Running a nutrition business is rewarding, but managing the day to day tasks can feel like a lot! Between wondering if you’ve forgotten something, figuring out where to even start, and keeping track of deadlines, it’s easy to lose clarity amidst the chaos.
Add collaboration with team members to the mix, and you’re left questioning if they’ve seen your latest email, are even aware of any deadlines, or wondering if the next move is yours. Without a clear system that you can refer to every day, staying on top of it all can feel like a juggling act.
That’s where a reliable task management tool can transform your business. If you’ve read my post on task management tools, you’ll already know that Asana is my absolute favourite for this! It’s got the right balance of features to save you time but without being too complex to get going with it quickly. In this post, I’ll take you through how to set it up and highlight the main features so you can quickly get started and feel organised – that’s such a great feeling!
How to set up Asana
- Create an account
This is your business or in Asana language, your workspace or organisation
- Set up your team
Next, set up your team. Most small to medium sized businesses will only need one team. You may want to set up two if you have a team who carry out very different tasks e.g. if you have a team of dietitians and an admin/content team.
You do not need to add in all your sub-contractors here if they are only going to be involved in one or two projects. We’ll come on to how they can get involved in the next step..
- Create your projects
This third step is the starting point of organising tasks and in my opinion, is where the fun starts! Projects are the main areas of your business that you are currently working on e.g. website revamp, social media, blog, email marketing, meal plan, lead magnet set up, hire VA.
All projects are assigned a team but you can add additional collaborators to specific projects as needed who are outside of your main team e.g. your website designer may only require access to your website revamp project.
Once all your current projects are set up, continue to add further projects as they arise. This step is vital as consistent use of your tool will ensure it becomes a regular part of your business life!
Once projects have been completed they can be archived, so that you can only see active projects on your home page.
- List out your tasks
These are the individual step by step action points that need to be completed within each project. They should be clear, simple and actionable e.g. writing a blog post on gut friendly foods is too big a task and should be broken down into the individual steps you need to do such as research topics, create outline, write first draft, source images etc.
Tasks can be organised into different sections which can be useful if you have a large number of tasks within the project.
Within each task, add a description of the task, attach files that may be required, set a deadline and delegate to a team member. Deadlines are key as this will help you and your team with prioritisation. You can further categorise each task with a low, medium or high priority if needed.
All task collaborators can comment within the task if they have any questions or comments which provides an opportunity to communicate with the team as the task is being carried out whilst ensuring communication is centralised.
Check out my 3 time saving tips when setting up tasks at the end of my blog post.
- Sub-tasks
I personally rarely use these as I prefer to make sure my tasks are already broken down but if you like these can be added for more complex tasks or if multiple team members need to be allocated different parts of the task. Always delegate to a team member and give a deadline – the 2 top rules of task management!
My Tasks (Everything You Need To Do)
This feature shows you at a glance all the tasks that have been delegated to you.
You can personalise your tasks by setting them up in one of 3 different views:
- List: a straightforward list of tasks that you can filter, group by project and sort by different variables such as due date or priority
- Board: my least favourite view when looking at all tasks
- Calendar: useful to see your deadlines at a glance over a time period. I usually set this to a week at a time for my weekly planning sessions and a month for my monthly planning sessions.
My Inbox (Everything You Need To Know)
This is my absolutely favourite feature. You should check this every day as it will show you tasks that are due for the day and any communication about tasks from team members.
If at the end of the day, you still have tasks remaining, reschedule them for another day to prevent them from building up.
All activity in your inbox can be:
- Read and archived
- Responded to (with a thumbs up or message) and archived
- Saved for later
- Assigned a follow up task
Time saving tips when setting up tasks
- Use bulk actions
This is useful when setting up your tasks as it allows you to select multiple tasks to perform a bulk action e.g. set multiple tasks to a specific team member or a specific due date, or add collaborators rather than perform this action for each individual task.
- Assign the same tasks to multiple people
This is useful if you want to delegate the same task to multiple people without setting up a separate task to each of them. Simply create the task, click assignee, select assign to multiple people and select who. Hey presto, you have created a task for each of them!
- Recurring tasks
This is a game changer for those tasks that are carried out frequently in your business e.g. writing blog posts or scheduling social media. You can set the task to reoccur as frequently as needed!
By following my steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating a more organised and productive business all mapped out in Asana.
If you need more support on this, comment below or drop me an email at nevine@thriveonlineservices.com and I’ll send you my 20 minute video walkthrough of Asana – I’ve had such great feedback from people that now use Asana in their business, like this one:
“I have just watched it this evening whilst setting tasks on mine at the same time, it has been super helpful – thank you so much for doing this. You explained it so well too 🙂”
