Their tool Twist is the result of their own problems while developing their app (Todoist) , and they use it internally.
Usual tools made by companies that use it (dogfooding) use to be better.
The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
21–30 of 272 posts
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#22The issue I often have with discussions of remote work vs. on-site, is how much confirmation bias tends to be incorporated into the conclusions made.
After about 16 years of on-site work (at various jobs), I did almost 5 years of remote work (for a single company), having just recently returned to an in-office role (despite focusing on landing another remote position, the best opportunity wasn’t.)
And, frankly, I find neither inherently, categorically superior. It has far more to do with a number of unique variables, among them: culture, software tools, and the people themselves.
So while I do largely agree with the core argument of the linked post (roughly summarized: asynchronous communication helps facilitate productivity for knowledge workers), I also feel too much emphasis is placed on working remotely as inherent in part of the solution.
How about we just teach and incentivize people to, for example, not interrupt others unnecessarily, how to recognize when someone may be deeply focused on a task, how to indicate such an effort is currently underway, plus to recognize when it may be appropriate, necessary, and healthy to stop the “deep work“ and address communal, biological, and psychological needs? All regardless of the exact mode of the work.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#23Sometimes I wonder if the underlying issue is that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. I worry that I'm about to sound super out of touch, but hear me out; I'm not making a value judgement about anyone's job. It is assumed that everyone needs to do exactly 40 hours of work per week, but ask yourself this: for every person in your company, what do their next 40 hours look like? 40 hours worth of HR polici…
It should always be "I get paid for giving my employee 40h/ week of availability for work". that doesn't necessarily mean code. there's design, meetings, bugs to find, etc.
ofc, short breaks should be in those paid times. And the hour/week is not the same in every country.
But 40/week doesn't have to be every week, just average (as some times there is less work to do, and other times stuff is on fire and must be fixed)
also, that rate has nothing to do with being remote or on-site.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#24I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation. At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk. So I can attest to this.
> At home this obviously never happens for me.
Interesting, you never get phone calls, texts, Amazon deliveries etc.?
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#25my office is hell to work in. everyone simply shows up next to your screen and starts talking.
that is why async comms from remote locations has been a blessing for me. i can simply queue the non important messages for later.
once they've realised that i won't answer for a couple of hours they started being a lot more aware of what messages they're sending. thus comms improved greatly once everyone started working from home. the occasion call takes care of any face2face situations.
overall major win
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#26Sometimes I wonder if the underlying issue is that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. I worry that I'm about to sound super out of touch, but hear me out; I'm not making a value judgement about anyone's job. It is assumed that everyone needs to do exactly 40 hours of work per week, but ask yourself this: for every person in your company, what do their next 40 hours look like? 40 hours worth of HR polici…
You’ll probably be interested to read about Bullshit Jobs. The authors’ name escapes me currently.
Is it this one, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
You're shadow-banned btw (which I normally wouldn't tell) but your comments look OK, so maybe this has happened by accident? You could try to challenge that (maybe via the email support?).
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#27The issue I often have with discussions of remote work vs. on-site, is how much confirmation bias tends to be incorporated into the conclusions made. After about 16 years of on-site work (at various jobs), I did almost 5 years of remote work (for a single company), having just recently returned to an in-office role (despite focusing on landing another remote position, the best opportunity wasn’t.) And, frankly, I fin…
I would like to see an improvement in the culture, too, and I've seen organisations experiment with "Do Not Disturb" desks, with very limited success.
Every office I've been in has been open-plan. If it's full of developers it will mainly be quiet and conducive to work. Put just one person in there who needs to talk, especially Sales and Marketing, and it's all going to fall apart.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#28I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…
Maybe the problem is you were trying to invalidate their e tire management worldview with those studies. Instead, a more effective strategy might have been convincing management that while their methods were generally fine, for your specific case you might buck the trend. At least, that's how I've had luck with this problem. And also reassuring(and proving through my actions) that they wouldn't need to devote special…
Logic doesn't matter, it's the ability to sell it. This goes for almost all major decisions which are usually decided based on emotional "gut feelings" rather than logic and statistics.
I would suggest something like: "I've been crunching the numbers on how to increase efficiency and been pleasantly surprised at how well we're performing compared to our competition. I was thinking of trying an experiment based on this new study I've read where we leverage existing great management techniques to also allow remote work on a limited basis. If you're interested I could show you the numbers but I think with a small sample set we could prove that this could boost our efficiency even higher! In fact even though it's increasing our numbers we can even offer it to the team as a perk, has shown that when a team gets a perk even if it boosts efficency they work even harder! We have this great new/old project that would be perfect to measure the numbers with. How about I roll it out at the beginning of next month? Don't worry about the planning, I have some experience and can have a proposal on your desk by the end of the week."
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#29Sometimes I wonder if the underlying issue is that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. I worry that I'm about to sound super out of touch, but hear me out; I'm not making a value judgement about anyone's job. It is assumed that everyone needs to do exactly 40 hours of work per week, but ask yourself this: for every person in your company, what do their next 40 hours look like? 40 hours worth of HR polici…
It should always be "I get paid for giving my employee 40h/ week of availability for work". that doesn't necessarily mean code. there's design, meetings, bugs to find, etc. ofc, short breaks should be in those paid times. And the hour/week is not the same in every country. But 40/week doesn't have to be every week, just average (as some times there is less work to do, and other times stuff is on fire and must be fixe…
I find an _average_ of 40 hours to be quite extrem also. I've been at a new 40-hour job for 1 1/2 years now, after working 26/30 hours week for the 3 years prior. My impression is that 30 hours a week might be a realistic average to aim for (26 being the ideal amount IMO). It shifts the work-life balance to "I go to work and in the evenings and on weekends I do whatever I like", where 40 hr / week feels more like "life is work and I'm glad if I get one day completely off on the weekends"
EDIT: Maybe I should give some perspective: I'm single and under the impression that people in a relationship have an easier time managing 40hr weeks because they can better distribute the random shit that comes up every week (how people with kids do it though, I have no idea...). Also I'm currently laying in bed sick, due to having had no reasonable work-week for months, because the only thing I get as reward for finishing my projects in time and to the utmost satisfaction of our customers is even more work. /rant off I guess...
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#30(promo) - For builders we have created https://www.yourtempo.co to help you manage e-mail and only process / reply once or twice a day.