Async Work
Also known as: asynchronous work, async communication, async-first culture
Asynchronous (async) work refers to collaboration that doesn't require all participants to be present simultaneously.
Instead of meetings that require everyone online at the same time (synchronous), async work uses tools like recorded video messages, written comments, shared documents, and messaging platforms where participants respond when they're available. Async-first cultures are common in distributed teams across time zones. Async work tools include Loom (recorded video), Notion (shared documents with comments), Slack/Teams (messaging), and Linear or Asana (asynchronous task tracking and discussion).
Async Work, explained at three levels
At home
Async work means communicating in ways that don't require everyone to be available at the same time. Instead of calling a meeting to discuss something, you record a short video or write a document explaining the situation, share it, and let people respond when they have time. This is especially useful when team members are in different time zones or have different schedules. It gives everyone time to think before responding, which often produces better-considered responses than real-time meetings.
At work
Many meetings exist because it's the default way to get information to and from people quickly. But meetings require everyone to be available simultaneously, interrupt deep work, and often end with decisions that could have been made in a well-written message. Async alternatives (a recorded Loom video, a written proposal with comment threads, or a decision documented in a shared doc) let people contribute on their own schedule, reduce meeting load, and create a written record automatically.
At home
Async communication changes information density: a written message must be self-contained and clear because there's no real-time opportunity to ask for clarification. This forces communicators to think more carefully about what they're saying, resulting in more complete and precise communication. The 'write it up' requirement also forces decision-making that might have been deferred in a meeting (someone has to decide something before they can write it up), which can accelerate clarity in distributed teams.
At work
Async-first principles: default to async for non-urgent information sharing and decisions; use meetings for relationship building, complex discussions benefiting from real-time dialogue, and time-sensitive coordination; set expectations for response time windows (not immediate, typically 4-8 hours or next business day); document meeting outputs in writing for participants who weren't present; and create a written record of decisions made in sync meetings to enable async understanding later. GitLab's public company handbook is the most detailed documentation of async-first operating principles.
At home
The psychological dimension of async work: constant sync communication (perpetual Slack notifications, always-on availability expectations) creates 'always-on' stress and prevents deep work. True async culture requires explicit norms about response time expectations (not 'reply immediately'), permission to set focus blocks without Slack monitoring, and cultural acceptance that a message not responded to for two hours is normal, not rude. These norms must be explicit: implicit sync expectations will reassert themselves in the absence of clear async agreements.
At work
Async-sync balance in enterprise environments: fully async organizations (like GitLab) operate with minimal meeting culture and extensive written documentation systems. Most enterprises benefit from a hybrid approach: strategic relationship meetings, complex unstructured discussions, and team building remain sync; informational updates, approvals, and structured discussions shift to async. Measuring the ratio of meeting hours to deep work hours per week is a proxy metric for whether an organization's meeting culture has reached an equilibrium that supports both collaboration and individual output.
Real-world examples
At home
Sophie's startup team was split between Toronto and Berlin. Instead of scheduling daily standups that required someone to be on a call at 8am or 9pm, they introduced an async standup: each person posted a brief written update in Slack every morning in their own time zone. The Toronto team read Berlin's updates when they arrived; Berlin read Toronto's updates the next morning. Meetings dropped to twice-weekly video calls for complex discussions, and both sides reported more focused work days.
At work
Thomas's product team was spending 22 hours per week in meetings. He implemented an async-first experiment: product review videos recorded in Loom (watch on your own time), written RFC (request for comments) documents for major decisions (comment in the doc rather than meeting to discuss), and async retrospectives (add to a shared board before the sync retrospective for focused in-meeting discussion). Meeting time dropped to 8 hours per week with no reported loss in decision quality.
How it compares
| feature | asyncWork | synchronousWork |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Participants respond at their own convenience | All participants must be available simultaneously |
| Interruption cost | Low, no need to stop current work immediately | High: meetings interrupt deep work blocks |
| Communication record | Automatic: written messages and documents are inherently persistent | Requires deliberate note-taking to capture decisions |
| Best for | Information sharing, structured decisions, distributed time zones | Complex unstructured discussion, relationship building, urgent coordination |
| Relationship quality | Can feel impersonal without deliberate team bonding | Natural for building rapport and trust |
Async work and synchronous work serve different collaboration needs. Async enables distributed time zones, deep work, and written record creation; sync enables relationship building, complex unstructured discussion, and real-time coordination. Effective teams use both intentionally rather than defaulting to one.
For analysts
When a client's team is experiencing meeting overload and low individual productivity, calculate the total meeting hours per week across the team and multiply by average hourly rate. Present this as the organizational cost of meeting culture before recommending an async-first experiment. The experiment doesn't need to be radical: replacing three specific meeting types (weekly status updates, informational reviews, approval requests) with async alternatives typically frees 30-40% of meeting time while improving written communication quality.
History & origin
Asynchronous communication is not new: letter writing was inherently async. Email (developed in the 1970s) was the original async workplace communication tool. The cultural shift toward async-first work emerged as global remote work expanded in the 2010s, particularly in software companies with distributed teams across time zones. GitLab and Automattic (WordPress) were early and influential advocates of async-first communication, publishing detailed public documentation of their async practices. Loom (founded 2015) popularized asynchronous video messaging as an alternative to meetings for explanation-heavy communication. COVID-19 (2020) forced global adoption of remote work, surfacing both the benefits and challenges of async communication at scale. Books like 'It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work' (Basecamp founders) and 'Remote' articulated the case for async work philosophically.