Writing and Asynchronous Work

An important part of working asynchronously is writing effectively.

Sometimes, when we feel the urge to “move forward” with some project, the first reaction is to schedule a virtual meeting to discuss the relevant points.

Many times, the meeting is mostly informative. Things could be perfectly said in an email or similar. But of course, writing a concise email takes effort and time. So it’s easier to schedule the meeting. (When I say email, please replace it with your organization’s favorite communication tool.)

After the meeting, if people in the organization are trying to do serious work, someone in charge forwards the agreements to all participants. (I hope this will be done automatically by some AI in a short time.) But this takes a similar effort than writing that email that would have made the meeting unnecessary, so many times it’s just not done.

If you want asynchronous work to work, you need to learn how to and put in the effort. There is no free lunch.