GOODBYE ASANA, HELLO NOTION

Having made the switch from Asana to Notion over the last year, we want to discuss our history with Asana as a project management tool and our new found love for Notion to streamline our workflow. Making this move was the best decision for our business and today we want to discuss why we’ll never look back.

But what are Asana and Notion?

Both Asana and Notion are project management tools. In very broad senses, you most often see Asana linked to work life and Notion to personal life. Have a quick Google of “Notion aesthetic” or “Notion tour” and you’ll see what we mean! They both do the same things but in very different ways. If you want to have some sort of organisation in your life, these are likely the two platforms you’ll be deciding between. Both are brilliant for productivity, so which do we use and why?

Let’s start with a bit of a back story - when Asana came into my life years ago, it changed everything. At the time I was working for a company that was incredibly unorganised, and I was also undertaking a huge personal project of restoring a 1968 VW T2 Campervan. That project alone continuously evolved, as every small job we started seemed to uncover something else twice as big. As such, I was finding that I needed a more intuitive and in depth project management system. Asana had a free trial, and the second I got started I was obsessed. I implemented it into the company I worked for and oversaw the training, and then did the same for the next company I worked for. I was their number one fan. I even had an Asana t-shirt 😂.

Unsurprisingly, Paper + Word was also born in Asana. However I was finding that this hub I’d called my home for 5 years just wasn’t quite right, and I began using it less and less. I was feeling a little bit lost, as running your own business calls for you to have fingers in all the pies and a constant eye on everything - but now I wasn’t keeping this anywhere.

I’d seen a lot of people talking about Notion, and with the amount of customisation that was possible, I knew I’d be into it! I used to make HTML websites for funsies aged 12 (faerie themed, obv), so the idea of combining code, creativity, and all the list/info goodness from Asana was a no-brainer.

When talking to the team, Beth was also really keen on diving further into Notion, so we began the task of setting up a central P+W hub. It took us a couple of weeks to get everything in, as there were a few spreadsheets I’d scraped together that I knew would be better in Notion, as well as adding all the things we’d been completely missing.

So, what do we use Notion for as a small business?

Notion is the central point for the whole team, their workload, and all of the business’s resources. We use Notion all day every day for PR tracking, customer service guides, brand guidelines, wholesale plans + contacts, supplier details, goals, content planning, a materials database and so much more. Of course, it also has the Trello-style boards and Asana-style to-do lists still, but having everything together has revolutionised the way we work. Not only this, but it’s freaking beautiful! Because Notion is so customisable, we’re able to theme it to our brand colours, include product imagery, photos of the studio, and more. It feels like a custom piece of software, except we don’t need to speak to an illusive IT team to make any changes or pay a fortune.

I can’t imagine ever not using Notion to run our business now. What are your thoughts? Do you use Notion for your work or personal life?

If you haven’t used Notion before, you can create a free account with them and get started immediately! These are affiliate links, so if you sign up they know you came from us! 💜