Make every day more productive with Asana

Here in San Francisco, summer is just around the corner, which for some teams can mean a slow-down in productivity. Fortunately, you can fight the seasonal slump with a bit of decluttering and organization. On this World Productivity Day, we’re sharing our top Asana tips so you can spark productivity for the season ahead—and maybe even a little more happiness on your team.

Master your My Tasks

As the days get longer, your task list might be getting even longer (especially if you’re covering for teammates who are heading off for vacation). If your My Tasks is starting to feel out of control, block off some time to review and prioritize every task assigned to you according to the 4 Ds:

• Defer: For tasks that are important but not urgent, mark them for Later so you’re prioritizing the most pressing work.

• Delegate: For tasks that you don’t have bandwidth for and still need to be completed, re-assign them

  to someone else on your team.

• Diminish: For work that’s both important and urgent, but could be accomplished with fewer resources, adjust the scope of the task

• Delete: If you get a task that is neither important nor urgent, you can comment on the task

  to let the assignee know why the work won’t be done, and then mark it complete.

By taking the time to prioritize your tasks—and delegate or remove tasks from your plate—you’ll be able to focus on the work that will make the most impact.

Declutter your Inbox

Clutter can get in the way of productivity. But it’s not just your physical space that could benefit from tidying up. Information clutter—whether it’s an accumulation of notifications or a list of overdue tasks—also makes it harder to stay organized and focused on what matters right now.

This is where archiving becomes your best friend. After you’ve read or taken action on an Inbox notification, you can archive it to clear it. If you’re feeling extra ambitious about decluttering, you can archive all notifications with one click. Don’t worry—if you need to refer to something later, you can find it in the “Archive tab.”

Organize your work into tasks and projects

Once you’ve cleared the clutter, you can home in on your most important initiatives in Asana. The question is, should you use a task or a project to capture key action items? It depends!

Think of tasks and projects as different-sized containers for your work. A task is great for a discrete unit of work while a project is great for grouping multiple tasks related to the same goal or initiative.

Sometimes work that starts out as a task turns into a bigger initiative. If you find yourself adding more than a handful of subtasks, consider turning the parent task into a project so you and your team can stay on top of your action items.

Make it easy to find information

Here at Asana, we use projects, both for time-bound initiatives as well as ongoing work. While there are many different ways to set up a project—depending on your team’s processes and preferences—there’s one common principle to keep in mind: Make projects user-friendly.

This means setting up your project so that teammates can quickly find the information they need. Use sections in your projects to keep tasks organized by category, stage of work, or priority level. When projects are easy to navigate, teammates can skim a project and quickly zero in on the tasks most relevant to them.

Take productivity with you

Now that you’ve decluttered and organized all your work, maintain your Asana My Tasks, Inbox, and projects so you can be productive year-round. Enter the Asana mobile app. Before you get into the office each morning, you can use the mobile app to:

• Review and archive Inbox notifications

• Prioritize your My Tasks for the day

• Update any projects you’re working on

By making it a daily habit to set you and your team up for productivity each day, you’re likely to get more done together.

What are your favorite ways to stay productive with Asana? Let us know in the comments!