On the power of sharing habits with your team

At our recent company meetup, a colleague closed the week with a short session: each of us shared practical habits we use at work. It wasn’t about design frameworks or process diagrams, it was about the small, repeatable behaviours that shape how we get work done. The result was immediate and quietly powerful: dozens of little ideas that anyone could adopt tomorrow to speed progress, reduce friction, and improve clarity across the team.

What stood out was how accessible these habits are. They don’t require new tools or big reorganisations, just small changes in how we organise, communicate, and think. Below are a few curated, high-impact practices I picked from that session, rewritten so they’re easy to apply and aligned with the spirit of the meetup.

Make your task system work for you (Asana habits that matter)

• Clear your Asana Inbox as the first task of the day. It’s a short investment that stops important items from slipping through and sets a crisp agenda.
• Batch-process updates instead of reacting in real time. Fewer context switches = more focus.
• Assign due dates for even small tasks. If it exists only in your head you’ll forget it; if it lives in Asana it becomes visible and actionable.
• Keep a private, short daily to-do list for the day’s focus, let Asana hold the noise while you keep a filtered view of what to finish today.
• Use rules and simple filters to surface what’s truly for you (e.g., “For you”, “Needs feedback”, “Objectives”).
• Track where your time goes with a lightweight activities sheet, it helps spot tasks that consume disproportionate effort.

Why this helps: small, consistent behaviours around your task inbox reduce cognitive load and make priorities visible to everyone.

Run projects with clarity (Project-management habits that scale)

• Break big projects into bite-sized pieces with clear “Done when” and “Successful when” criteria. Completion and success are different things, name both.
• Share a short, week-by-week timeline at kick-off (week 1: discovery, week 2: prototype, week 3: reviews). It removes guesswork and aligns expectations.
• Add an explicit “out of scope” section to every project brief. Focusing on what you won’t do is as useful as what you will do.
• Reserve 1–2 days at the end of a project for wrap-up: update components, clean up files, note follow-ups.
• Be transparent about priorities and changes, if a deadline moves, say why. Frequent, brief updates (TL;DR first) keep stakeholders calm and informed.
• Delegate clearly, give ownership for smaller pieces like icons or micro-animations so the whole ship sails faster.

Why this helps: clear scope and cadence turn ambiguity into predictable steps, and transparency keeps trust high as priorities shift.

Figma practices that reduce rework

• Name your Figma file the same as your project/task. Cross-tool traceability makes it trivial for others to find the right artifact.
• Use component variants instead of detaching everything for explorations. You’ll be able to iterate and revert without losing design history.
• Keep Figma pages simple. One focused page beats a sprawling file of half-formed ideas when you need to present to stakeholders.
• Update shared components after ship review, keep the system healthy and reduce future duplication.

Why this helps: small structure decisions prevent confusion and speed handoffs to engineering.

Make feedback frictionless and useful

• For each review change, create a separate task. That makes triage and assignment straightforward and avoids large, ambiguous todo-lists.
• Use a concise PFR (Product/Feature Review) format with a clear TL;DR:
  • Background: goal and how the proposal helps
  • Proposal: what’s changing and links to Figma/poster
  • Details: implementation or roll-out notes
  • Question: what feedback do you need right now?
• Put screenshots, GIFs or clickable mockups directly into the PFR (Product Feedback Request), give reviewers the most useful context up front.
• For big proposals, split reviews into focused PFRs instead of one catch-all. Smaller conversations reach agreement faster.
• When something is blocking, hop on a quick DM or Zoom and then summarise the decision in Asana.

Why this helps: focused requests and clear artefacts make it easy for reviewers to say yes (or give actionable corrections).

Protect mental clarity so you can do your best thinking

• Start the day with a short personal routine, reading, walking, or 30 minutes away from the inbox. It makes your morning planning intentional rather than reactive.
• Ask “Will this matter in a week? in 30 years?” to keep perspective and prioritise ruthlessly.
• Define work windows, use Do Not Disturb, and avoid checking work during personal time. Boundaries protect deep work and long-term energy.
• Step away when you feel overwhelmed; return when you’re grounded. A short break prevents long, costly mistakes.

Why this helps: habits that protect focus multiply the value of every hour you work.

Capture wins and learnings (simple reflection)

• Keep a private Asana project for short self-reflections and to capture wins as they happen. Screenshots of positive notes and a running log save you the “what did I even do this quarter?” scramble when reviews arrive.
• Admit gaps in your knowledge publicly. It builds trust and speeds learning across the team.

Why this helps: consistent, small reflections make performance reviews less stressful and more evidence-based.

Start small, share widely

The magic of the meetup wasn’t novel theory, it was noticing how many tiny practices we could borrow from one another. Try one habit for a week: clear your inbox each morning, or add “out of scope” to your next brief, or start using component variants in Figma. Share the result in your team chat. If it helps you, it will likely help others.

Small habits compound. When a team shares them, the result is a quieter, clearer, faster way of working.