Hey everyone, Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this Asana tutorial, you're going to learn the basics of how to use Asana.
And then we'll go through some practical strategies and things you can do to make sure Asana doesn't
become a just unorganized, cluttered mess of half done to do’s.
So with that, let's go ahead Jump on into my screen timestamp table of contents in the
description.
The very first page that you'll be looking at when you get started with Asana is going
to be your homepage.
And this is going to show you the most recent tasks that are coming due, And then the recent
projects you've been involved in.
I personally don't use this page.
My favorite page is actually, the my tasks page.
So every time something's assigned to you or you create a new task for yourself, this
is where those tasks are going to show up, irrespective of how many teams or projects
or sub tasks or any mentions that you have, pretty much everything's going to show up
here, that's assigned to you.
And so what you do is, you have recently assigned and then you can either move it to today,
upcoming, or you can Mark it for later.
And the way you do that is let's say this one is recently assigned to me and it's actually
due tomorrow.
So what I can do is I can come in here and Mark it for today or upcoming.
So if I want to take care of it later today, I’ll just click Mark for today.
And then if I scroll down here, you'll see that Now it showed up in my today section.
Now, something I like to do with my upcoming is actually you can create these sections
to organize your tasks.
So in this particular view, I’ve created Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
and then on deck.
And so if I'm not going to take care of this today, maybe I’ll move it to whatever the
next day is.
Let's say, tomorrow is Wednesday.
I would move it there.
And then what's also really nice about this view is anything that is actually due the
day of will automatically be moved up to today.
You can see that yesterday.
I was supposed to reply to a bunch of comments and it didn't get done.
So it's still sitting in the today section.
So that's something that you can really plan out your weeks or however you want to organize
things.
And this is just going to be your go to page when you're using Asana.
So the next one is inbox.
And inbox is very important for just keeping up to date with what's going on across all
of your teams and projects.
Now, unlike your, “my task” section, your inbox is going to show your mentions, because
whenever you're working with someone on a project, you can use the at sign and then
start typing in their name and then whatever messages you're sending to them will automatically
show up in their inbox.
So you definitely want to make sure if you have a large team, you're looking at your
inbox because people might be mentioning you in their other projects, even if it's not
assigned to you.
And then you also have the ability to follow projects and we'll get to all of that.
When we go through actually putting together a new team and a new project.
And so finally, we have our actual teams and projects.
So you can see here, I have three teams.
We can see the blurred out thumbnails of everyone who's on the team.
And let's just go ahead and go to our YouTube project.
And you'll see here, we have all of our tasks broken down into sections.
And if we click on a task, let's say we click on our template here.
You can see that it's assigned to one person at the top.
And then we have all of the sub tasks and subsections.
And as you can see here, you can be very, very detailed with your Asana tasks.
I tend to be a little OCD.
My team kind of puts up with it, but you don't necessarily have to be this granular and this
organized, especially when you're first getting started with Asana.
But it is really nice to be able to have your projects and then your tasks, You can make
sections.
And even inside of these tasks that are inside a task, you can make another task.
So if I wanted to go into this content outline one, all I'd have to do is click on this and
I'd start making another sub task.
And I haven't found a limit to the number of sub tasks you can make, But as a general
rule of thumb that you probably don't want to make more than two levels deep.
So maybe you have a task and then one sub task, because you have to remember if you're
working with other people, it can get hard for them to actually find where all those
subtasks actually are.
So that does it for a very brief overview.
The only other thing I want to show is timeline is actually a premium feature.
But if you go over to calendar, you'll be able to see what's assigned to who and when
it is actually due.
And so we'll go back to the list view.
And now let's go through an example of creating a new project.
So in this particular instance, let's say I’ve gotten tired of looking at the list
view, and I want to try doing a board view like you do in Trello.
So what we would do is we'd come up here to the plus button for our team.
We can go and click and add a project.
And when you add a project, you'll have the ability to use all of these templates.
If you have no clue, kind of what type of project you're putting together, just go ahead
and use a blank template.
I've always used blank templates, and then you can choose whether it's going to be a
list like I’ve been showing you, or if it's going to be a board, very similar to what
Trello does, and you can't go back and forth.
So what you'll want to; for instance, we showed a bunch of lists already.
Let's go ahead and make a board, and we're just going to name this YouTube demo.
And then we can make it private to ourselves or public to the entire team.
If you pay the $10 to $15 a month per user, then you can actually choose individual users
who have access to individual teams on the free version.
It's either just you or everyone on your team.
So we'll go ahead and click on create project.
And now you'll see we have different columns and we can easily add a column to organize
all of our, to do's.
So let's say we're putting together a process for creating our YouTube videos.
So the first column will probably be ideas.
Then we'll have writing, recording, editing, and finally completed or posted.
So the way we would create a new task is click on this plus button, and then we'd go ahead
and give our task a name, and then to edit the details, we can go ahead and click on
it or if we already know who we want to assign to, and when it's supposed to be due, we can
go ahead and click on this calendar.
Let's say, we're going to make it due in a month or so.
And then we can go ahead and click a dropdown and then you can actually start typing in
the name of someone who should be doing it, or you can click just assigned to me.
So now let's go ahead and click.
Now, these details are going to be the same, whether you're doing a board view or a list
view.
So you can come in here and drop in a quick description.
If you want to attach anything, you have the option of uploading files directly.
There is a file limit though.
So you're definitely not going to be uploading full podcast or raw video files here.
Pretty much just documents and some pictures, and you can easily connect to Dropbox, Google
drive, Box and OneDrive or SharePoint.
We personally-- we actually use Google drive for most of our stuff.
If you want to create a sub task and go ahead and hit this, and then you can start typing
in the name of the sub task.
And if you click this little arrow right here, you'll be able to edit all the details, just
like you're doing with the parent task.
And let's say, I'm going to ask my business partner to check out the idea, to make sure
that it makes sense before we make the video, so I can assign it to him and tell him, “Hey,
I need this done a week before I'm going to record the video”.
And then the other thing you can do is you can actually copy the task to the link.
So if you're using a different system for your communications, you can go ahead and
copy this task link and then drop it into your email or your Slack channel and whatever
you're using, And people will be able to click on that link and go directly to the task,
which can actually save people a lot of time because sometimes things get lost.
Cause the Asana can get really, really big and confusing.
We'll go through how to make sure that that doesn't happen.
And then you have some other options here, like duplicating the task, adding a followup,
or creating some advanced actions.
A lot of these, even though it doesn't have the little premium icon, actually won't work.
It'll be a little thing that pops up and says, “Hey, pay us a bunch of money in order to
do this cool thing”.
So pretty much the only thing I use here is deleting the task and duplicating the task.
Now, something else when it comes to your date, before we move on, is you can actually
add a due time, a specific time of day, and then also set to repeat.
Now, if you're working with people in different time zones, whatever you do in your time zone
is going to be adjusted for their time zone.
So if someone's a day ahead of you or you want something done in the morning, their
time, you need to just be aware of that because whatever you do is going to be in your time
zone and then Asana will automatically change it for their time zone.
So sometimes you have to think about someone else's time zone and when you want them to
do it and then convert that to whatever yours is and do that instead of the actual time
you want.
Hopefully that made sense.
It was probably a little, a little confusing, but you'll get it.
It's a little confusing and cumbersome with multiple time zones, but a week or two And
you'll be good to go.
So then what's great about the board view is let's say the idea pass and my business
partner, Jesse says, “yeah, that's a great idea”.
So let's go ahead and come in here.
And he checks off and he says, “great idea at Jason”.
I'm giving myself way too much credit here, but you can see that you can use the at symbol
and then it will pop up people on team and also projects in their name.
So I’ll just go ahead and say that and comment.
Let's just pretend, that's what he said.
So I'm good.
I know now that I'm good to go and that will actually show up in my inbox and I can move
it over to the writing or recording phase.
And that's really all there is to it to creating your tasks, creating new projects.
So now what I want to do is show you how this popped up in my, to do list and also popped
up in my inbox and then go through a simple system You can use to stay organized with
whatever you're doing in your projects and your business.
Now, before we get into the system, we use to stay organized with Asana.
Let's go ahead and check out that new task that was just assigned to us.
So if someone else had sent the message, it would show up in my inbox.
Of course it's not cause I talk to myself, but if we go to my tasks and we go to recently
assigned, now, you'll see the video idea and you'll be able to see the message.
We'll see that my business partner signed off and that I’m-- It's ready to go.
And I can go ahead and decide when I want to take care of it.
So I'm just going to mark it for upcoming and scroll down to my upcoming section and
we'll see video idea One is there and I can go ahead and move it to whatever day I want
to work on it.
So let's say I'm going to do it on Friday.
Okay, perfect.
And then I’ll definitely of video figure out how to organize all those other recently
added ones.
And that's all there is to it, to the basics of Asana.
So now what we'll do is go through some practical things you can do to make sure you don't have
a recently assigned list that looks like this, or having a project that just seems to get
out of hand with the number of two dues.
So the very first key that I have for your practical takeaway here is using something
called the not now list.
And so there's two ways that I do this, essentially what I do with all of those projects or ideas
that I have, that aren't necessarily something that we should be doing right now, But I do
want to do in the future.
I've made myself a private list called not opportunities where I put all of those things
that shouldn't be done right now, but I think it would be great to do in the future or would
be really cool in the future.
And then every quarter or two, I’ll go through all of our projects.
And if we have something that isn't part of our quarterly goals, I’ll just go ahead
and put not in front of it.
So as an example here, we recently finished up a couple of Instagram experiments and unfortunately
they didn't go too well, but we're moving on to focus on our blog.
And so what I’ve done here is I’ve just gone to the top and done a double //NOT//.
And so this lets me and everyone on the team know it's here.
We're going to work on it in the future, but it's not really important.
And the other thing we do is with a few exceptions, we pretty much remove all the due dates and
we remove all of the assigned to so that it doesn't clutter up anyone's mind.
And it's not on anyone's radar in terms of working it.
So if we go a quarter two and we don't come back to this project, then we just delete
it.
But it makes sure that you don't clutter up your my task section with a bunch of things
that you're actually never going to work on, or aren't super important to your current
business.
And so that's all there is to it, to getting started with Asana.
Let me know in the comment section below, if you have any questions or if you organize
your Asana any differently, thank you so much for watching.
Make sure you check out the links in the description to some other helpful videos that walk you
through.
How to use Google drive, and specifically our system using the four digital business
quadrants for organizing all of our individual projects.
It takes a much deeper dive into how we use Asana as opposed to here just going through
the basics of how Asana works.
So until the next, keep building the business you love.