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Our collective switch to remote work, brought on by the global pandemic, made finding time and mental space for focused work even harder. That Slack outage gave workers what their bosses had not: permission to disconnect and focus on their actual jobs. On June 27, 2018, when workers had a reprieve from Slack for a few hours because of an outage, RescueTime data showed they spent more time on productive work than the same time the previous week. In an 8-hour workday, this leaves workers with only 1 hour and 12 minutes of productive time that’s not interrupted by communication tools. On average, knowledge workers spend 40% of their day context switching, ping ponging back and forth between communication and other work. “It leads to everyone having half-conversations all day long, with people frequently rotating through one slow-drip discussion after another, never needing to officially check out because “hey! it’s asynchronous!…I wonder if conducting business in an asynchronish environment simply turns every minute into an opportunity for conversation, essentially “meeting-izing” the entire workday.”Ĭonstant connectivity chips away at focus. It’s embodied by Slack, “a conversational melting pot that is neither fully real time, nor fully asynchronous.” Asynchronish is the worst of both worlds:
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Software developer Samuel Hulick, calls this “ asynchronish” communication. We habitually check into communication tools, attempting to complete our work in interrupted spurts. Today, the common way of working is somewhere in between the two. It’s the opposite of synchronous communication, which refers to communicating in real-time, such as an in-person meeting or video call. For example, I send an email in the morning, and my colleague sends a reply in the late afternoon.

The case for async-first communicationĪsynchronous communication involves a time lag between when one person delivers a communication and another person responds to it. This guide will explain asynchronous communication, why it leads to more focused, calmer work, and how you can go async, whether you’re a team leader or team member, with specific steps from organizations and teams that have done it. A small but growing number of workplaces are beginning to recognize the need for a more flexible style of working that puts employees in control of their time and attention and gives them space to disconnect. This moment brings an opportunity to reimagine how your team works. Forcing workers back to the office full-time isn’t going to solve the burnout issue, but neither will remote work alone. The move to remote work only amplified how broken things have become. The way many of us were working wasn’t working, even before the pandemic. Here’s the paradox about remote work: We want to have the option to work from home, but we’re feeling extremely burned out from unnecessary Zoom meetings, nebulous Slack chats, and a general lack of boundaries between work and home.
