top of projects from so many different clients and different kinds of work and remember to do my own blogging and images and the whole lot. And I won’t lie to you – its a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of small tasks that make a big difference for a business, both my own and my clients businesses.
Well today I am going to let you in on a little secret. My new most favourite thing, the secret to my continued success (other than my winning personality and moxie of course) and boy is it a doozey.
It’s Asana.
I discovered Asana about 6 months ago when I first took my business full time and started getting really serious about it. I had tried tracking projects and deadlines in a bunch of different ways – Gantter for Google Drive, spreadsheets, lists and lists and lists on every piece of paper, device and anywhere else I could find. None of it really worked for me. A list was never finished because one little thing delayed that task that needed to be done. Or I had so many lists that eventually I lost one. Spreadsheets were too rigid and didn’t allow me to drill in on a day to day level easily. For whatever reason, none of the other systems worked for me.
And then I found Asana.
I go from my desktop to my phone all day every day writing down big things and little things that I need to do. I can reshuffle tasks really easily and move things around depending on what has happened with my clients that day or what information I have or haven’t received. I can set in due dates, work on this dates, repeating tasks like invoices and analytics and sub tasks that break one big task down into lots of little chunks. I literally use it for every part of my business, and now it is slowly taking over my personal life too with appointments, trips away and big events being recorded.
And it’s so PRETTY!
For me as a visual person, being able to colour code different clients and projects is really important so I know what I am working on in any given day. It means I can look at my diary and work out if I am doing too much of one brand in a day or whether I want to spend one day getting really in the zone for a brand and just busting it all out. Not only that but it easily allows me to see the different clients I am looking after that day – so when someone calls and says ‘when is that going to be finished’ I can actually give them a timeframe.
And it’s MOBILE!
The web page that you use on Desktop is very similar to the app that you download. No, from my own experience you cant see your whole day in one hit, but if you want it to it will send you alerts of the tasks to do today and for which projects. You can schedule tasks on the fly, which I use between client meetings – if Ive jut come out of a meeting I sit and write down all the tasks I have to do on an indicative timeline so I don’t forget to put it into my list and it never gets done. With Asana, everything gets done.
I don’t think it would matter whether you were a creative or not, Asana is a great platform for planning your life and different tasks that make up your day. Maybe for you it’s as simple as “write that email” or “chase that client”. The ability to see everything that is going on, quickly schedule for the future and organise your life in a very visual way is something that everyone needs. And I feel so much better having all my jobs, tasks and everything else plugged into one system, one source of truth for my business and my life.
Oh and did I forget to mention that Asana is completely free?
(that’s your bonus for listening to my rant this far!)
