In my last post I was talking about the importance of finding the time management tools that work best for you. I’m always looking to try new productivity tools both for myself and for projects I’m a part of. Many applications don’t offer any more features than a boring paper to-do list, while others are too bloated, leaving many features unused.

I had given up finding a good app that worked on both my desktop and mobile. Then a few months ago I was introduced to Asana. It has definitely shaken up my choice of productivity tools in a great way.

Looking for an easier way to brainstorm, collaborate with, and organize your business? Look no further than Asana.

What is Asana?

The aim of Asana is to help cut down the time spent micro-managing via e-mails, phone calls and any other number of time consuming communication methods. Essentially it seeks to cut out the “work about work”. Originally created for use within Facebook, the developers Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz decided to bring the collaborative to-do list to the outside world.

In an interview at Mashable, Rosenstein said,

Every organization on Earth, whether it’s business or government or non-profit — every time that a group of humans are working together towards a common goal — the mechanics of organization are just really hard. If we could make that easier, we knew people would be happier, because that part of people’s jobs is easily the most annoying or painful.

Communication

The best feature of Asana is how easy it is to see what’s going on in your organization. When you select a task, you can see at-a-glance a description, who the task is assigned to, any files or links associated with the task, and any discussion going on about the task.

The comments feature for each task is also great. It makes Asana almost like a social network for your team because you can easily share your comments, and get comments from other team members. It may seem silly but in practice it’s an easy and fast way to communicate agreement or approval of an idea. This really helps to get the work flow moving. It’s also a great way to make sure ideas get thoroughly discussed before completing a task.

Ease of Use

Asana is not just for your web browser. It works great on mobile devices, thanks to its official Asana Mobile app for both Apple and Android devices. There are also a number of unofficial apps designed to work with Asana, if the official app isn’t working for you. You’ve got a variety of apps to choose from so everyone on your team can pick what works best for them.

Whether you have a multi-person team in need of lots of organization and discussion or only a few people in need of a more structured to-do list, Asana can work for you. The flexibility of Asana makes it a great tool for teams of many sizes and needs. If you’re a smaller team you may not need the comments as much, but the assignable sub-tasks could prove invaluable. For larger teams, being able to break up a project’s tasks into flexible sections could make it easier to track a task in a large project.

The best part? Asana is free for teams under 15 people. For most small businesses, this limitation isn’t a problem (it certainly hasn’t been for Van Patten Media) . Have a larger team? Plans for more than 15 members start at $50 and also add some cool exta features (private projects, unlimited guests, etc).

We think Asana really is best option for the small businesses, but there are plenty of other task management tools available too. Have you used Asana, or do you have another favorite? Leave a note in the comments below!

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