EP 47: How to Turn a Task Audit into Asana Boards

Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of the think happy podcast. I am so happy to be with you guys today. Please forgive me, I'm just gonna start off by saying that I am back in my closet. I know the sound quality is just not as great when I record in here, but you know, sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do. I have full confidence that the content I will be providing for you today will um outweigh the mediocre sound quality. But also one thing. I did just want to take a second to laugh at myself, because you guys would laugh at me if you saw me trying to sit down on my closet floor right now. With this big old baby belly and then, okay, so like watching me sit down, it's probably very funny. Watching me stand up is probably very, very, very funny. It is tough to get down and get up these days, but I will do it for you guys. I will always sit down on my closet floor and get back up, with or without a baby belly, for you guys. So that I will promise you.

Okay, so today's episode was inspired by something that I was talking about on Instagram the other day and I just had the random thought to put a pull up on my stories and ask if you guys wanted more in depth content on the topic that we're going to be discussing, and you did. So here we are with one of my favorite types of episodes, which is a listener requested episode. I love these, these are my favorite I love giving you guys content that you love listening to. That is what I'm here for. It just makes me so excited, so happy.

Before we dive into today's episode, before I unveil a topic of today, I do want to start by stating quite the obvious. It is the season for officially wrapping up summertime and preparing to dive into just your regularly scheduled work routine, Um, school routine, life routine, just your regularly scheduled routine. Say That five times fast. First of all, this is the perfect time, you guys, to start getting a handle on your time and task management. Okay, new seasons of life just generate something inside of our brains that tell us, you know, this is a good time to start something new. New goes with new, like goes with like. So, luckily for you, think happy is all about all things time management, task management, task prioritization, and you name it. So, because of that, join me each week in August for a Free Live coaching session that's going to be dedicated to teaching you tips, tricks, hacks, all of the good stuff to help you master time and task management in your own life. Okay, so here are the logistics. These sessions will be on the first three Fridays in August at noon central time. They will be hosted on Google meets. When you register, you will receive links to all of the sessions. You'll receive access to replays of all of the sessions. In case you aren't able to make it live, you'll receive a new worksheet each week and also access to registrant only discounts. There is so much good stuff in here and I will say if you register, you know, like part way through the month, you'll also get access to all of the replays from the sessions that have already occurred. Um, so, like, don't don't feel like you're gonna miss out on something if you don't register the very first week of August. It's really no Biggie to register. Head to either the link in my instagram bio and Click Freebie, or you can just head straight to thinkhappyco.com/mini-series. Okay, that is where you can register for this free event, this free mini series. I'm so excited about it.

Okay, but back to today's topic. Today I'm gonna walk you through how to do a task audit and then how to turn that audit into neatly organized Asana boards or insert whichever project management tool you use. Okay, so this is recently an activity that I did for all of my Think Happy Co tasks. So, as you might might not know, at the time of this recording I am juggling my nine to five job and also my think happy job. Right. So, after James is born, I will be transitioning full time to think happy , which is so, so darn exciting. But for the time being, you know, each and every minute of my day I have to make sure I'm optimizing so that I can be a great employee at my nine to five. You know, that's still really important to me. The company that I'm leaving means a lot hot to me, Um, and I don't want to slack there on my final few weeks. Okay, so I have to optimize, optimize my time to make sure that I can be a great employee at my nine to five so I can be a great coach to my think happy clients, y'all mean the world to me, and just so I can be a good business owner in general for all things that fall under the think happy co umbrella. Right. So that's a lot of important things that I am trying to balance inside of working hours. So I was starting to feel very overwhelmed and doing this this task audit really helped me. But then what helped me even more was taking what I learned from that audit and transferring it to Asana and like laying it out in a manner that made me feel like I could accomplish it all just with like one bite at a time type of thing.

You know, I'm so big on getting things that are just floating around rent free in your brain out of your brain and, you know, onto paper Um into a place that's going to help you have action with them while minimizing your anxiety around them. And this process has helped me so much. It's helped me so much that I talked about it on my instagram and you guys wanted to learn more about it, so here we are learning more about it.

So my situation that I'm in right now, you know, is very unique. It's very specific. You could be in some sort of life instance other than than the one that I'm in now where doing a task like this or not a task... Where doing, an activity like this might be beneficial. Okay, so it could be as simple as you're in a situation where you find yourself straddling two jobs kind of similar to me right now. You know, that is not uncommon at all. And if I can just state the obvious, inflation is brutal right now, so brutal. And so if you find yourself in a situation where you're straddling two jobs, maybe like a full time job plus another part time job., this activity might really help you. Okay, another example of of an a life instance that this activity could be helpful is just embarking on any new season of life. Okay, so that could look like adding a new family member to the list, to the mix, transitioning from, you know, a summer schedule to a fall schedule, starting a new year, starting a new job, any new life season like that comes with just sometimes this natural anxiety and and I don't want to say that that anxiety weighs heavier than the excitement of it or other emotions that you're feeling, but prior or doing this audit and organizing it might be something that helps to alleviate some of your anxiety around transitioning into a new life season. And then, finally, another time that doing this activity might be helpful is just any time that you find yourself just feeling generally overwhelmed. Okay, so, like you might not be able to put your finger exactly on what it is that's making you feel overwhelmed, but you know that you do feel overwhelmed and feeling overwhelmed is not a fun feeling and we don't want to stay in that state for too long. And so doing this audit really might help you first of all, identify what it is that's causing your over and, second you know, attack it head on.

So let's talk about the steps on how to perform your task audit, and then how to transform it into neatly designed, beautiful asana boards.

The first step here we want to do a brain dump of all relevant tasks. Okay, so if you have listened to other podcast episodes, if you have followed me on Instagram, you have heard me talk about brain dumps. The main thing to keep in mind with a brain dump is you're just there to write. You're just there to get things out of your head and onto paper. Okay, it does not have to be pretty, it does not have to be in any particular order, it doesn't have to be organized. You're only there to write, to physically transfer things out of your brain and onto paper. Okay. So, specific to this particular activity, though, I will tell you it's really helpful if you try to keep this brain dump focused on the area of life that you're tackling. Okay. So for me, like I said just a couple of minutes ago, I recently did this activity specific to the tasks that I have surrounding think happy. Okay. So when I did this brain dump, I wrote down all of the tasks that I have that are specific to think happy. Okay. So try to stay zeroed in on that area of life that you're tackling, but if you do find yourself veering off course, that's totally fine. I would suggest to do a pre step to this activity and just do a general brain dump. Okay, if you're finding your veering off course from from the one area that you're trying to focus on and it's hard to reel yourself back into the area, that would definitely be an indication that you just need to do a general brain life dump. Okay, so that would be your pre step. Now back to these steps. So step one, brain dump all of the relevant tasks.

Step two, I want you to go back through that brain dump, reread each task that you wrote down and identify each task as either a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly task that has to get done. Okay, daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly.

Now step three if you're like me, if colors help you organize, I want you to color code those. Okay, so grab a high lighter, Um, grab a colored pen, whatever it might be. I want you to Color Code, highlight, underline all of the daily tasks in one color, all of the weekly tasks and another color, and so on with monthly tasks and quarterly tasks. There is something about color coding this list, you guys, that really helps you, like, feel that difference between maybe a daily task and a monthly task. Okay, it really helps separate these, especially if you're a visual learner.

Okay, so step four, after you've color coded, I want you to rewrite all of your tasks according to the the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly assignment that you gave them. I want you to rewrite them to help you get a fresh perspective, and then you're going to evaluate the list. Okay, so this list is still on paper. We have not even moved to the computer yet. We are not on Asana. When you evaluate this list, there are a couple of questions that you can ask yourself as you go through each task. Some of those questions could be am I wasting time by repeating these tasks too frequently? Can I consolidate some of these tasks? Can I delegate some of these tasks? Is Each of these tasks necessary? Okay, so those are all questions that you can ask yourself as you're evaluating the outcomes of this brain dump. Right and before we even move to Asana. You might find yourself eliminating some tasks or changing some tasks that you have marked as daily to maybe weekly tasks, or moving weekly tasks too maybe monthly tasks. Maybe you're doing too much of the same thing too frequently. Maybe there's something on your list that doesn't have to happen every single day but can just happen once a week. Okay, those are the types of things that you're looking for. That low hanging fruit.

So step five. After you do this evaluation, it is now time to move to a Anna, or whichever project management tool you prefer. So from here on out I'll be using terms that are specific to a sauna because that is the project management tool that I use. But there are plenty of other options out there. Maybe you use Monday, maybe you use trelloh Um, whichever project management tool you use, I would be willing to bet that maybe the terms that I'm going to be using are not exactly the same, but the functions are probably there. Okay. So it is time to move our evaluation, move these tasks into a sauna.

So step six. I want you to create a new project and give it a name. The name of mine is... guys, It is just like so clever I almost cannot handle it. It is called "to dos". Yeah, to dos this is what my project is named. Not Clever at all, but you know, it's it's easy to identify. I know what it is. I don't have to go scrolling for it. So create a project, given a name. Next step inside your project. Inside your project, I want you to create four new boards. Okay. Those boards are going to be titled Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly.

Okay, next step, starting with your daily board, I want you to create a task and any necessary sub tasks for each of your tasks that you identified as daily. Okay, so you'RE gonna go back to that piece of paper where you rewrote your tasks, after you identified them as daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly, and after you did your evaluation, crossed off anything, moved anything around from a daily to a weekly or whatever it might look like for you, whatever you ended up having left in the daily category. You're going to create an individual task underneath your daily board. Okay. Now some of your tasks might have subtasks that go along with them. This is the time that you're also going to add those subtasks in.

Now, once you finish this for your daily tasks, you're gonna Rinse and repeat for weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks.

Okay. So at the end of this you're gonna have one project that in my case is called to dos. Inside of that project, you're gonna have four boards. Underneath your daily board is going to have all your daily tasks - underneath weekly all weekly tests, so on and so forth, with monthly tasks and quarterly tasks. Now the last step here is to set appropriate due dates.

Okay, so I want you to go back to all of the tasks that you have created in your boards and I want you to set due dates. Now we're gonna come back to this step because I do have a tip that is specific to that. We're gonna about to go into a couple of tips that I want to share with you guys, for when you're actually executing this um and I lied.

That's not the last step. The final step is to get to work.

So you have these beautiful, neatly organized Asana boards now that break down your tasks into bite sized pieces. Talk about investing a little bit of time up front to do this activity, but saving so much time down the line, saving so much mental space, mental energy, now that you have like, taken this small investment of time up front and laid out this beautiful project inside out of Asana that has all of these tasks laid out for you, with due dates set. You know, one step at a time, baby. Now you get to start you know, chipping away at this one step at a time, feeling so accomplished along the way. I'm so excited for you guys to do this. It really has been a game changer for me.

As I said, I do have a couple of tips for you guys, and these are tips that I put together just you know, I have been doing this now for more than a couple of weeks. So these are tips that I put together just through through my experience so far.

The first tip, I have found it helpful to reset the due date on a task when it's completed instead of totally like checking that task as completed. so that sounds kind of silly, right, because the whole point of this is to check tasks off of the list, right, but I realized that if I checked a task totally off of the list that I ran the risk of totally forgetting to come back to it like the next time I needed to do it. So let's say it was a weekly task and I checked it off the list while there was there was a chance that I wasn't going to remember to do it the next week because it was checked off the list, if that makes sense. So to avoid that, instead of totally checking it off the list, I just changed the due date. Okay. So let's say that for this, you know, example task, this example weekly task, I want to do it every Friday. Okay, so I'm just gonna pull up the calendar for this month right now and use these dates as as examples. So, Um, we're in August right now. So let's say that the next day I was going to do this task was Friday all as twelve. Well, on Friday August twelve, when I do that task, instead of checking it off, I'm just gonna reset the do date to be Friday August nineteen. Okay, and then on the nineteenth, when I do it again, instead of checking it off, I'm going to reset the do date for Friday August. Okay. So that is a big one. That has really helped me. I think you should try it also if you find yourself in a similar situation as I was.

My second tip is too to help avoid my task section. So on your home screen where on Asana where you see the tasks that are are assigned to you to help that screen get like or not get super cluttered with just zillions of tasks. I don't set do dates for everything all at once. Okay. So, for example, I have do date set for the daily and the weekly tasks, but I don't have do date set for every single monthly task and definitely not for every single single quarterly task that I have on my on my project board. Um, I wait to set those do dates until the time gets like a little closer to when I'm actually going to be doing them. Um, that just help. My brain feels cluttered when I see clutter. Okay, so, even though all of these tasks are organized, if I'm on my homepage or the my tasks section of a sauna and I see all of these tasks that are assigned to me, that makes me think in a more cluttered fashion. That makes me feel more cluttered. So just to avoid that situation as a whole, Um, I do not give every single task a do date until it's getting closer to when I I'm going to have to start thinking about that task and thinking about executing that task. Okay.

My third and final tip is on your my task section again, that same section I was just talking about, kind of like on your homepage, on your dashboard, utilize the section that is called do date. Approaching. Okay, this is a really cool section. It even comes in the free version. So there is a rule that is built in to this do date approaching section that will automatically push tasks that have a do date set for whatever the rule is for the approaching date Um that will automatically move those to your do date approaching board. Okay, that is really cool. And what's even more cool about it is you can go in and reset, like whatever the default setting is for how many days ahead of time a task is deemed as do date approaching. You can change that period of time. So, for example, let's say that by default it's said that if the task is due in two days from now, that it gets pushed to that board. You can change that too. If the task is just do one day from now, it gets moved to that board, or if the task is going to be due three days from now, then you want it to get pushed to that section.

Okay. So, before I wrap up, for my visual learners who are listening right now, head to my instagram today. I'M gonna go into detail and actually show you, guys, the Asana boards that I have. For me personally, actually seeing an example of a final product is really, really helpful, so I want to provide that to you. So on instagram today I will be like showing videos of what my Asana boards look like. I'll walk you through the tasks that I have in them. Um, yeah, that'll be really helpful for you guys. If this sounds like something that you want to do, I'll also save it as a highlight. So, Um, if you're not listening to this on the day that it airs, you can still go back to my instagram and, Um, look forward on my highlights and man, you guys. That's pretty much all I have for you today.

I feel like we covered a lot in a relatively short amount of time. We started by talking about instances in your life where you might want to do a task audit for yourself. We moved into how to perform a task audit and transform it into organized a sauna boards. Those steps I'm going to run through again really quickly.

1. Brain, dump all relevant tasks.

2. Two, identify daily, weekly, monthly quarterly tasks.

3. Three, Color Code.

4. Four, rewrite to get a fresh perspective and evaluate.

5. Five, move into Asana.

6. Six, create a new project in Asana and give it a name.

7. Seven, inside your new project, create four boards, one for daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly.

8. Eight, starting with daily, create a task for each of the tasks that you identified as daily.

9. Nine, rinse and repeat, do the same process for your weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks.

10. Ten, set appropriated dates get to work, my friend

And then, of course, we wrapped up the episode with some of those bonus tips for helping you execute your tasks, just in making it feel as effortless as possible, because Lord knows that your tasks in and of themselves take so much effort that actually getting to the point of accomplishing them, of executing them, of crossing them off your list should not take much effort, right.

So I hope you found this episode interesting. I hope that you took a few key notes away from it help you some takeaways. I would love to hear what your takeaways are. Um, if you have any questions or feel so inclined to share your takeaways with me, slide right on into my DMS. Truly, truly, truly, I would love nothing more than to hear from you.