Have you ever wished the following for yourself and your team?

• Producing low-quality work
• Wasting more time
• Feeling stressed and overwhelmed

Probably not.

If you work in a synchronous manner with your team, chances are that your environment produces those negative consequences. Despite what we commonly call “productivity killers”, real-time collaboration is the norm. Traditional teams working out of an office, as well as remote companies based in specific time zones, communicate synchronously.

There is an alternative: asynchronous communication. Simply put, asynchronous communication means exchanging with your team members without expecting an immediate response. It may sound intimidating, but it can be used at different degrees. There are a few tricks that you can try with your team, to give everyone more time and freedom in how they organize their workday.

We will tackle four contradictions often encountered in traditional work environments. For each, I will share an alternative method and tool your team can use:

Alternative Method 📚

Making a change in the way your team works.

Alternative Tool 🧰

We’ll use the example of Twist, an alternative to Slack. When writing this article, I had the chance to speak to Lucile Foroni, Product at Doist (the company who makes Twist). I asked for her advice on making the transition to a more focused work environment.

Contradiction #1: We value quantity over quality of communication

Have you ever logged off Slack for an hour, and came back to a long thread, thinking this conversation could have been condensed in a few well-written messages?

Let’s say, you want to explain what blockchain is to your friends (who have to listen to you, because you’re friends). Will your explanation be more structured if you prepare for it, or if you jump right into the talk? The same applies to written communication.

Alternative Method 📚

Establish communication guidelines, to help maintain a quality of communication. This can hold in a few bullet points, or be more involved like at Zapier, a remote tech company, who has a Slack Etiquette.

Alternative Tool 🧰

Slack is not the only option. Lucile Foroni works in the Product team at Doist. They are the builders of Twist, a communication app designed for asynchronous communication. She believes that the tool should help the users communicating differently:

In our team, we have succinct guidelines. Having too many rules might lead to people forgetting them.

Twist is designed to encourage users to think their words through. The main mode of communication in Twist is done in threads. A thread has a title, and it looks closer to a post. It encourages users to share a longer form and proofread content, rather than sharing a quick thought or question

Contradiction #2: It’s ok if my team cannot deeply focus on their tasks

“Tac-tac-tac” It’s me, the Slackbot. I offer a variety of enjoyment to distract all your senses.

Discover and enjoy:

• My instant sound notifications
• My instant visual notifications
• And the nec plus ultra: the expectations we commonly set as a group that, if it’s between 9–5, you should be answering right away.

Alternative Method📚

Create a work environment that does not require your team to be reachable at any time. Schedule time slots for deep work. Coined by Cal Newport, deep work is about dedicating time with no distractions to do your work with focus.

This is easier said than done! For tips on the method, I encourage you to read Cal Newport’s best-seller book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. You can also read this Guide to Deep Work by Doist.

Alternative Tool 🧰

In Twist, there is no expectation for the team members to jump at any new post because it is not expected of them to answer right away. But it is good to set an expected reply time. In Lucile’s team, it’s around 24 hours. It does not have to be that long to start with! Lucile recommends:

Start small, close Twist, and focus on a specific task for two hours.

Chances are, nothing will have burnt off while you’re off producing quality work.

Contradiction #3: It’s fine to always feel behind

One of many uncool facts about me: I wrote a short horror story, called Corporate Demon:

A dedicated team lead becomes the target of the Slackbot. The bot gone bad starts deleting information, sending messages on her behalf, and eventually materializes to try taking over the world.

Pretty bad, huh? I might be digressing, but really, Slack does not trigger the best feelings in me. It triggers some stressful expectations:

I have to be available at all times because people might need me now.

I have to answer now, if not I will have no say in the decision made.

Alternative Method📚

Defining what success means in your team. Are you a good employee if you have the fastest reply rate, or if you consistently deliver high-quality work? This needs to be driven by your team’s leadership and discussed with the team.

Alternative Tool 🧰

A non-disruptive tool gives a lot of freedom. It does not mean no rules can be set.

Lucile’s team has a few guidelines they follow:

• Posting a weekly update every Monday
• Answering to a message within 24 hours
• If you see a red flag anywhere… raise it!

Contradiction #4: It’s ok to waste time looking for information

Have you ever found yourself frantically typing words to find something buried deep into Slack?

Instant replies can lead to a giant mess: irrelevant or contradictory pieces of information, wrong or misleading terminology makes it hard to retrieve team knowledge...

Alternative Method📚

Being more thoughtful with our use of words, and valuing a thoughtful written communication as a team. We’re not all born writers; find ways to help your team members develop this valuable skill.

Alternative Tool🧰

If there is an expectation to write a clear, descriptive title, it makes it easier to look for content related to this topic. In Twist, you can filter your search results by thread titles.

How does your team collaborate?

If you’re new to this, remember that you don’t have to commit to changes right away.

Try it out slowly, and ask for your team’s feedback along the way. If you’re part of a team working mostly async, do you have any tips to share?

A big thank you to Lucile Foroni for her time and valuable advice!

You can learn more about Twist on their website. Twist is built by Doist. If you’re looking for resources on remote and asynchronous, head to the gold mine that is the Doist’s blog.

Productive and Happy Remote Teams Communicate Asynchronously was originally published in The Async Times on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We might all be living in a 50-kilometer radius from each other, but we haven’t been in the same room together for months now.

We’re a digital agency with a team of 15 developers, designers, and business people. Our team has adapted pretty well to the global WFH change. Just like how we work, how we stay in touch has evolved, too!

Today I will share the things we do and the tools we use to keep learning from each other, and staying in touch!

Coffee time with Donut

Donut is a Slack add-on that randomly pairs people, and helps schedule a time for them to meet. During this time, we chat about anything and everything! Using this app, we remove the hassle of having to schedule these times for ourselves. It keeps us in the habit of having an informal chat with each other, at least once a week.

This pairing is optional, but most of our team usually participates.

You can customize Donut’s settings: we choose to have a weekly pairing, with people getting matched in groups of 2 to 3.

Pair Programming

When we used to work in the office, our developers were doing these sessions of pair programming organically, from time to time. Moving to a remote environment, we had to make sure these moments are recreated somehow!

The pair programming session is an opportunity for developers to share what they work on. They get paired randomly every week, thanks to a script they wrote (similar to the Donut add-on). It’s an opportunity to share what they are working on. It’s also a time to learn more about everyone’s ways of working, especially for problem-solving!

Design Fireside Chat

This is our newest thing, organized by our designers, for people interested in design.

The format is informal: At the beginning of the hour, we do a “roundtable” and everyone says if they want to talk about a topic in particular today.

There is no restriction on what and how we talk about a design topic: sometimes we demo something, go through an article and debate, or just show something beautiful to the group!

We have gained some actionable outcomes from it, too. Thanks to one recent conversation, we decided to review and improve our engagement process with our clients.

Share & Tell

On Friday afternoons, one of us gives a talk to the group. We initiated this as a “Code Share & Tell”, and have now expanded to serve the whole agency on topics of design, project or product management, productivity, and more.

As a result, anything that relates to our industry goes! It has multiple benefits for the team: the speaker gets to practice their presentation skills, get feedback on their topic of choice, and everyone learns something new!

For releasing pressure — Shell Shockers

Counterstrike, with eggs.

Right after our weekly Share & Tell, we stay on the Google Meet, and create a private game for our team. Free for all. We blow our steam accumulated through the week, and we’re ready to start the weekend with a clear mind!

These are not set in stone, and we hope to keep adapting what we do to stay close and keep learning as a team! What are some things you do with your team?

How We Stay Connected Remotely was originally published in Four Nine Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is Deep Work?

“Deep work” is a term coined by Cal Newport, an author, and Computer Science professor. Let’s start with his definition of deep work:

“Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

“Deep Work” is also the title of Newport’s best seller. The book revolves around understanding how deep work can help you be truly exceptional at what you do, by adopting the methodology.

I am not going to go over the concepts of Deep Work in-depth (bad pun, leaving it to make my dad proud). If you are interested in learning more, I recommend either reading Newport’s book or checking out this excellent Guide to Deep Work.

What I love in the book

Like for many self-help/business books, the theory is easy to understand and to summarize. To me, the value lies in the stories of accomplished individuals shared by the author.

Why this article?

It feels good to read about examples you can identify with. In this article, I am talking about four outstanding women that inspire me. They are all writers, I am not one myself, but I can relate to their ways of working that require deep focus.

I would love to hear from you if you wish to share your inspirations in the comments section!

Four deep work philosophies

There are four deep work philosophies. I will describe them briefly, and I will share an example of a famous writer who practices (or practiced) this philosophy.

The Monastic Philosophy

• The most dedicated approach: spend all of your working hours on a singular high-level focus.
• It is unrealistic for most people nowadays, as most of us are required to perform more than one kind of work in our roles.

An adept of the Monastic Philosophy: Emily Dickinson

Now I know, this is not a very contemporary example, but doesn’t it tell something about today’s society? Being a recluse has never really been en vogue, nowadays even less…

At the age of 28, Dickinson moved back home to take care of her mother. She ended up living the second half of her life as a recluse. She was mostly corresponding with her few friends, and later in life was even reluctant to leave her bedroom.

This extreme seclusion is not a happy example: it is believed she might have suffered from afflictions caused by mental illness, such as agoraphobia or epilepsy.

The first years of her seclusion were the most prolific. In seven years, she created forty fascicules that held nearly eight hundred poems…

The Bimodal Philosophy

• Putting in a high amount of deep work during a long stretch of time (weeks, months, a year), while enabling you to maintain other activities in your life that you find valuable.
• It requires having the flexibility to arrange your schedule as you see fit into larger chunks of deep work.

An adept of the Bimodal Philosophy: Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is a prolific author: she published 24 books in 40 years of career. This would be the equivalent of one book every year and a half.

She always starts a new book on January 8th, the anniversary of the day in 1981 when she started writing a letter to her grandfather that turned into her first novel, “The House of Spirits.” This is her describing her process:

“It’s a superstition, but it’s also discipline. I really need to organize my life around the writing, so during the first months of the year, I don’t travel, I don’t have any social life, I don’t lecture anywhere. I just write.”

The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

• Ideal for individuals with a fairly static schedule.
• If you know what most of your days will look like, you can block off hours for deep work every day, and build up a daily routine.
• It still leaves you some time for what Cal Newport calls “shallow work”: emails, meetings, daily tasks.

An adept of the Rythmic Philosophy: Ursula K Le Guin

She is an American author, best known for her works of science fiction and speculative fiction.

I have just got into her works, and I am currently reading “The Left Hand of Darkness”. I highly recommend it if you are interested in exploring the idea of a gender-fluid society. Given our current topic of conversation, a schedule is worth a thousand words…

This was Ursula K Le Guin’s typical day, pretty much every day:

The Journalistic Philosophy

• For people who are constantly on the move, with a schedule that always changes.
• Not recommended for deep work beginners: you need to have a clear goal to dedicate to identifying small chunks of time during your day to dedicate to deep work.
• It requires a high capacity of concentration, as you need to get focused the moment you start working (because you have less time).

An adept of the Journalistic Philosophy Toni Morrison

She is an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Nobel Prize for Literature, Pulitzer-price recipient.

Toni Morisson wanted to embrace the bimodal philosophy. But she had a nine-to-five job. This is something relatable for many of us!

“I have an ideal writing routine that I’ve never experienced, which is to have, say, nine uninterrupted days when I wouldn’t have to leave the house or take phone calls. I am not able to write regularly. I have never been able to do that — mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time…”

I loved writing this article and learning about these impressive women. Who inspires YOU to produce more focused work?

Getting inspired is the first step. Now, when it comes to choosing a deep work philosophy that works for you, it is a process! If you are interested in the topic, I recommend checking out this The Complete Guide to Deep Work, by Doist.

Sources used for this article

• Emily Dickinson
• Isabel Allende Sings the Praises of Process, Peace, and Pups
• Vintage WD: Isabel Allende’s June 2002 WD Interview
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ideal Writing Schedule Was Very Relatable
• “You Don’t Know Anything.” And Other Writing Advice from Toni Morrison

The Female Version of Deep Work was originally published in Four Nine Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.