Managing Tasks as a Freelancer in Asana Without Breaking Your Brain
If you freelance full-time and Asana is your main hub for project management, you’ve probably hit that moment where your calendar looks like an ancient mosaic of unchecked subtasks, half-built rules, and mystery comments from clients you haven’t seen in months. Same. Let’s talk about setting up Asana in a way that doesn’t melt down every Friday when your browser RAM is fighting for survival.
This piece is based on my day-to-day freelancing setups — mostly consulting, some automation builds, and way too many Loom videos explaining why someone’s recurring task silently disappeared. If you’re working with multiple clients and trying to keep even some kind of rhythm, Asana can be your friend… but only if you make peace with a few of its quirks.
1. Choosing the right layout for your freelance workflow
Before anything else: toss the idea that one Asana layout will work for everything. I treat List view like my default inbox and Board view for anything editorial, ongoing, or status-driven.
Example: for copywriting retainers, I set up a Board view with columns like “Ideas,” “Writing,” “Reviewing,” and “Shipped.” But for consulting or one-off builds, I’m in List view only — that lets me use due dates and nesting without the visual clutter of cards.
There are at least three times I’ve set up everything perfectly in Board view, only to realize I needed subtasks for dependencies, and then Asana hid all of them until I switched views. It’s infuriating. Subtasks don’t show up in Timeline or Calendars unless you explicitly assign and date every one. I still forget this sometimes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
One tip if you’re juggling multiple clients:
– Make one project per client — even if they don’t use Asana — so your hours/tasks are grouped
– Color code each by client (menu → “Set color & icon”) so they visibly pop in “My Tasks”
– Use the same column or section names across projects (like “Waiting for Client” or “Need Clarification”) so you can create Universal Tag searches later
– Drag the “My Tasks” section or create a Saved Report to see everything in one digestible view
If you’re using Asana Premium or higher, the Timeline is helpful for mapping overlapping deadlines. But again, subtasks will ghost you unless you micromanage them. YMMV.
2. Turning comments and emails into tasks before it’s too late
Every freelance week includes a client dropping a comment on a Google Doc that’s titled wildly vaguely like “Final_v7_final_THIS_ONE(1).docx” and that one comment is effectively a scope change. If you don’t turn that into a task, it WILL disappear into the void.
Here’s my setup so I freak out less:
– When I see a client comment in email with something actionable, I forward it to Asana with x@mail.asana.com (this works only if you’re a project member — classic)
– Then I jump over to that task and assign it to myself with a due date
– I add the original email sender as a collaborator so they get notified (especially helpful if it’s something like “Client X needs final deliverables by Thursday” — I don’t want to keep track of that in my brain)
I also have a rule that if something has more than one step, It. Gets. A. Task. Subtasks are the way to go, but they’re buried unless you view the full parent — so I treat subtasks as internal flags only. Things others need to see = parent task.
Pro tip: if you use Gmail, the Asana extension lets you create a task directly from your inbox. Still slightly buggy — sometimes it fails to load the right workspace, in which case I reload the page and try again. Super fun, right? 🙂
3. Setting up recurring tasks that actually work
Here’s what most people don’t realize until their content calendar implodes: recurring tasks in Asana duplicate with their original settings, including assignees and due dates. But if you update the subtask in the recurring task? Nope. That won’t carry forward.
Real example: I had a biweekly “Send newsletter recap” task with subtasks for drafting, review, and approval. After two successful runs… bam. The next version was empty. Why? I edited the subtasks in an instance of the task, not the recurring template. Only changes to the master repeat configuration carry forward.
To fix this:
1. Duplicate a working version you like, but don’t check “set to repeat” yet
2. Make sure all subtasks are assigned, scheduled, and labeled
3. Once it’s perfect, THEN set it to repeat
And test it! Set it to repeat daily just for a hot minute and watch the copy show up correctly once or twice, then switch to the right cadence.
Final Pro Tip: if you must have a checklist that updates per recurrence, skip subtasks and instead paste in a markdown-style checklist in the task description:
“`
– [ ] Draft content
– [ ] Send for review
– [ ] Finalize links
“`
That list will persist exactly as-is for each recurrence, unlike subtasks.
4. Using tags and custom fields to triage chaos
If you’ve got more than one client, one type of deliverable, or 10+ tasks open at any moment, your cognitive load plummets fast. That’s where tags and custom fields save you — but you can’t just randomly add them. You need “views” that you actually check.
I created a “Billable Today” tag. Every time I look at the Inbox or My Tasks tab, I filter by that tag — that’s what I must do today to survive. The rest is backlog or admin.
I also use a custom field for “Task Type” with a dropdown: Meeting Prep, Asset Review, Reporting, Build Deployment, Misc Logs. Why? Because then I can sort on it, and clients love it when they ask “Where’s the invoice tracking page?” and I slap a report view showing “Tasks billed under Reporting”.
Reminder: Custom fields don’t carry across projects unless you use a shared library. If you’re getting weird field duplicates, you can manage and centralize them under your Organization’s field settings. Hidden gem (but good luck finding it the first time).
Seven tips that changed how I freelance with Asana:
1. Any review comments longer than 2 lines = new task
2. Use “Today,” “Upcoming,” “Later” for your personal task page like a daily filter
3. Color code status-specific tags, not priority tags (easier to read in the dark theme)
4. Use a Saved Search for “Unassigned and due in 3 days” — catches dozens of sneaky tasks
5. Don’t let unscheduled subtasks live more than 1 day
6. Install the desktop app — your browser tab bar will thank you
7. Avoid creating rules that archive completed tasks — they’re hard to dig up when invoicing
5. Tracking hours and prepping invoices inside task comments
No, Asana isn’t a time tracker, and yes, I resisted third-party tracking for way too long. But for any project where I’m billing by deliverable and not by the hour, I just log actual time spent in task comments.
Here’s a typical entry:
“Logged 75 minutes writing + 25 minutes revisions – Deliverable total: 1h 40m”
Yes, very analog. But when I do invoicing, I filter by project and Completed Tasks, then open each and skim the comment section. I’ve caught so many under-billed hours doing it this way.
One warning: task comments are not editable forever — once a few hours pass, Asana locks them in unless you’re an admin. So if you typo something and leave it for later, you’re stuck.
More accurate method if you like 3rd party tools:
– Clockify works okay via the Chrome plugin; just make sure you’re in the right task window
– Toggl has integration but it’s clunky unless you only have one workspace
– Tracking inside Everhour and syncing with Asana is decent if you’re serious about reports
I’d rather keep things lightweight, though. For me, task comment time logs + recurring invoice checkpoints have saved my sanity more than any perfect time tracker.
6. Automating Asana with Zapier without ruining your timelines
Every freelancer gets tempted by automation. I mean, why not auto-create your client follow-up tasks each Monday? The problem is that Zapier and Asana don’t always agree on what a “Task” is. And don’t get me started on subtasks again 🫠
Last month, I set up a Zap where every new scheduled Google Calendar event created an Asana task under “Client Meetings.” It worked fine — until someone moved an event back a day, and Asana created a second task. Turns out, GCal’s integration sees every change as an event, not an update, so the Zap re-fired with updated info. I ended up with phantom duplicates for every rescheduled call.
To avoid this:
– Add filters to prevent re-creation of tasks if one already exists (use title matching or custom fields)
– Include a delay after trigger, like 1 minute, to see if edits stabilize
– Avoid letting Zapier create subtasks unless you’re okay never deleting them later — deletion via API isn’t clean
By the way, if you’re curious about tweaking automations that open up better audit trails, the filters and formatter tools in Zapier are massively underrated. You can “clean” sloppy data from Airtable or Notion before it hits Asana.
The Asana integration on Zapier is here: https://zapier.com
But here’s what I learned the hard way: never automate task creation from Jira unless you normalize naming. Or every bug fix creates a duplicate Asana task called “Bug fix.” Been there. Had to delete 40 duplicates manually.
7. Collaborating with clients in Asana without overwhelming them
Generally, clients will not touch Asana unless you spoon-feed them. I used to assign them tasks with clear names and still… crickets. Then I realized: they don’t see your structure the way you do.
Now, I:
– Create a section just for their needs (“For Client Review”)
– Keep tasks assigned to myself but add them as Collaborators
– Mention them @ in comments directly
– Paste one sentence: “When you have 5 min, just reply here or thumbs-up if OK”
If you assign the client a task and they don’t check Asana daily, it becomes invisible. But if they’re a collaborator, they get pinged in their email and can respond from there.
Pro tip for feedback-heavy deliverables:
– Upload PDFs or sheets to the task itself
– Ask for inline comments, but also summarize big changes in the Asana thread
– Once they give feedback, unassign them and move to your “In Progress” section
If your clients are using Slack, consider a Zap: when a task moves to “For Review,” it posts a Slack ping to your shared channel. Just…remember to test it. I had a Zap that failed silently for three days because I changed a column name without updating the trigger field.
Asana is powerful, but it doesn’t care about your naming consistency. You will break your own rules eventually. Just make sure the silence that comes after isn’t your client waiting for a reply you didn’t know you missed.