Async vs Sync: When to Schedule Meetings vs Send Messages

I probably spend an hour each week declining meeting requests. Not because I'm lazy — because most of them shouldn't be meetings in the first place.

In distributed teams, knowing when to meet live versus communicate async is critical. Not just for productivity. For sanity.

The True Cost of Meetings

Every meeting has hidden costs people don't account for:

Preparation time: Reading the agenda (if there is one), gathering materials, getting context back into your head. Usually 10-15 minutes before the meeting even starts.

Context switching time: You can't do deep work right before a meeting. You're already mentally transitioning. That's another 15-30 minutes lost.

Recovery time: After a meeting, especially a difficult one, you need time to process and get back into work mode. Another 15-30 minutes.

Opportunity cost: What could you have accomplished instead? For a one-hour meeting, the real cost is often 2-3 hours of productive work time when you account for all these factors.

For distributed teams, add one more cost: Time zone sacrifice. Someone's attending at 7 AM or 9 PM. That's not just inconvenient — it's draining.

According to research from Harvard Business Review, executives spend an average of 23 hours per week in meetings, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s.

We're drowning in meetings. Most of them are unnecessary.

When Synchronous Meetings Actually Make Sense

Real-time meetings are valuable for specific situations. Here's when they're worth it:

Complex Discussions

When a topic requires real-time back-and-forth dialogue, meetings are more efficient than 47-message Slack threads.

Good candidates for sync:

• Architectural decisions with multiple trade-offs where you need to debate options
• Strategic planning where building on each other's ideas in real-time helps
• Resolving conflicts or misunderstandings where tone and nuance matter
• Technical troubleshooting where screen sharing and live debugging helps

Why it works sync: The latency of async (waiting hours for responses) slows down discussions that need rapid iteration.

Relationship Building

Some things genuinely can't be replicated asynchronously:

• Team bonding and casual conversation
• Building trust with new team members
• Reading body language and emotional context
• Celebrating achievements together (you CAN do this async, but it feels hollow)

Remote work is isolating. Distributed remote work doubly so. Some amount of face time (even virtual) is necessary for team cohesion.

My rule: At least one meeting per month should have no agenda except "talk to each other like humans."

Urgent Matters

When time is critical, async doesn't cut it.

• Production incidents (you can't wait 8 hours for someone to wake up and respond)
• Time-sensitive decisions with a hard deadline
• Crisis management where rapid coordination is required

These are rare. If everything feels urgent, you have a prioritization problem, not a communication problem.

Brainstorming and Ideation

Creative idea generation often benefits from the energy of real-time collaboration. The "yes, and..." dynamic of brainstorming is hard to recreate async.

But: Even here, async can work. Many teams do brainstorming in shared docs where people add ideas over several days, then meet briefly to discuss the best ones.

Test both approaches and see what works for your team.

Sensitive Conversations

Delivering difficult feedback, discussing performance issues, or having any conversation with emotional weight — these should be synchronous.

Text lacks tone. You can't read body language. Difficult conversations go badly async.

When Async Communication Wins

For most things, async is superior. Here's when to default to it:

Status Updates

Never, ever hold a meeting just to share status updates.

Use instead:

• Slack/Discord/Teams channels
• Async standup tools (Geekbot, Status Hero, etc.)
• Shared documents or dashboards
• Loom videos if you need to show something

Everyone reads updates on their own time. Nobody loses an hour sitting through updates that don't concern them.

Information Sharing

One-way information transfer doesn't need everyone online simultaneously.

Examples:

• Company announcements
• Documentation
• Training materials
• Project updates
• Policy changes

Record a video, write a doc, post in Slack. People consume when convenient for them. They can pause, rewind, or reference it later.

Deep Thinking Topics

Counterintuitively, complex topics sometimes work better async than sync.

Why? Because people can:

• Take time to actually think about their response (instead of blurting the first thing that comes to mind)
• Research before responding
• Write thoughtful, structured arguments
• Respond when they're at their cognitive best (not at 7 AM in a mandatory meeting)

Some of the best strategic decisions I've seen came from week-long async discussions in Notion where everyone had time to think deeply.

Reference Material

Anything people will need to refer back to should be written down, not just spoken in a meeting.

Design decisions, technical specs, product requirements, process documentation — all of this belongs in permanent, searchable, async form.

The meeting might still happen, but the important content should be documented async.

Code Reviews

Code review in a meeting is a waste of everyone's time. It should be async by default:

• Reviewer sees the PR when they have focused time
• They leave detailed comments
• Author responds when they have time
• Discussion happens in GitHub/GitLab comments

Live pairing sessions are different — those can be valuable for tackling hard problems together.

Questions and Clarifications

"Quick question" doesn't need a meeting. It needs Slack or email.

If the question is genuinely quick, async is faster. If it's not actually quick, it deserves proper thought, which again argues for async.

The Hybrid Approach That Actually Works

The best teams don't choose async OR sync. They use both strategically:

1. Async Pre-Work

Before any meeting, share:

• What decisions need to be made
• Background context and materials
• Pre-reading or prep work
• Initial thoughts or proposals

This lets people come prepared. The meeting itself becomes much shorter and more productive.

2. Focused Sync Time

The meeting covers only what genuinely needs real-time discussion:

• Debate trade-offs
• Make decisions
• Brainstorm solutions
• Build consensus

You're not wasting time sharing information (everyone already read it async). You're using the valuable sync time for actual discussion.

3. Async Follow-Up

After the meeting:

• Post notes immediately
• Document decisions
• Track action items in your project management tool
• Enable async follow-up in a Slack thread or doc

People who couldn't attend live can catch up and contribute. Questions that arise later get answered async.

This "async → sync → async" sandwich respects everyone's time while preserving the benefits of real-time interaction.

Making Async Work Effectively

Async only works if you do it well. Here's how:

Be Explicit and Over-Communicate

Async written communication requires more clarity than in-person chat.

Good: "I need the revised designs by Thursday March 20 EOD Pacific time so I can review Friday and share feedback before the Monday launch. If that timeline doesn't work, let me know by Tuesday so we can adjust."

Bad: "Can you send those designs soon? We need them for the launch."

Assume no context. Spell everything out. Include:

• What you need
• Why you need it
• When you need it
• What happens next
• What to do if there's a problem

Set Clear Response Time Expectations

Different urgency levels need different channels and expected response times.

At Whenest, our norms:

• PagerDuty: Respond in minutes (true emergencies only)
• Slack DM with @mention: Respond within 2 hours during work hours
• Slack channel message: Respond same day if it concerns you
• Email: Respond within 24 hours
• Doc comments: Respond within 2-3 days

Everyone knows what to expect. No anxiety about "why haven't they responded?"

Use the Right Channel for the Right Thing

Different tools for different purposes:

• Synchronous chat (Slack/Discord): Time-sensitive, requires quick responses
• Email: Can wait, not urgent, or external
• Docs (Notion/Confluence): Permanent information, reference material
• Project tools (Linear/Asana): Action items and task tracking
• Loom: When you need to show something but async is fine

Using the wrong channel creates confusion. Putting a critical deadline in a Slack message that scrolls away? Bad. Sending a 5-paragraph email when a quick Slack would do? Also bad.

Write Clearly

Async communication lives or dies on writing quality.

Tips:

• Use structure: Headings, bullets, numbered lists
• Lead with the point: Don't bury the ask in paragraph 3
• Be specific: Concrete examples over vague descriptions
• Add context: Link to relevant background
• Make it scannable: Wall of text = nobody reads it

Remember: people are reading this at different times, possibly days apart. Make it easy for them to understand without needing to ask clarifying questions.

Record Videos for Complex Topics

Sometimes typing it all out is harder than just showing it.

Loom is great for:

• Walking through a design
• Explaining a technical concept
• Demonstrating a bug
• Sharing feedback on work

3-minute Loom > 30-minute meeting.

Create a Culture That Values Async

This is the hard part. It requires buy-in from leadership.

What this looks like:

• Meetings are opt-in by default (except the truly mandatory ones)
• Nobody gets dinged for not responding within an hour
• Important info is always documented, not just spoken
• Decisions can be made async
• "I prefer async" is a valid response to a meeting invite

If your company culture demands immediate responses and constant availability, async won't work no matter what tools you use.

Finding Your Team's Balance

Every team is different. Consider:

How many time zones do you span?

• 1-2 zones: Can probably do more sync
• 3-4 zones: Need significant async
• 5+ zones: Async-first is basically mandatory

What's your team's communication style?

• Some cultures/companies are meeting-heavy
• Some prefer written communication
• Neither is inherently wrong, but mismatch causes friction

What type of work do you do?

• Creative work might benefit from more brainstorming sessions
• Individual contributor work (coding, design, writing) needs long focus time
• Client-facing work might require more availability

Use the meeting planner or the overlap finder to visualize when your team can actually meet comfortably. Limited overlap argues strongly for async-first.

For more on finding those overlap windows, check out our guide on maximizing overlap hours.

Common Mistakes Teams Make

Defaulting to Meetings

If your first instinct when facing a decision is "let's schedule a meeting," you've got a problem.

Ask first: "Could this be a Slack thread? An email? A shared doc with async comments?"

Only if the answer is clearly no should you schedule a meeting.

Not Recording Important Meetings

If a meeting contains information people need, record it. Full stop.

"Not everyone could make it" is a completely predictable outcome for distributed teams.

Synchronous Communication Outside Core Hours

Sending urgent Slack messages at 8 PM your time to someone where it's 2 AM their time is rude.

Use scheduled send features. Let it wait until their morning.

No Written Follow-Up

Meetings without written summaries might as well not have happened. Two weeks later, nobody remembers what was decided.

Always document in writing.

Treating Everything as Urgent

If everything is urgent, nothing is. Real urgency is rare.

Most things can wait a few hours for a response. The ones that can't should be clearly flagged and use appropriate channels (phone call, PagerDuty, etc.).

Bottom Line

The goal isn't to eliminate meetings. It's to make every meeting count.

Reserve synchronous time for what genuinely benefits from real-time interaction:

• Complex discussions
• Relationship building
• Urgent matters
• Sensitive conversations

Do everything else async:

• Status updates
• Information sharing
• Deep thinking topics
• Questions and clarifications

Use the async → sync → async sandwich to get the best of both worlds.

Need to schedule a meeting that's actually worth it? Use the meeting planner to find times that work for your global team. For more tips on respecting colleagues in different time zones, read our article on time zone etiquette.