Asana tips: spring cleaning
Spring has sprung! And you know what that means… time to clean up and get organized. If you let your tasks, projects, and teams get as cluttered as your garage this year, you may need to do a little spring cleaning in Asana. By taking stock of your work in Asana and doing a little bit of tidying up, you might rediscover what your most important work is. And you might even feel reinvigorated enough to tackle it.
Here are our five tips for spring cleaning in Asana.
Archive old projects
Asana allows you to have an unlimited number of projects and store as much information in them as you need to (forever!). But that doesn’t always mean you want to actively see these projects in your sidebar forever. Once a project’s work is completed (or you’re just not using the project anymore) you can archive it. Archiving a project removes it from the team’s project list and from search results, but keeps all the project’s information so you can reference it later if you need to.
To archive a project:
- Navigate to the project you want to archive
- Next to the project’s name, there is a carrot. Click the carrot to open project actions.
- In the project actions menu, click Archive Project.
Once you archive completed projects, take time to celebrate with your team on a job well done.
Clean up your favorites
Now that you’ve archived some projects, your favorites might have changed too. Favoriting projects, task lists, tags, and Search Views is a great way to keep your most relevant work easily accessible—but that gets a little harder the more favorites you have. Reevaluate whether or not you still need the same list of favorites. As you evaluate your favorites, consider updating the criteria for your favorite Search Views, too.
To remove something from your favorites, click the star next to the item in your sidebar and choose Remove from Favorites in the drop-down. Add new favorites to your sidebar by navigating to the project, task list, tag, or Search View and click on the star in the header. This will add the favorite to your sidebar, where you can then drag and drop to customize the order of your favorites.
By taking stock of your work in Asana and doing a little bit of tidying up, you might rediscover what your most important work is.
Do (or update) your overdue tasks
We all have them from time to time (or if you don’t, we’re impressed!)… those nagging little tasks with red due dates, cluttering My Tasks and adding anxiety to the day. Our advice? Set aside some time on your calendar to tackle these tasks and—finally—check them off.
If it’s still not something you can get done, instead of feeling overwhelmed or just ignoring it, change the due date to something realistic and achievable (it’s impossible to go back in time and meet the original due date, after all!) Be sure to comment on the task about what changed, and communicate the new game plan. Consider what prevented you from getting these overdue tasks done on time, and use that to help make future plans.
Convert tasks to subtasks
As you look at some of your projects in Asana, it might become clear that some tasks can be nested within others, since they actually represent smaller pieces of those tasks. To keep your project lists clean and easily skimmable, you can convert tasks into subtasks. That way, only the biggest pieces of work show up in the list, and the smaller intermediate steps are organized within the bigger tasks.
To convert a task into a subtask, both tasks must be in the same task list.
- Click the task you want as the main task to load its details in the right pane.
- Click and drag the task you want to be the subtask into the subtasks section of the main task.
Use sections to organize long lists
As projects grow and change over time, you might add more tasks or change the way they’re listed. Using sections is a great way to organize tasks by category, priority, workflow, teammate, etc. All you have to do is add a colon (:) at the end of a task name to make it a section. Drag and drop tasks between sections if you need to.
And if you followed the previous tip for subtasks… you can also use sections for subtasks, too!
To new beginnings
Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal. With your newly cleaned up and organized Asana, we hope you’ll feel ready to start fresh and have your most productive season yet.
What are some of your favorite spring cleaning tips for Asana? Share them below!
