Not to be a downer…
I currently run a growing startup company and have recently hired a project manager - to help me manage daily operations whilst I focus more on sales.
I’ve been introduced - by multiple staff now - to ASANA as a software.
The truth is - a lot of the tasks I do day-to-day are collaborative in nature - and require other users input.
Asana seems far more appropriate for this.
It can be also be customised to have custom perspective modes, review modes and generate any notification you want.
I feel that - after seeing these features in action over the last week - my personal use of Omnifocus 3 seems lacking.
Has anybody else noticed that the software seems to be missing out on the fundamental ways most of us work?
I am aware it was designed for a personal project management system - but you can have private projects in asana quite easily.
What are your thoughts?
Personally I prefer to keep group projects and their “tasks” in our project management system at work, but I then have my own projects and tasks in OmniFocus - often based on these (and my personal stuff too of course). Why? I might be assigned a “task”, but it requires multiple steps to complete and those steps are not collaborative - this way I can make my own notes and more.
I’m a big fan of Asana and have been using it for years for collaborating with contractors (e.g. graphics designers, web developers). It helps keep all of us on the same page and virtually eliminates the need to use email. It works very well for this purpose and is robust enough to handle large, complex projects.
In contrast, OmniFocus is my personal task manager. It’s answers the question “what’s next” and, along with my calendar, helps keep me on a productive path across all areas of my life.
I find OmniFocus is better suited for personal task management than Asana (which is primarily built for collaboration). And it creates a clear distinction between things that I’m working on individually and those that are part of a team effort.
A few specific suggestions on using the two in tandem:
When people assign “tasks” in Asana, I find that they they’re really assigning entire projects. Along the lines of what @rosemaryjayne shared, Asana can be used to keep track of what you’re committed to completing and OmniFocus can be used to assign the granular details that are probably not useful for relevant to other people in the team.
Each Asana project, task, etc. has a unique URL. I recommend including this URL in any related actions or project you create in OmniFocus.
You can use Zapier to automatically create OmniFocus actions that reference specific tasks in OmniFocus.
Asana can be a great place to keep things like meeting agendas and checklists, especially those that need to be viewed and/or updated by other members of the team. You can create OmniFocus actions to prompt you to review and update these lists (e.g. an action to “Review: meeting agenda” that shows up at the appropriate time with a link to the agenda list in Asana).
