Optimizing “My Tasks” in Asana (Legacy)
📝 Retired 2022. See the newer version here.
⏱ 3-5 min Read / 7-10 min Setup
🥈 We were awarded 2nd place in Asana’s Optimizing My Tasks competition for this article. You can see the original post here if a member of the Asana Community Forum. We update this post from time to time with best practices and features. You can learn more about our Asana services here.
Optimizing My Tasks
Asana's My Tasks is great for making sure we never miss a deadline. We almost always use My Tasks in List View because it maximizes what we can see, giving us the context we need for decision making. Below, you can see the My Tasks sections and Rules we recommend to keep on track.
◻️ Recently assigned
Anything assigned to you starts here. Update and sort tasks as you need.
🔋 Focus
This is where I put tasks I’m working on right now. I move tasks here as work on them. Limit this to 1-3 tasks at a time.
🔺 Critical
When my Today section feels overwhelming or urgent requests come through, I move them here. Everything in Critical should be finished before the end of the day.
❌ Overdue
Exactly what it sounds like! Try to complete overdue tasks as soon as possible or give them a more realistic due date.
Rule: Any task that is overdue, move to this section.
📗 Today
Anything due today is moved here at midnight in your timezone. This section and Tomorrow are where you find out what’s ready to be done when you open your My Tasks each morning. I move important tasks to Critical and update tasks with unrealistic/inaccurate deadlines. Anything remaining here at the end of the day should be low priority and not likely to hold others up.
Rule: If due Today, move to Today
📘 Tomorrow
Each day, as I go through my Today section I also check my Tomorrow section to see what I might get ahead on. Some tasks require a little extra preparation, so is helping me avoid surprises.
Rule: If due Tomorrow, move to Tomorrow
📚 Priorities + Milestones
This is for big picture items that may lack clear deadlines or actions but are generally on the immediate horizon. It’s a little amorphous, but by design. To make progress, try to break down tasks using subtasks; and use dependancies with milestones to understand what’s blocking a path forward on tasks you’re responsible for.
💬 Meetings
If you have a lot of tasks that represent meetings, this section allows you to separate them from other types of tasks. The day a meeting happens the task will be moved to today. When a meeting starts, I’ll move it to Focus with other tasks or reminders that are part of the agenda.
Advanced: Here at The Collaborative, we have all our meetings created as tasks and automatically assigned by integrating Calendly with Asana via Zapier. This reduces work and keeps us organized.
📙 Upcoming (7d)
Tasks accumulate here seven days out so we can see exactly what’s coming down the pike. This is a chance to get ahead of any roadblocks by communicating on tasks with my team. We go through this section each Friday (sometimes Sunday night) and move tasks to Later that we won’t need to consider until the day-of. Remaining are only tasks that require effort or have significant priority. When “today” or “tomorrow” arrives, all tasks are automatically moved because of our previous rules, so they can’t be lost in Later.
Rule: If task is due in 7 days, move to Upcoming (7d)
⚪️ Later
Everything else. Thanks to our other rules, you don’t have to worry about this section much. Just put what you don’t need now, here. Once a quarter, do some spring cleaning.
🏆 Complete
Anything that is completed automatically moves here.
Rule: If task marked complete, move to Complete
Rule: If task moved to Complete, mark complete
🕖 Recurring
Any recurring task is moved here when it’s auto-created after having been marked complete.
How to: My Settings › Hacks › Recurring Tasks in Last Section of My Tasks › Save/Reload
Minimal My Tasks
Feel free to skip some of the sections we recommend if you don’t think you need them. For a more minimal setup, we recommend:
◻️ Recently assigned
🔋 Focus
❌ Overdue
📗 Today
📘 Tomorrow
📙 Upcoming (7d)
⚪️ Later
🏆 Complete
🕖 Recurring
My Tasks Sort Settings
We recommend customizing your view as Sort by Due Date with Sort with sections on.
My Tasks Rules
Try out these rules to make your My Tasks work for you.
“I’ve been putting [your My Tasks recommendations] into practice over the last couple of weeks, and y’all, it really is a game-changer. It makes My Tasks so much more manageable. It’s just way better with those automations.””
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