Asana or Notion, where to manage your tasks?
Where’s the best place for a non profit, team or freelancer to manage their projects and to perform at their best?
Asana or Notion?
We’re using both.
I’ll share what we’re doing as we work out which one is best (for a comparison of their features, just Google it, here’s one that’s 70% accurate IMO) but for our thoughts on whether to consolidate all your knowledge in one tool (Notion) or specialise (Asana), here’s a few pointers.
Asana
Our setup
Free version (the paid version isn’t compelling enough).
Use case: Client projects
strengths
It’s already setup well for managing tasks. Notion has to be built from scratch or a template, ideally someone who knows it helps you.
It’s a more tailored interface so you can achieve things with less clicks and more intuitively
It’s got more powerful notifications. eg. Auto emails
It’s notification inbox is more sophisticated
It’s been around longer so it’s naturally more feature rich (eg. Notion has only just added automations in 2023, Asana has had them for ages).
Much easier to share externally
Notion
Our setup
Business version: 2 paid seats
One for me and one generic one that any team member can use for admin things.
Rest of the team are free guests.
Use case: Internal projects (but we’re weighing up whether we really need Asana…)
Strengths
ALL of our key information from across the organisation is right next to our projects, tasks and meeting notes.
It’s VERY usable and integrated with all our information which makes it ridiculously simple to refer to information elsewhere. eg. your task is linked to a page of important information about your project which Asana really can’t do well. But more than that, you can refer to ANY block of text anywhere.
You can do far more with the free/cheap version
The richer content/interface within page templates makes it amazingly more useful for recording info about complex tasks in a systematic way. It’s great for onboarding new people as we can provide them an exact template of how to do a thing without them having to go somewhere else to read an out of date document
One less critical tool. Which means one less place to keep up to date with notifications and conversations.
You can hack it in infinite ways (ie. make it do all kinds of things, I’m not saying it’s a security concern!). Asana’s design is very locked down. Sure people build their CRM in it but really… it’s a pretty poor experience.
It’s built on databases which makes it possible to make complex relationships between information and for a lot of people, can make spreadsheets and Airtable redundant.
Use Asana if…
You’re spending all day in your projects and tasks and need a purpose built tool
It’s what you’re used to and have no need to go elsewhere
You don’t need to integrate with other information in your organisation (it doesn’t feel like an information island to you)
The workload planning feature is really useful for you (Please tell me if you get value out of that function, I don’t know anyone who does)
The cost isn’t an issue
Use Notion if…
You want most of your knowledge in one place and that’s more important than having a mature task management tool
You’re open to trying something new and spending the time to set it up right
You want more flexibility with how you manage projects and tasks than Asana allows
Clearly both tools have their place. We like them for different reasons but we’re leaning towards the benefits of having all of our knowledge in one place.
👉 Simplicity, efficiency, great onboarding, cheaper, easier to maintain, easier to focus
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s also weighing up this challenge at the moment, to see what we can learn from each other. Send me a note: malcolm at optimi.co.nz