One of our greatest work hacks recently has been practicing the art of asynchronous communication.
Sounds fancy, right?
Here’s what it means in practice:
You don’t need to reply to someone’s email as soon as they email you.
Our inboxes (and Slack channels and, heck, even our text messages) can be pull sources instead of push sources. Yes, really. You can decide when to look at them, when to engage with them, and when to respond to them. Turn off the endless dinging. It will change your life.
There are caveats, of course. Respect your coworkers, set expectations, be a good teammate, etc. (No one is saying delete your inbox altogether…)
But do what you need to do to create space to work. Because those endless emails and notifications (don’t even get us started on meetings…) are messing up your flow. They are preventing you from being productive. They are keeping you from doing your actual job.
Especially for people with creative roles (hello, writers and designers) or people who need to invest a lot of thought (hi to you too, strategists!), chunks of uninterrupted time matter. And asynchronous communication is a secret weapon to getting you the time you need.
