Why I Love Asana

Conscious leaders are impeccable with their agreements. This means...

1. They make clear agreements: including who will do what, by when
2. They keep 90% of their agreements (most unconscious leaders keep less than 50% of their agreements).
3. They re-negotiate any agreements they will not be keeping as soon as they know they will not be keeping them. In other words, they keep people informed, which builds trust.
4. They clean up all broken agreements by taking responsibility for not keeping them.  

When leaders live this way they are in full integrity. Integrity equals energy. Energy management is critical to leadership success. Conscious leaders can’t afford to dissipate energy by being out of integrity with their agreements.   

We have written and spoken about these 4 points many times (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Commitment #6).

What we haven’t talked much about is that conscious leaders write down all their agreements. As Gay Hendricks has said “If your life is any more complicated than a bedouin sheep herder, write down your agreements.”  

Conscious leaders use their minds to do what a mind is good for; creativity, innovation, imagination, day dreaming and high level problem solving. They don’t use their minds to keep track of their agreements.  

Instead they have a reliable, trustworthy system that will remind them at just the right time what it is they need to do and when they need to do it. This system will also keep track of agreements others have made with the leader so that follow up is easeful and effortless.  

Asana is the system I use to live a life of integrity around my agreements. Asana is a partner to achieving what I want in the world. I rely on it like any leader relies on his/her critical business partners. Like all partners, when I work well with my Asana system it never lets me down. It does for me what I cannot do for myself. The result of my partnership with my Asana system is that I get loads of things done with minimal stress and effort. Bliss.

What I’m pointing at here is most compellingly articulated by David Allen in Getting Things Done.  David reminded me the other day that what system you use for tracking agreements is not important. You can use Outlook, Things, IBM Notes, or Post-It Notes for that matter. If you use a system well, you will ending up loving your system because it supports you to have more energy for the important things in your life. Thus, my love of Asana.

Organizational bliss is not where my love of Asana ends. As an organization, Asana is committed to conscious leadership. Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz, Asana co-founders are committed to living and leading consciously.  

Not only is Asana my partner in living in impeccability with my agreements, being in integrity and managing my energy, it’s on the cutting edge of conscious sustainable leadership. Now you know why I love Asana.