[stlark]

Prior to quarantine, I had never heard of the concept of async communication. It felt like a fancy way of just saying "document more". Now that my whole department is WFH we've tried using Notion as our central repository of information. I don't think it lands every single feature described in the write up (e.g. search could be better), but, it has enough features to create write-ups and RFCs that are visually appealing to help get the point across.

We still hop on a quick Zoom 1:1 if we can't find the words to discuss over text.

[wenc]

To build on this -- for me async communications means not having to jump on so many meetings, and being able to organize/prioritize/delay stuff to respond to and batch them.

Email is the quintessential async tool. Slack isn't really even that async -- people still expect quick responses (it somehow has that expectation built-in)

For individual contributors, sync meetings really disrupt the flow of the day. Worse are meetings that don't respect your time zone -- either too early in the morning or too late at night.

People don't realize how disruptive it is when someone says "let's jump on a call" for every single little thing. I much prefer them to just "send me an email".

Sometimes sync meetings are more efficient, especially for complex topics or on topics requiring a live demo -- but I find having a sync meeting after an email thread much more effective, because then folks have had a chance to engage with the material.