Asana: Dustin and Justin's Quest for Flow

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To escape from that all-too-common morass, says Moskovitz, companies need “a single version of the truth” about what everyone is doing. Asana is meant to supply that: a single place where people can see every project colleagues are working on, answer questions, and get instant updates about how the work is progressing. As people spend less time dealing with day-to-day functions, according to the Dustin and Justin theory of productivity, they have more time for things they care about. They get clearer minds too, says Rosenstein, which puts them closer to perfect focus. “It’s that state you get into when you’re working, when you’re doing something creative, where you lose track of time, you forget who you are,” he says. “You’re just in the zone working on that one thing.”

Psychologists have a term for this state of mind: flow. The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (pronounced “chik-sent-me-high-ee”) has studied flow for decades. While in such a state, people take deeper, more regular breaths. Their heartbeats slow. “Whether it’s music, rock climbing, painting, or whatever, the same conditions apply,” says Csíkszentmihályi, who teaches at Claremont Graduate University. To achieve flow, people need a clear task that’s challenging but not beyond their abilities; clear feedback; and an emotional state somewhere between bored and stressed. “When all of these conditions apply, you start being able to concentrate on what you’re doing, and you know exactly what you want to do,” he says.

E-mails, tweets, project meetings, clunky software—all of these standard workplace phenomena impede flow. “Flow is under attack,” Rosenstein says, and goes off on another riff. “One of the key challenges of yoga practice is, how can you find an ease and a comfort and relaxation, even when you’re literally stretching yourself to your limits? With Asana, we try to help teams achieve that ease and comfort and confidence to act even while they’re stretching their capabilities.” Moskovitz nods in agreement.

The co-founders are sitting in their flow-compliant office in the northern edge of San Francisco’s Mission District. A cooling, gray wash of paint coats the walls, and the 19 employees have ample room to roam. Everyone gets hydraulic desks on wheels, which can be raised for the standing-worker position. Every few weeks the desks are rolled into new formations as team assignments dictate. A chef prepares meals to the dietary preferences of each employee—vegans, vegetarians, and pescatarians abound. The kitchen area has a wide selection of liquor, energy aids, and coconut-water drinks. Two days a week the dining room is cleared for companywide yoga sessions. It’s Club Med for coders.

Moskovitz and Rosenstein don’t claim that Asana’s sumptuous working environment—or Asana’s product—ensures flow. Rather, the goal is to create Csíkszentmihályi’s conditions for it. Productivity software only really works, though, if the user wants to be productive.

When you pull up Asana on a browser, it divides the screen into three panes. From left to right, they are Projects, Tasks, and a running, automatically refreshed stream of what’s getting done that will be familiar to anyone who’s used Facebook. You can call up a project—say, “Photos for Honda Civic Ad”—and then click on it to reveal the associated tasks in the middle pane. There you might see things like “Call Joe the photographer about shoot,” “Get engine graphic,” “Brainstorm session on slogan,” and “Lower budget.” Click on “Get engine graphic,” and the task wall opens up to the right, showing everyone that’s following this task, a due date, attached documents and pictures, and comments. You can move tasks around with a mouse or use keyboard shortcuts to mark something as complete, add a new comment, or flip to a new project. As people update a task, alerts go to their e-mail. You can respond to those alerts straight from e-mail without entering Asana.