Do you need a free time management tool? No Im not talking about a clocking-in and clocking-out machine, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything we try to get done. I know I curse sometimes that I wish there were more hours. I do tend to neglect my sleep in the process of building my empire !
We are barraged by emails, instant messages, distractions from interesting articles or a funny video someone sent you free, time is a scarce commodity. Time management has grown into a vastness of applications, software, and hardware all with a single purpose – making sure every minute you spend at work is productive!
This tool – Asana – is a tool that I use to stay focused on goals, projects and daily tasks to grow my business. I have a habit of getting sucked down rabbit holes, I run about a bit in the warrens, time ticking by, like I’ve been eating the lotus flowers in The Odyssey, then eventually I resurface to find I have wasted half an hour!
Asana has a basic program that is free, it is limited but for a single business like mine, it works just fine.
How To Use Asana
Best place to start is to set your account up.
Choose the right area your business is in. If yours is anything like mine, it will fit quite nicely into the Marketing catagory. Then put in your website name or your own name for your team.
Next screen brings up your contact details. So I use my web email.
Features
Asana has numerous interlinking features within the platform, essentially for the small business with 4-5 employees who all work closely together on projects. It offers an interface where each is assigned their tasks within the project and each can see how things are progressing to the common goal of the deadline for the completion of the project. It is an intuitive platform, fresh and clean. It can be customised to suit your character, what colours help you work better and assist you in staying focused.
There are interactive videos for each aspect of the platform if you want to watch how things are done. I’m not a great watcher, I like to dive right in nd get on using things but I do go take a look at the ‘instructions’ if it doesn’t come straight away.
Lists and Calendar
The main feature of Asana is the ability to create lists of ideas, brainstorms, keywords, perfect titles for blogs. I know that I get flustered and have tons of notes, post-it tags reminding me of things I have thought about whilst doing some thing else – my rabbit holes – so instead going off on a tangent, I can add them to one of my task lists to remember about later, rather than add yet another confusing note and feel totally disorganised. It also means that when one of the tasks has been completed, I can log an accomplishment, which is a good feeling! It gives me a balance with productivity and relaxation. The headings of each list are customised by you, then each of the cells can be filled with the details. You can set yourself a completion date for the task and assign it to yourself or others in your company. This then gets transferred to the calendar, so you can see at a glance whats going on. Its intuitive so quick to pick up and apply to your business.
The features can be accessed by the menu bar at the top. You can flick between your tasks and calendar. You can assign different colours to the different lists. This is ideal if you have other members of staff in your business, at a glance you can see that Pete is in green and responsible for the team building day next Tuesday or Evie is arranging the social media features for your latest release. For me, I use them to denote the different types of blogs I write, not that its important to separate them as I do them all, but it looks pretty cool and interesting on my calendar!
PORTFOLIOS
This is a feature that I don’t use as I am the only one in my business right now, so everything is down to me. But would be perfect to keep track on projects.
Perfect feature if you have different staff members all working on the same project where each one is in charge of a segment. Everyone can see how each is doing and support towards the completion deadline smoothly. Progress can be monitored by everyone, so reducing the need for so many catch-up meetings. The workday is then better managed and greater productivity achieved with satisfaction in a decent days work.
Another aspect of the the portfolio feature is that you can step back one level and see what the progress is, of each key section. Keep an eye on where everyone has got to, who needs help and who is forging ahead.
Each segment of the project can be listed, with details on progress within each cell. This enable those that are reliant on others to be a certain stage for their section to be introduced, can keep track.
Keeping Track
Asana automatically saves the tasks, portfolio delegations, reports that have been worked on, keeping you up to the minute on what has been done and what is still outstanding, so at a glance you can see the progress made without having to go speak to each individual.
There are so many features that I wish I could use them all! The only drawback I have found is that I over extend myself and think I can get done more in a day than is humanely possible. But no worries, if you run out of time for all the tasks, you reschedule them later in the week or next week. They dont disappear from your tasks lists even if they get past due – no such luck! They are still there for you to remember and get done.
But I have found that I am much more productive with everything down, I know what is expected of me and I do my damnedest to get it done. Hence the lateness of the hour now!
Use it and stay focused on getting your work done efficiently. The competent companion for getting your sh*t done !
Hi!
It looks like a great tool. I cannot live without my To Do List and it always with me!
But! It is very difficult to follow and easy to lose.
What I like from your description – “notes, list of ideas, brainstorm.” For anyone who is a copywriter, it is awesome!
I am curious – what are the greatest features of the paid version?
Thank you!
Thankyou for your comments Ella. The premium versions, of which the first one is only €9 a month, they focus more on productivity within a team – product launches, closer project management. I can see that this would be ideal for a larger company with many more people involved in the business.
Sounds like a good tool. As you say it is best for small businesses with a few people not really for a single person. I have trouble sticking to things like that by myself anyway. But as my business grows and I think more about partnering and building a team, it would be better to have something like that to help keep us all accountable, I’ll be sure to look this up again in the future, thanks for the great idea!
Thankyou Elaine, for your comments. There is only me in my business right now but I still use Asana. it keeps me focused and on time with tasks, It also allows me to get my ideas down in one place before I forget them or lose the paper I wrote them out on, so as a brainstorming platform I love it!
It is horrible working with someone who has terrible internal time management. Great externally but oh my goodness! It is frustrating and just irritating sometimes. This is when I also pray and ask God to give mepaitence again. I think this is just what we need so everyone on our board can see this individual is not assigning things when supposed to. Waiting to make fundraisers in a week? Waiting to make a gala within a month? Lord help us all. I think this will really help so all board members can see my partner and I aren’t crazy.
Thankyou Linda, I really hope I have managed to solve the time management issues in your business!
Hmm, I haven’t heard of Asana before. Coz’ honestly, I’m a terrible guy when it comes to time management and productivity. Therefore I could use some optimizing in order to get more work done. Maybe I’ll try the free version if I have the time (ironic, isn’t it?)
By the way, what feature of Asana would you recommend for a beginner user like me to help improve my productivity right away? Coz’ you said it yourself that there are too many features inside this tool. Which feature/s have helped you so far?
Thanks for your comments Dominic. There are two features that I use constantly. I use the brainstorming because I love lists – you can add all your thoughts to this list and know then you can forget them because theyre all written down ! I also find that assigning those tasks to me, I can then go and set the time frame in the calendar. Thats my other favourite on this platform. I love looking and seeing what i have achieved!
Hey Quinne,
Asana is a nice application to manage work and seems it has many useful features. I think you can use Asana for personal use also, and that’s a nice feature.
Asana does have a free version but I find it very limited. Also, there are many project management apps available in the market, especially I am hearing a lot about Trello, so in your opinion, which is better Trello or Asana?
Regards
I prefer Asana to Trello, simply because I like the interface of Asana. I dont find it limiting for my business and a small business would be able to work with the free version but once things increased with business growing and expanding, it is likely that more of the services of Asana would be needed and payment for those is required. But for the small start up business, the free version is ideal.
I totally agree that there are not enough hours in a day, so a time management tool would be very useful. Asana looks like a great product for proprietors or small businesses. I like the calendar feature and that you can jot down ideas in an organized manner. The menu bars look perfect for organizing ideas and data. Additionally I like that saving and sharing information seems seamless. I bookmarked your post and will share it with some friends who will find it useful as well, thank you!
Thanks so much for your comments, it is a great tool to keep yourself organised. I still find I write things down but I am getting more efficient with Asana and eventually hope to do away with the paper note taking.
I also tend to get side-tracked when working on my own so a time management tool like Asana would be ideal. You mention that it can be used by individuals as well as small groups or companies. I was hoping that there would be a link to Asana where I could see how the tool works. The “Get Started” button at the end of the post doesn’t take me anywhere, so is there a way that you can please provide a link to Asana? Thank you
Im sorry Line that you couldn’t get to Asana. I will have a look at the article and make sure the link is working but I have added one here for you to go have a look at it. It offers you a free trial but if you are a small business, it continues as a free platform anyway. ASANA
Oh thank you for reviewing Asana. I’m searching for the best free time and work management tool, but I can’t really decide between Trello and Asana. Have you tried Trello? What do you like better in Asana compared to using Trello? I feel the interface of Trello is a bit old-fashioned compared to Asana, but I don’t know the real difference between them beside the portfolio function. I also like you, working on my own (for now), so the portfolio function doesn’t seem relevant as comparison to Trello for me.
I tried Trello before I found Asana. To be honest there isnt much difference between the two but I like Asana better, it appealed to me and I like the interfaces better on Asana than Trello. Each to his own I suppose !
Interesting tool for time management. It’s truly something that everyone can benefit from. Even if you think you’ve mastered time management, you probably still have a ways to go. It sounds to me like Asana has applications in even larger teams that can be broken up into smaller segments or sub teams. Do you know if there is a limit to the number of projects that you can enter? I work in a repair service industry and things are constantly changing and we’re forced to pick up one ball and potentially drop several others. This looks like a place to store all those balls in one place, so that less of them get dropped.
The first level Asana is free and is intended for small businesses but you can have several projects running at the same time, simply create the new project and assign jobs. Once it gets beyond a certain number of users within the company, thats when it starts to charge.
I’ve been looking for a way to keep track of where I’m at on various projects. I find that I will come up with a plan of action and start executing it, but I will then not be able to work on a project for a while. When I come back to it feels like I’m starting over because I don’t know where I was at in the process. Do you have to log into the Asana website in order to use it? Does Asana have the capabilities of sending you notifications or reminders to do certain tasks?
Thanks Thomas for your comments. I have a tab on my laptop, well its more than a tab, its in my permanent menu bar so it makes it easier to get to straight away. The program will send you email reminders of what is coming up if you haven’t already marked them as completed.
The way I see it, it’s good in managing your business schedule, delegation of tasks and monitoring the work progress which is designed for a small group. Getting Asana is like having a virtual supervisor. I checked it out myself and found out that details of each others tasks can be shared so everyone can see your progress as well as back lags.
This tool is definitely made easy to use for everyone, it’s simple and understandable. Everyone in the team can follow what is set up by each other or by the boss her/himself. Projects can be organised according to how it works best on you. This is a good atoolpp especially for members who are far from each other. I will suggest this tool to be used by department heads in our faculty because we work from different buildings and I think this will save our time to go to each others office just to compare our work in progress.
Thank you for sharing this. It is not known to many and I think it will help a lot to make things easier for a team. It’s just that when I saw the templates there is none available for a faculty but I figured, you can design anything with Asana.
Thankyou for your comments about Asana and the benefits it will bring. It definitely works well for a team on the same project but dont forget that for personal business schedules, it is perfect ! I schedule everything through Asana and then can get rid of all my notes that i have scattered around my desk and the stress in my head to remember stuff !