You would have heard about this really awesome project management tool called Asana. Asana is no doubt one of the best project management tools in the world. You would always find it on top of any list that includes tools for productivity & managing progress. But, have you ever wondered why is Asana called Asana?
This tool was created in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and software engineer Justin Rosenstein. This tool serves more than 75,000 paying customers, and 1.2 million paid users on their daily basis. Not to forget, there are thousands of industries like Uber and Spotify that use this tool in their workflow.
Why Is Asana Called Asana?
Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein were building Facebook and, they felt that there is a need for better coordination between teams to work more efficiently. They saw that it’s not just Facebook, but every organization needs such a tool to organize the teamwork, so they decided to develop it on their own, and that’s why they built this tool and launched it in 2008.
Dustin & JR call Asana “work about work”. On the name of Asana, their website says,
“Dustin and JR found inspiration in Buddhist principles to center and guide the product they wanted to build: bringing ease, focus, and flow to a world otherwise full of chaos. Asana is a Sanskrit word that refers to the place and posture in which a yogi sits. A pose requires marrying form and flow, staying centered while moving through distractions.”
The companies were spending more time fixing meetings and writing long emails for them and coordinating meetings. Because of this, they were spending less time on the actual work. Dustin & JS got frustrated with it. So, the main goal of building this tool was to track the progress of work and reducing time for unnecessary emails, meetings, and arranging tasks.
Why Is It Called Asana?
This tool’s name took inspiration from yoga to make the same balance in work while keeping productivity on the highest level. It was a challenge for the founders to make such a solution. They saw that as in yoga, there is a single-mindedness to keep the focus on a single focal point and by practicing it again & again, they get to focus more efficiently. Rosenstein expresses
“One of the key challenges of yoga practice is, how can you find ease, comfort, and relaxation, even when you’re literally stretching yourself to your limits? With Asana, we try to help teams achieve that ease, comfort, and confidence to act even while they’re stretching their capabilities.”
This tool is built on such belief that as humans; we focus on multiple things at once, which degrades our productivity. So, to increase our productivity, we need to focus on just a single thing. In Asana, there is a single place to get your attention on the tasks only so it increases productivity.
According to a survey, there is around a 45% increase in efficiency of an average Asana customer. So, their goals seem to be doing well. The ultimate purpose of this project management tool is to “help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.”
As Asana keeps growing, we can expect it to keep the focus on work and have more single-mindedness in it. So, you would know a lot now about why is Asana called Asana?