Interview with Bastion Sibmon on Asana, Productivity, and Minimalism

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well hello and welcome back. We are continuing our interview season and we're going to continue and wrap up our interview with Bastion Sibmon. We've been talking asana. We've been talking about productivity and finding ways to get things done. Great ways, I mentioned things like you know inbox zero and all of those fun things that help us know that we have gotten something done today that we have been productive. We're going to continue into that. He's going to give us some cool productivity hacks and one of the things that I alluded to last episode, we're going to talk about writing a book in record time. How do you get it done? This is even if you're not a writer. I think that alone will be worth more than the cost of admission for this episode. Let's get back to our discussion. Putting you on the spot a little bit is you've used asana for a lot of stuff and you've talked about its pros, but is there anything that asana is not good for? What is the maybe the three things like if you're in this situation, asana is perfect. If you're in this situation, it's not going to be a good fit for you. I think asana is perfect for anything that is project based like a marketing campaign, like bug requests, support tickets, all of those, any organizing an event, anything like this. I think asana is a great tool. Asana is not good for anything relying on big databases like inventory, things like this doesn't work well because you do have relationships between the tasks, but it's not as advanced as would have a database. I think it also doesn't play well if you're not ready to make some compromise. For example, when you use SAP, you really have the ability to customize everything, the wording being used, you can really customize everything. In asana, you can't change the interface, you can't change the wording, you can't change you can't choose the colors, you have to stick with whatever they decided for better or worse. That's the way they decided to work. So it doesn't work well in that case. And then there are some specific things that asana doesn't do. Asana, for example, you can't send emails from asana. So if you want to build a CRM solution, you have to find workarounds. So we were able, for example, to code something that allows you to send emails from asana, but it's not a native feature. So unless you are willing to go and hire someone like us or code your way through this, you can't send emails from asana. And there's a few specific features that we've seen people really miss, and they went to other tools specifically for those. Otherwise, I think it's a very generic tool that can be adapted to a lot of different use cases. You just need to usually be helped by someone like us that can guide you through the different phases and really show you the best way to possible to use the tool for your use case. So something as popular as asana, do you find that a lot of your customers can, instead of needing you to do some complex solution, are they able to often do like if this then that or one of those kind of sort of the automation tools that are sort of general purpose and that are out there? Are those typically a good solution for them and maybe even a better solution because then it doesn't require IT support and things of that nature? So using other tools to do the automation for them? Yeah. Yes, we see a lot of people relying on Zapier, Meg.com, Workato. And then there are other asana specific apps like Flosana, Unito does this. So we do see people rely on other apps. I'm not saying you have to custom code everything. It's quite the opposite. You can actually usually find your way by using other tools, especially Zapier and all those other tools. They are quite powerful when you know how to use them. So yeah, you can definitely get a lot done by not custom coding everything. So in the just because it's sort of a fun question, what is the in these consulting calls and people wanting to use asana and how they want to use it, what's sort of the most memorable or wacky or out there kind of thing that you've run into? We do have sometimes CEO telling us, I want asana for my team, but I don't want to use it myself. And that's usually a bad start because we know that adoption will not work. One day I had a client say, I don't know what my team is doing on a daily basis. I need asana to really understand what they're doing. So that person was completely lost, just couldn't track anything and they were completely lost. They needed asana to help them. And sometimes people are afraid that a tool like asana might be used to spy on them. But we usually train everyone to explain that it's quite the opposite. It actually allows you to show to finally show everyone what you're doing and all the work you're doing, which could be hidden if you don't have a tool like asana. No, I think crazy requests are always around the need to customize everything. Like we want to replace the word task with ticket everywhere in the app or things like if I can't choose my own color palette, it's a deal breaker. I'm working away. It doesn't make sense in my case. I think it's a bit stupid to not be able to do some compromise like this unless you're ready to end up with a tool that's fully customizable, but it's going to cost you a lot in setup, in maintenance, in consulting. So unless you're ready to really throw money at the problem, I think it doesn't make sense to not be able to do some compromise like this. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of other tools out there where you see something that's like, oh, that's almost there. And then they end up to a point where it's like you would have been better writing it on your just creating your own solution by the time you're done. You're taking something and completely trying to convert it into something it really wasn't built to do. Exactly. The next one is minimalism in productivity. And I think we've actually you've hinted on this a little bit, even in some of the things that we've already talked about, but where do you see, why do you see minimalism as an important thing as something that's a valuable trait or aspect to have? I think you can't really have focus and clarity unless you are surrounded by something that's clean and tidy and well organized. And I think in my case, it all comes down to having a clean desk. Nothing's lying around. I have a clean my task view in Asana. I have inbox zero with my email. I have inbox zero in Asana. That's not a good thing. I have inbox zero in Asana. That's the only way for me to really have clarity. And once I have clarity, that's how I do my best work because I can tackle things very quickly. I don't have to look at all those notifications popping up everywhere, or I can work not knowing that I have dozens and dozens of emails I have to read. So I think it does give you clarity and allows you to do deep work. In my case, it's not a luxury. It's a necessity. I can't work if I have mess around me. And I know some people can. But I think if you have clarity, that's really the best way to be as efficient as possible by yourself or even as a team. If everyone is on track and clear on what they have to do next, that's how you move forward the best way possible. If any one of your team members is overwhelmed, you can't do anything. And it's going to impact the entire team. So I think that's when minimalism comes in. You have to keep things clean, simple, nice, organized in order to just be efficient. Now, is this something that you have always been this way, or is this something that you sort of developed over time and realized that, hey, this is the way, this is the better approach to getting things done. This is how I am most productive. No, I was always this way. But later on, I realized I could actually turn this into my job and become quite good at productivity and actually teach people some of the tricks I have. And most people with just like half an hour of work together, you can really help them have everything clean and organized and really see things differently. So I think for most people, you're really not that far away from having a completely different workday just because you are organized properly and you have the right system in place. It does apply to Asana with the Asana features like MyTask and Inbox, but I think it applies to everything. Just if you look at email, most people do not archive email. They just keep on piling up. That drives me nuts. If I look at my email inbox right now, I have like three emails and I love it. I know exactly where I'm at and exactly what I have to do. And I think I can't work differently than this. And I would hope that everyone has the energy to actually reach the same level. It took me a long time to convince my partner, but once he reached that inbox zero often, he actually realized what he was missing from before. Yeah, that's actually one of those. I'm more of an inbox zero person and I'll be talking to somebody. They say, oh yeah, I've got 20,000 emails in my inbox or something. To me, that's just mind boggling. Because usually what happens is you're going to miss stuff because they get to a point where they say, all right, I just deleted everything. They said, I just had too much. I can't figure it out. Just delete it and start from scratch. And so I'm a huge, huge fan of inbox zero and it would drive me nuts if I had even probably dozens of email as opposed to some people that do the thousands. And so that actually does lead into with Asana being really a productivity tool. And that's part of what you bring to the table. How do you see in a lot of your engagements and a lot of your consulting, is it really more about helping people be productive than it really is the Asana side of things or do you have people have come to you that have said, hey, we've got our processes in place and we need this tool to help us be productive where we sort of have an idea, but now we need a tool to help us do that. Yeah, I think one third of the work is about actually teaching the tool and the features. One third is about training people on how to be productive and teach them concept of productivity. And I think the other third is about helping them with their processes, mapping out the processes, simplifying the processes and putting them into Asana. I think it usually looks like this. You have one third, one third. At first, I thought that my work was to teach features to people. And very often we end up in meetings where we actually help the people themselves and we help them communicate with each other and we sometimes even help the company organize themselves way beyond the tool that they hired us to work on for. And this is something I haven't anticipated before. And this is usually when the imposter syndrome kicks in because you came as an Asana consultant and suddenly the CEO is asking you how he should be managing people from his team. So this is not why you came in. So we start to help by sharing what we've seen and experiences we've had. But yeah, I think one third, one third, and one third. So that ends up typically, and it sounds like it is, is that Asana is sort of your entryway into some of those engagements, but you end up going far beyond what Asana was there. I guess that original Asana scope of the project. Yeah, it's really not my goal to sell consulting on anything else than Asana. So if they ask for help, we do provide advice. But I think that said, we have enough to do with the Asana side of things. We usually try to train and teach Asana champions internally and then we let them do the work. I try not to be caught up in all the politics and all the management stuff. Sometimes you have to, but this is really not what we're going after. We're not like, we're not a productivity agency. I don't teach inbox zero unless we do talk about emails during one session, but this is really not what we sell. Some people lose, but this is not our case. And then with that, so what is your, what is this typical length of an engagement for you? Do you guys sort of get in, get everybody trained and get out, or do they end up coming back to you and just, Hey, we've got more questions about Asana. Can you help us here? Can you help us there? Yeah. So usually we help teams one by one and each team goes through the same steps. We have a discovery call to understand the way they work. Then we have a workshop, one or several workshops to actually implement something or improve something they have implemented already. And then we have the trainings and then we have like the impact review or the last call to see what would be the next steps. And we go through those four steps with each team. So it's usually pretty quick for a team. And then we do have regular contact with the champions. They do ask us some questions and provide some support to them. But surprisingly enough, we'd never have to work month and month with the same clients. They're usually pretty autonomous after a while. Everything has been set up properly. They have the good best practices in place, the right people in place, and they don't need us after that. That's good. And that's which is bad for business, obviously, I'm happy they're happy. Exactly. But I think that's the thing you want is you want to, they want you to come in and help them out and go away. And you sort of want to do the same thing and hope that that, they will instead of them being your customer forever, they go tell three other people and you grow that way through that word of mouth. Exactly. So one of the things that you had just in the, sort of your background and just an interesting question to ask you, which I think is a, I want to, I sort of want to hear this answer and a little bit of the stories. One of your questions, how do you publish a book in record time? So how did you, and particularly, I'm assuming that that was, this has a Asana link to it. So how did you tie that all together? It's actually, yes, it's a productivity hack. The goal is to publish the book because you have things to say, and it also looks very good to have published a book, obviously. So your goal is to publish a book. So what's the easiest way to publish a book? You divide the book into chapters, let's say 30 chapters, and then you create one task for each chapter. And then you decide that a chapter doesn't have to be really long. You can have really short chapters. It's fine. It's still going to be a book in the end. So each chapter is like two pages each. So if you work during the day, you assign each chapter to each Saturday and Sunday. So that's 30 chapters, 15 weeks. That's going to be 15 divided by four. It's like four months. In three to four months, you have a book ready to be published. And you self-publish as a PDF. You sell on Amazon. So very quickly, you do have a book that is really condensed to what you know. You don't have to repeat, for example, if you've read the GTD, the book, it's awful. It's like, I couldn't read it. It's like the same thing over and over again. It goes on for like 600 pages. I think the entire book could be summed up in like 10 pages. So this is really not the book I like to read. So I'm trying to write books that I like to read, which is very condensed straight to the point. And also one hack is to write a book about something you already know. So you do not need research to do the book. You just write about everything you know. You teach things you've seen. You talk about experiences you have. I think what takes a long time when writing a book is when you have to do research and interview people and go and find out about something. If you just write about what you know, it goes very, very quickly. Oh, good. And that's a great way to sort of divide and conquer approaches. Take that big thing that looks like it's a huge, it's a book. It's this big, huge thing. But then when you break it down, it's like, yeah, just take a little time. You can do it on that. You can do it on your Saturday, Sunday mornings or whatever it is, and knock it out in a matter of a month. It's the next thing you know, you're an author. You've got to book. Exactly. And you get an assistant to proofread. You get another one to find you pictures for each chapter. You get one to do the layout, and you might get another one to publish on Amazon. There you go. See, tying it all together and getting it done as fast as possible. After spending all this time, I think anybody that's listening is probably like me, is like, yeah, this guy's great. They would love to ask you questions as well, I'm sure, and reach out and see how, particularly if they use Asana, how can we do this better? So what are the, what is maybe the best or what are some of the best ways to get a hold of you? If somebody wanted to reach out and get to know a little bit more about it. I think you can find me on LinkedIn. That's the easiest. You can contact me on LinkedIn. You can also go to our website, ido-clarity.com, and just contact us through there. We answer to everyone very quickly. So I think that's the best way. Excellent. Well, I want to thank you for your time. This has been exactly as I expected. This is great. And I think, I guess, as you like to consume stuff, as we very get right to the point, a lot of good facts, a lot of content. And now I think the people that are listening are probably like, you know, take a deep breath. Now they have to actually digest some of this stuff. So it'll, we'll give them a little bit of time to do. And they have to hire an assistant as well. Go out there, get some assistance so they can get their work done while they're, while they're digesting all of these great ideas. But don't take my assistant. She's taken. She's too good. She's booked, huh? Completely full. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time. Thank you for a great conversation. And I just want to recommend to everybody, you know, if you want to get a little more productive than, you know, check out Bastion site, some of his videos. I am sure that you're going to find that your day will be a lot less hectic going forward from there. Thanks. And that surprisingly wraps it up. We are moving on from this conversation. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I think there were a lot of great ideas that he brought to the table. And maybe this is something that has you sort of like I was when I first talked to him. And every time I listen to this, I have that little itch to go check out Asana and see where maybe it can help you help yourself get a little bit better, particularly some of the things like capturing ideas and finding ways to quickly throw some notes together. There are a lot of ideas that he threw out that I think are useful to all of us in some way, form or fashion, even if you're not already someone that's utilizing Asana. It is free to jump on. And it is a really good quick way to track tasks and move things through their life cycle. That being said, we are not done with the life cycle of our interviews. We will come back next episode, talk to somebody new. And once again, probably going to be filling your notebook because we're going to have some cool things and ideas that are going to be covered as we go through that conversation. But until then, go out and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Newer Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.develop-a-newer.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. 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