asynchronous work you've probably heard of it being thrown around the team productivity space
for some time but what is it it's perfect not only for team leaders but individual contributors alike
and simply put asynchronous communication is when you send a message without expecting an immediate
response so for example you could send an email I open it and respond to the email several hours
later now below there's a fantastic article that goes into much more depth if you want to
read it later but let's kick off with some of the differences between real-time communication and
asynchronous communication so it's very different the way that it works and this explains it pretty
well let's explore some of these core differences let's start with what real-time Communications
like it typically requires team members to be present simultaneously in either meetings or video
calls or even responding to work chat or emails and everyone is tied to more or less the same
schedule as they go across their work days and naturally it's prioritized around the speed of
collaboration asynchronous communication happens in writing or pre-recorded video with team members
catching up focus is that is the focus of it responding on their own time and everyone in
that works when they works best for them so you can really design it around when your day
is most suitable to be responding to stuff and it prioritizes focus and flexibility no you're
probably wondering okay I know the differences between them but what is the real problem with
real-time communication well let's look at a few different interactions you have with
real-time communication across a workday and the first of those is email we typically spend
an average of six hours a day on email and this is mainly due to the fact that we prioritize the
speed of collaboration in responding as quickly as we humanly can the same goes to to meetings
in meetings since the pandemics forced a lot of companies to go remotes meetings ballooned by 253
percent SO meetings are much more common and they typically must be attended which is something that
is naturally part of the real-time communication element and finally instant messaging applications
the average slack user sends on average 200 messages a day which is pretty high and
something I didn't expect it to be that high and the power user can send a thousand and not being
as common but definitely not the exception it's very interesting to see instant messaging being
used so aggressively to prioritize the speed of communication so what are some of the benefits to
actually introducing something like asynchronous communication well let's go through a few of
them it gives you more control over your work day leading to happier and more productive employees a
Wall Street Journal survey actually showed that workers wanted more flexible hours even more than
they wanted remote work so this is something that asynchronous work basically is designed for is to
be much more flexible on when to respond and where to respond as well asynchronous endorses
higher quality communication the communication is naturally slower it is admittedly slower but
it also tends to be higher quality because your flexibility and focus is much more induced into
that interaction that you have a lot better planning typically happens it leads to less
stress when people learn to plan their workloads and collaborations more carefully it gives them
time for their co-workers to see and respond to their requests and it improves that interaction
and natural communication deep work is also a factor here it is much more prevalent in
asynchronous communication because instead of reacting instantly in context switching you're
actually focusing maybe one to three times a day on batching your communication whether
that's on messages or those sort of emails that pop in it's naturally designed around
you versus instantly responding and it also gives documentation greater transparency and it becomes
more automatic in terms of writing up about key discussions and information making sure
they're documented versus constantly needing to communicate time zones are also benefit from this
and naturally it puts in office people and remote employees on the same footings which is definitely
useful but of course you do need that real-time communication and asynchronous communication a
great worked example for meetings Twisters dramatically reduce the amount of meetings
that they have around synchronous communication 70 of all of the communication is asynchronously
done through twist GitHub Google Docs figma and todoist 25 of it of their day is synchronous
communication so Zoom around or Google meet and five percent is actually in-person meetups
like annual company and smaller team Retreats so there's a lot of benefit to it now you can check
out the full article for some amazing insights and check out the asynchronous newsletter for
much more in the world of communication and collaboration a really interesting space at
the moment but hopefully we gave you a great guide to dive into the differences between
real-time communication and asynchronous communication thank you very much folks
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