Keeping organised with Asana

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NathanRidley

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Jul 26, 2008
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London, UK
I'm using Asana to manage my project development. Asana is free and really nice (and fast!). It's essentially a glorified to-do list manager but has some handy features such as due dates, team collaboration, commenting, daily email notifications, etc. I think one of the main reasons I like it so much (apart from the price tag) is that it is so intuitive - you just type to create new items. Pressing enter, just like in a word processor, goes to a new line, ready for you to type in a new task. Pressing backspace on an empty task line deletes the task, just like a word processor would delete the line you're on, and so forth.

If you're a Trello fan, you can simulate your boards by creating a heading which would correspond to each board. I use headings in a semi-Agile manner, with each heading indicating where a given task sits in the development cycle.

Here's an example of what one of my Asana projects looks like right now*:

2012-12-17_0914.png


* User profile thumbnails in the screenshot are broken because I'm at work and they block files hosted by S3 for some stupid reason.

Definitely worth a look if you want a free, high quality alternative to Trello and Basecamp. Asana - Task Management for Teams
 


Wow, that's a beautiful interface and color scheme. I'm going to have to contact Asana, and ask them who their designer is. Nice name too. Asana. Rolls off the tongue nicely.

As for project management, I use Notepad. It allows me to easily enter new lines, categorize items, move / change priorities of items, remove items, modify, etc. It's great!
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Wow, that's a beautiful interface and color scheme. I'm going to have to contact Asana, and ask them who their designer is. Nice name too. Asana. Rolls off the tongue nicely.

As for project management, I use Notepad. It allows me to easily enter new lines, categorize items, move / change priorities of items, remove items, modify, etc. It's great!
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Notepad works I guess... though you haven't even upgraded to a decent editor such as Sublime or something else? Notepad is shit, even for basic text editing.

Here you go: Sublime Text: The text editor you'll fall in love with

:)
 
Ok, I lied. I don't use Notepad. I use MacroMedia HomeSite, which is basically just a fancy version of Notepad.
 
LOL. Every few years I seem to download a bunch of the newest text editors, and play around with them. Not a single one has ever beaten Homesite. For just text file management, nothing beats it.

I don't do any actual work in Homesite, and have my own custom network, infrastructure, and IDE for that. For notes, to bang out a quick custom script, quick website design, and so on... nothing beats it.
 
I've tried Asana and also Basecamp but I find these things really can get out of control when you have a lot of projects. Just a bit of a mess. I am still searching for something that can really do what I need.. Ugh.
 
HiGhPeR said:
I've tried Asana and also Basecamp but I find these things really can get out of control when you have a lot of projects. Just a bit of a mess. I am still searching for something that can really do what I need.. Ugh.
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I've been using self-hosted active collab for a few years now - has been doing the job pretty well. I'm sure our needs are not the same, but it may we worth a try.

NathanRidley said:
I used Notepad++ for ages too. Then I discovered Sublime Text and the magic of multiple cursors, and the heavens parted and the angels shone their light down upon my code...
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Wow looks nice, will check it out.
 
I started using Asana a few weeks ago and have found it pretty great at organising writers so far.

Where did I find out about it? I read 15 pages of the famous Drew Myers thread and found this obscure reference:

Lexicon said:
Pushed a paid mandatory task into my writers content stream. Lets strengthen that drew-myers.info on page.
.
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This has gone some way to justifying the 1 hour daily time-sink my addiction to STS has become. Even the epic WF mob threads have gold buried in them.

Ok, now I am going to read back over KaniGTS and Albany Plantation, I know there have got to be some productivity nuggets in there also.
 
dchuk said:
the tools you use professionally consistently blow my fucking mind man. HOMESITE?!?!
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LOL, it's for simple text files. Don't you have little notes that you need to scribble down, or just need a simple text editor to type out a quick custom script for a one-time job, before you copy & paste it into Putty sometimes?

Settle down, I don't use Homesite to actually type code and complete projects. For a text editor though, for me at least, it remains the best out there.

What blows my mind is how some of you guys use these online services, and think it's just awesome how you can enter a new task, and simply press enter to add it! How cool is that!?!? Then you guys get all amazed about how easily you can move items around in it. Why not just cut & paste some lines in a text file? Works the exact same.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
LOL, it's for simple text files. Don't you have little notes that you need to scribble down, or just need a simple text editor to type out a quick custom script for a one-time job, before you copy & paste it into Putty sometimes?

Settle down, I don't use Homesite to actually type code and complete projects. For a text editor though, for me at least, it remains the best out there.

What blows my mind is how some of you guys use these online services, and think it's just awesome how you can enter a new task, and simply press enter to add it! How cool is that!?!? Then you guys get all amazed about how easily you can move items around in it. Why not just cut & paste some lines in a text file? Works the exact same.
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anything text based in my life goes into evernote, from random scratch pad stuff to blog post drafts to the book I'm working on (a note per chapter at this point). The ubiquitous nature of evernote is ideal for me as I can sit down with my tablet and review in bed or on my laptop or desktop or phone or a friend's computer on the web. Plus, no more text files to deal with.
 
Just downloaded the 51MB beast they call Evernote to check it out. I actually quite like it, and it's nice. I'll probably never use it, but kudos to the development team, because it looks like a great tool.

I think there's a line between being efficient in your job, and adopting things just because you think it's the savvy thing to do. Being cool and trendy is different than being efficient. What exactly are all you guys storing to do your jobs? If my shit got cluttered to the point I needed multiple catalogs with dozens of notes each, I'd know it's time to hire someone and delegate.

This is starting to remind me of that Drobo Storage thread in STS.
 
I use Evernote. That shit works on any phone and has a desktop app. For notes it's perfect, you can even do recorded notes and notes on links and images and just about anything. For just general task management I use PivotalTracker it's really nice for keeping track of tasks and progress, updates and changes....
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Just downloaded the 51MB beast they call Evernote to check it out. I actually quite like it, and it's nice. I'll probably never use it, but kudos to the development team, because it looks like a great tool.

I think there's a line between being efficient in your job, and adopting things just because you think it's the savvy thing to do. Being cool and trendy is different than being efficient. What exactly are all you guys storing to do your jobs? If my shit got cluttered to the point I needed multiple catalogs with dozens of notes each, I'd know it's time to hire someone and delegate.

This is starting to remind me of that Drobo Storage thread in STS.
Click to expand...

all coding tasks are stored in Trello, all notes and more biz oriented docs are stored in evernote. Pretty simple really.
 
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