I made a reusable holiday card + gift list on Asana

Happy holidays, friends. This year, I used an Asana project for my Christmas list. I thought I’d share — maybe others have used Asana for a similar purpose? Would love to see what other people have done.

1. People are tasks ;)

Each person on my holiday list is a task in the Asana project. The Notes section is great for listing gift ideas. I also used it to record mailing addresses for future use, since I don’t have an old school address book.

2. I use Priority Headings to break up my list.

Like most people, I can’t afford to buy everyone gifts, so only a few close friends and relatives make my gift list. This view gives me a sense of how many cards to buy and how much actual gift shopping I need to do.

3. I use Tags to manage tasks.

I didn’t want to have to think about which part (card vs gift) was or wasn’t already done for any given person on my list. Using tags helped me move people/tasks through my ‘holiday workflow’:

  • Depending on which list s/he is on, I tagged each person with ‘gift’, ‘card’, or both.
     
  • If I bought someone a gift, but I haven’t written a card, I’d remove the ‘gift’ tag. And vice versa.
  • I like to do my cards in one or two sittings. Clicking on the ‘card’ tag would give me ALL the cards I still needed to write, regardless of which list that person belongs to.
     
  • With tags, I don’t have to mark a task complete until nothing else needs to be done for that person.

4. The Comment Thread and Unarchiving Completed Tasks makes my list reusable.

“Ohh you must love the Duplicate Project feature,” Jerry said when I told her about this. But no, next year, I’m going to use this very same project. It really, really bugs me when it’s abundantly clear that a person didn’t give much thought to a gift they bought. Like when I get a Bath & Bodyworks gift set 2 years in a row, and I remember, because the lotion from last year is still chillin’ on my dresser. I want to avoid being one of those gift-givers, even for the obligatory gifts I’m expected to buy for distant relatives I don’t know very well. Enter: Asana Comments! This year, I added each gift purchase to the person’s comment thread. I’ll do the same next year. I’m hoping that each person’s record of past gifts will help me select a thoughtful gift each year. (I’ll still keep unused gift ideas in Notes for future reference). Next holiday season, I’ll just Unarchive and Un-complete everything, and start over! Thanks, Asana :-)