Best productivity app for your business: Asana Vs. Trello

Recently, I took my annual three week break to rest and rejuvenate - the importance of which I learnt the hard way back in 2017. On my return, one thing was top of mind for me and that was getting my business activities organized and get even more efficient.

For that reason, I jumped into my Google Calendar and my handy-dandy paper notebook/calendar to start jotting down my upcoming projects and tasks to get organized once again. This led me to want a better way of dealing with my projects. Having some things digital and some thing on paper was just not going to cut it anymore. I wanted to have a unified system, a mothership of sorts for all my tasks, goals and projects.

What I found from my afternoon of playing around with two apps on my shortlist is that I totally love Asana. But not so fast. You will see the reason why Asana is my preferred productivity app.

In this video, I walk through the two systems (Asana and Trello) and show you how I set up my productivity app of choice:

So which productivity app should you go for?

I've worked with Basecamp, Asana, Trello and Freedcamp at different times in my business. While all of these apps have their pros and cons, I am going with Asana for all my business projects and tasks.

1 | Board Vs List View

In Trello, you can only have your tasks listed in a Board view. It uses Kanban system in which you can drag and drop your tasks from different columns. This allows you to have a visual of the progress you are making in your work. Like this:

Kanban Progress System in Trello:

In Asana, you can choose whether you want list view or board view. You must decide that before you set up your project because you cannot switch back and forth between list and board views. There is a workaround for this which I lay out in the video. But essentially, you have a choice and that’s what primarily won me over to Asana from Trello.

Board View in Asana:

List view in Asana:

2 | At-A-Glance View of Tasks

When you are using a productivity app day in and day out, it needs to have versatility to fit your individual needs. I find Asana to fit my need to have an at-a-glance view of all my tasks on a particular day from all my projects. You can sort them based on “today”,” upcoming” or “later”. So there’s a tab on the sidebar called “My Tasks”. When you click on it, you will see all your tasks across all your projects. So it looks like this.

At-A-Glance View of All Tasks Across Multiple Projects

In Trello on the other hand, one has to go into each and every project to see what tasks are upcoming. You can see all your projects on the home dashboard but I don’t find that useful since I still need to click into each project. This may work for teams who are really project-based. But for solopreneurs such as myself who essentially are running all parts of their business or delegating only a small part, then Asana’s “My Task” view is more helpful.

All Project Boards At-A-Glance In Dashboard

3 | Synching up with Google Calendar

What I appreciate in both Trello and Asana is that you can synch up your projects/tasks with Google Calendar. In the video above I show you how to do that in Asana. And it is practically the same process for doing it in Trello as well.

This way, whenever you are planning out something and open up Google Calendar, you can get a calendar view of everything in one place. I do think I will stop using this feature as Asana has a very nice Calendar view as well of ALL my tasks. But while I transition from Google Calendar, the sych up feature comes in handy. Also this is very useful when you are on the go and can look at your Google calendar on your phone. (Asana has a nifty app for your phone as well).

This is how Google Calendar looks when syched up with “My tasks” from Asana:

Asana’s Calendar view is quite attractive as well

The pros of using the Calendar feature in Asana is that all your projects are color coded and you can also see the colors of any tags you may have added to your tasks.

To get the same effect in Google Calendar, you will need to synch up each and every project/Team individually into Google. Doable with some patience! :)

Which Productivity App Will You Use?

So there you have my top three reasons why I like to use Asana (although Trello was quite up to par on point no. 3!). I am now using this daily and it’s the first thing I open up when I get to work each day. I love the feeling of a clear mind because I know all my tasks and projects are down on paper…well, actually…digital paper. (I still use a notebook or project paper for brainstorming processes). And I don’t have to store them in multiple places. I must admit, having my entire system set up on Asana has radically increased my productivity which is after all why we have a productivity app to begin with, right?

Running a website design business involves tons of small details and juggling many parts of both personal and business life. I am excited about my new system and I hope you found some inspiration to set up yours as well.

Let me know in the comments which feature of Asana or Trello you like. Or if you use something else, share why you went for it as well!

~ Peace, Sophia

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