Asana content-production inventory (Life Itself / Seeds of Renaissance)

Read with care (Rufus, 2026-10-20): Asana does not capture most of the backlog of produced-but-unreleased material, nor ideation or pre-production, and production is deliberately limited at the moment. Asana is not yet a source of truth; GitHub project #38 is a better listing, though also out of date. Debold is 4 items (episodes); the "8 overdue" below counts social-post tasks for those 4. Use this inventory for per-piece workflow steps; do not read its backlog, stall or cadence observations as a picture of the whole operation.

Extracted 2026-10-20, read-only (GET only). Raw JSON dumps and fetch scripts were kept in the session scratchpad, not committed; re-run against the Asana API (read-only) to refresh.

Counts below are top-level tasks (multi-homed subtasks de-duplicated). "Overdue" = open with due date before 2026-10-20.

Templates: the Asana task-template API returns none for every project, and there are no project templates. "Templates" are ordinary tasks in a TEMPLATE / Templates section that people duplicate by hand. TEMPLATE v2's notes say Asana Rules cascade subtask dates from the publish date and auto-create social tasks; rules aren't visible via the API. Workspace-level custom fields: Estimated time, Percent allocation, Priority, CONT, SRRE (mostly unused).

1. Projects

Most content work sits in the first two projects. The Content stage field is used inconsistently: in Podcast, 22 of 41 tasks leave it blank, and the field disagrees with the section (for example "2R Con Video" is "Ready to publish" but sits in Post-Production).

2. De facto per-piece workflows

2a. Podcast episode (OTM / SoR)

Three template generations can be seen in the data. v0: 13 flat steps, used on about 15 tasks (Jun–Jul: Vervaeke, McGilchrist, Hine, 2RCon keynotes, research calls). v1: about 45 steps grouped by phase, used on about 8 tasks (Lerner, Sarah Wilson, Amanda/Sylvie, Debold ×4). v2 (Oct): the same steps assigned to one person, with date rules; used on Ken Wilber only. Subtasks are mostly unassigned, so the episode owner does everything; Yoyo did this until October, and Amanda now does. "N×" = how many episode tasks carry the step, "d" = how many are done.

Pre-production (the producer is not in charge of guest choice or recording; Rufus and/or Sylvie record)

1. "Pre-Prod: Set up folder on Google Drive" — 23×, 10 d
2. "Pre-Prod: Create a new project on Riverside.FM" — 22×
3. "Pre-Prod: Send the interview link to guest/guest team" — 23×
4. (proposed, not yet in the template) "Create Podcast guest asset checklist": headshots, bio, handles and links, gathered by Asdra/Fae

Recording: there is no step for it in Asana. It happens in Riverside and is done by Rufus or Sylvie.

Post-production / edit (Riverside) 5. "Post-Prod: Add full file to Riverside.fm or edit full vid" — 22× 6. "Download show notes/Transcript" — 23× (Riverside generates these) 7. Pre-export checklist (v1/v2, 10×): "Jingle: this is over the mountains + background image OTM poster"; "Sylvie intro: in this episode.."; "End screen: 8 seconds + background image OTM poster"; "Check through 'cut fluff' or make any cuts asked for by guest/hosts"; "Check 'cut filler words' and 'cut pauses' are off"; "Check video is not glitchy where pauses or filler words may have been cut"; "Check audio quality - boost audio if needed (often to 50%)"; "Check video switches to follow speaker"; "Listen to full episode"; "Normalise audio levels on export"; "Write date in Riverside export name - to maintain version overview"

• v0 did this in one step: "Post-Prod: EDIT - add title, jingle, midway sub reminder and 8 sec end cap" (15×)

8. v0 only: "Post-Prod: Audit social media clips (3-5 videos)", "Post-Prod: Export YT teaser & full length Substack video" (15×)

Distribution package 9. "Generate show notes into file in drive" (8×) 10. "Generate main title, Summary, Tagline in guidelines doc + include options" (8×, plus 15× in v0) 11. "Main title under 75 characters to fit into YT w/ OTM after it" (7×) 12. "Add video cover image (canva)", "Add square promo image to Substack" (10×); v0: "Create thumbnail images [16:9] & [4:5]" 13. "Check chapter timings", "Update guest bio", "Check it's in the podcast category" (10×) 14. "Stage Substack post", "Stage YT post" (10×, plus 15× in v0) 15. "FINAL: PASS TO SOCIAL MEDIA COMS FOR POSTING" (23×, only 5 done)

Approval (v1/v2) 16. "Send substack stage to Sylvie" → "Sylvie approve Substack stage" (8×; v2 adds "approval due by Monday") 17. "Send substack stage to guest and/or their team" → "Guest and/or their team approve Substack stage" (7–8×, 1–2 done)

Social / marketing package 18. "Edit clips from Riverside" into "2-3 Reels" → "Export clips from Riverside" (9–10×) 19. "Generate social media caption based on summary" (22×) 20. "Create instagram reel cover" (7×) 21. "Create task in Social Content Calendar project in Asana for social media post" (7×), and "Create tasks for 2-3 additional reels on Instagram" (7×) 22. "Schedule all reels on YouTube" (8×), "Remove additional reels from main grid" (7×, 1 done)

Publish and follow-up 23. "Schedule podcast (Substack + YT)" (v2), "Publish on YT" (3×) 24. "Update linktree" (6×) 25. Ad hoc on high-profile guests: "Email guest with substack post", "Email Mary with all the links (his team)", "Send his team email with links", "collab with Iain's account" (Instagram collab post)

Cadence target: one episode every two weeks, Wednesdays at 9am ("not always met"). Published in Asana since May: Hine (May), Vervaeke (2 Jul), McGilchrist (15 Jul), Lerner (29 Jul), Amanda×Sylvie (9 Sep), Sarah Wilson (30 Sep), plus YouTube-only uploads (Alexander talk, Illich discussion). Debold ×4 and Ken Wilber are stuck in the queue.

Light variant (YouTube talk or discussion), from the Illich task: "Rufus interview Dougald on riverside" → "Yoyo edit in Riverside" → "Yoyo cover graphic" → "Yoyo upload to YT" → "Yoyo confirm with Rufus" → "Publish on YT" → "Make reel" → "Schedule reel on socials". It was done in two days.

Event / course video variant: "Download videos from Zoom" → "Upload to raw content drive under day" → "All videos added to the catalogue" → "Trim beginning and end" (on YouTube) → "Upload panel and keynotes to youtube" (unlisted/private playlist) → "Get Approval for captions" → "Send list of links to Asdra & Valerie". 2RCon (about 10 videos) is paused at the trim/upload stage, waiting on Jarlath.

2b. Social post / carousel / reel (Social Media Calendar)

Each post is a task named [Social] <type>: <date> (e.g. "[Social] MYTHOS promo: Mon July 20", "[social] POD Sarah Wilson third reel"). The task notes follow a fixed body: "Video linked below / Image: / Caption: …" with assets attached. Subtasks:

1. "Draft" — 20×; Yoyo when assigned. The caption usually leads with a pull quote from the guest.
2. "Approve" — 41×, Uriel 28 times. Approval stamps are often written into the notes, e.g. "APPROVED_ URIEL JUL 23".
3. "Schedule" — 36× (Yoyo 29); split into "schedule on Meta" / "schedule on YT" (9×) for reels, or "Schedule in Meta Business Suite".
4. "Remove from main grid" — 7× (keeps extra reels off the Instagram grid; often left undone).
5. Occasional: "Add cover image", "Add linktree", "Add whitepapers page link to linktree", "collab with Iain's account".

Per-podcast social packet (new, Amanda; "POD Social Media Packet"): "Generate caption based on episode summary" → "Create instagram reel cover" → "Schedule all reels on YouTube" → "Schedule all reels on Instagram" → "Crea Substack 'quick post' for feed". Each episode yields 2 social tasks ("main" + "post"); Sarah Wilson had 3 (main post, promo, third reel).

White-paper social (#263 Wisdom): "Determine quote(s) for the social media carousel" → "Create social media images" → "Get approval from Rufus & Rosie on pull quotes" → "Write a caption" → "Post to IG, X, Facebook, LinkedIn?" → "Create Substack 'post' to announce paper" → "Update branding on file to reflect what went live on substack".

Newsletter (monthly; LI and SoR): "Tell team what's included + ask what they want us to add" → "Draft newsletter in Substack" / "Draft newsletter in Google Drive doc using Claude" (Fae, Oct) → "Copy newsletter into google doc for easy editing by others" → "Send to Sylvie for approval/review" → "Integrate Sylvie comments" → "Edit newsletter" / "Final edit" (Uriel) → "Test newsletter" → "Schedule" → "Publish" → "Share in whatsapp chat". The template notes give content rules: reuse the announce-post copy, avoid the word "deadline", one link per CTA, and buttons go to the landing page.

Volume Jun–Oct: 61 social or newsletter pieces (20 OTM Pod, 11 Magazine/Mythos, 11 Course/Workshop (Praxis), 4 White Pages, 2+ newsletters, the rest untyped). About 25 were completed in July alone; output then fell off in August.

3. Activity types (flat list)

Stages: DEV = development, PRE = pre-production, PROD = production, POST = post-production, MKT = marketing package, DIST = distribution, FU = follow-up, OPS = operations. Projects: Pod = Podcast & Video, Soc = Social Media Calendar, WP = White Pages, Crs = Course template, Brand = 2R→SoR, FC = From Claude, RS = R&S Requests. Frequency: H = every piece, M = most pieces or monthly, L = occasional or one-off.

4. Gaps and oddities

• Hand-off at "FINAL: PASS TO SOCIAL MEDIA COMS FOR POSTING" is leaky. It appears on 23 episodes but only 5 are ticked, even on published episodes; social tasks then get created by hand ("Create task in Social Content Calendar…"). TEMPLATE v2 says Asana rules should automate this, but only one task (Ken Wilber) uses v2.
• Approval is the bottleneck. Sylvie approves Substack stages, Uriel approves every social post (28/41 approvals), and Rufus/Rosie approve pull quotes. The 8 overdue items (Debold ep 1–4 social, due 16 Oct, "In review") are all waiting on approval, held up by an unresolved branding question ("are we using OTM or 2R branding?") and title approval ("Follow up: Sylvie - approve the Debold series titles"). Guest approval is usually left undone (1–2 of 7–8).
• Recorded but not published. Debold ×4 (edited, blocked on branding), Ken Wilber (no edit yet, "3 (4?) episodes"), Jim Rutt, the Jonah Wilberg and Brendan Graham Dempsey internals, and all of 2RCon (about 10 videos, paused at Jarlath's trim/upload step). The cadence target (biweekly) was missed from August onwards.
• Dates are mostly empty. Podcast has 0 overdue only because almost nothing has a due date. Content stage is blank on 22 of 41 podcast tasks and conflicts with the sections.
• Three coexisting template versions (v0 flat, v1 phased, v2 assigned + rules), plus parent "header" subtasks ("Pre-prod", "Distro", "Social media", "Approval") that are never completed and inflate the open counts (438 open podcast subtasks).
• Missing steps. There is no formal pre-publish QC per platform (crops, links, brand version); this is now proposed as "Define pre-publish quality check". There is no release brief (proposed), no analytics or performance review step, no follow-up promotion after week 1 (no re-shares or evergreen recycling), and no transcript publication or SEO step. Community management is noted as inconsistent. Recording and guest prep are not tracked (outside Asana). There is no newsletter blurb step in the episode template, although newsletters list "Latest OTM podcast episodes".
• The Social Media Calendar is not a calendar of record. Many posts are named by date but have no due date. The "Remove from main grid" step is frequently left open. Posting to X and LinkedIn is uncertain ("Post to IG, X, Facebook, LinkedIn?").
• White Pages is nearly empty (3 tasks). The real pipeline lives in GitHub (comms issues, 2rbook). Content-type options are Asana defaults ("Customer story", "Sponsored post").
• Personnel transition. Yoyo ran almost all execution Jun–Sep (66 podcast and 85 social assignments). Amanda started on 13 Oct, and her backlog was generated by Claude from the transition doc. Knowledge sits in task notes (Riverside tips in TEMPLATE v2).
• AI use today. Riverside's AI features are used: show notes, transcripts, Magic Audio, auto-edit "find fluff" and clips. The notes warn about one auto-edited episode that was published unreviewed and included an argument that should have been cut. Claude was used to draft a newsletter (Fae), to generate Amanda's task list ("From Claude"), for social banner and thumbnail mockups and website drafts (Claude artifacts, by Sylvie and Uriel), and for "Claude Set Up + Asana Integration + Claude Automations" and "Testing out Claud automation on youtube" (both done, no detail). "Generate …" wording on titles, summaries and captions suggests LLM drafting, but this is not stated. Gemini meeting transcripts are mentioned. The course template suggests "Claude should have access" to keep Luma, the landing page and social information consistent.
• A pipeline redesign is already in flight (Uriel, "Develop Content Production Pipeline", due 1 Nov). It has the stages Ideas → Pre-production → Production → Post-production → Marketing content → Distribution → Follow-up promotion, with subtasks: map stages/owners/handoffs (due 20 Oct), pre-publish QC, release brief template, approval pathway, set up in Asana, and test on Debold ep 1. It references planning.lifeitself.org project 2602 and the comms content-backlog.