When it comes to starting a business, many entrepreneurs are drawn to the freedom of earning money on their terms. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t come without its challenges. One of the most common struggles we face is finding an adequate work-life balance. Anyone who is an entrepreneur knows and understands the many hats you have to wear and the tasks you have to juggle each day, especially when you’re starting out.
The past year has been a year of adversity. From the pandemic to racial injustice, many people have been faced with multiple types of adversity. And while there are societal changes that need to happen to overcome these challenges, there’s a lot we can do as individuals to fight adversity within an imperfect system. We recently had the privilege of learning from Laura Huang, who joined us for a virtual talk at Asana focused on how to turn adversity into advantage.
Extreme stress is now an all too familiar component of work. Last year, 71% of workers felt burnt out at least once. Additionally, the number of workers assessing their mental health as poor, or very poor, rose from 5% to 18%, with 42% rating their stress levels as high or very high. This elevated stress and pressure is a clear sign of the times.
At Asana we’ve grown a lot since going remote just over a year ago. We’ve grown into different schedules, work environments, and overall as people. We grew even more as a company, with almost 500 new Asanas joining us remotely from all over the world, who have never gotten the chance to meet or collaborate with their teams in person.
Entrepreneurship is tough no matter who you are. Yet, for a long time, the entrepreneurial journey has been especially challenging for women. In the US, despite owning 40% of all businesses, females receive less than 3% of venture funding. The discrepancy is especially concerning given research that shows women return twice as much revenue per dollar invested than men.
It’s Women’s History Month, and we’re celebrating women in leadership all month long here at Asana. And strong leadership is critical to successfully managing a team—whether it’s one person, 10, or an entire company. Especially over the past year, which has been challenging in many ways, but also created unexpected opportunities.
Despite all of the changes to the workplace last year, one thing hasn’t changed—employees are still spending 60% of their time on work about work. These activities, like searching for information or chasing status updates, take time away from meaningful, strategic work that moves your organization forward. In 2018, we introduced Portfolios to help teams reduce work about work and organize their most important strategic initiatives with project portfolio management.
At Asana, we’re committed to supporting our employees as they grow personally and professionally. We believe the best way to support career growth is to provide a framework, benefits, and culture that allows growth to happen. Then, the path to actually getting there is up to them. Growth isn’t linear—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. According to the Anatomy of Work Index 2021, global employees want work that is personally and professionally fulfilling.
New year, new you—but same organizational habits? No thank you. If you’ve resolved to be more organized in the new year, you’re not alone—according to the Anatomy of Work Index 2021, being more organized and finishing work on time is one of the top three work resolutions for 2021. But despite the fact that millions of people around the world set New Year’s resolutions, previous surveys have shown that less than 8% of people accomplish them.
With the shift to remote work, many teams are feeling the pain of having to search through documents and apps to find the information they need to get work done. While we could once tap colleagues on the shoulder for a quick question or help finding an important project document, we’re now spending more time digging through documents, spreadsheets, and wikis. Switching between apps is not only time-consuming—it’s also hampering team agility.
