The majority of our communication takes place in Asana. Ensuring that you use Asana’s notification inbox to your advantage is a crucial part of staying organized.
So, starting off with the inbox.
Asana’s inbox is where all notifications go.
And as the name suggests, it functions very similar to a traditional email inbox.
Meaning that notifications don’t just have the two typical states, read and unread.
Instead, they can be read, unread as well as archived. And until they are archived, they will remain visible and accessible in your inbox.
This is crucial to remember, as maintaining your inbox and maintaining inbox zero is crucial to maintaining the organization of your Asana account.
In other words, use the Asana inbox to your advantage.
What this means is that you can triage notifications in your inbox, jump directly to the task page without leaving your inbox (to update due dates, post a comment, and so on) but leave the notification in your inbox until you are done taking all action needed.
Once you are done clearing that notification (meaning you’ve responded or taken the action you needed to), you can hit E to archive the notification or click the archive icon here.
You should archive notifications the moment you are done with the notification because my inbox shouldn’t just be another version of “my tasks”.
If something is assigned to me, it will appear under “My Tasks” anyway, so I typically only use notifications to take action on the activity that triggered the notification.
Such as someone requesting something from me, posting a comment, and so on.
And, if that activity prompts an assignment of work or a new subtask, then I go ahead and create that, clear the notification, and then tackle that task when I get to it. Not when I am triaging notifications (of course, this depends on whether it’s something that takes 10 minutes or less, in which case I likely would tackle it immediately to maintain momentum).
Notifications also trigger other things like a due date passing, which equally prompts action such as making sure the due date is accurate and in line with the expected completion date and, when suitable, posting an update to relevant people in comments.