What is Async Communication: Everything You Need to Know

I got the first taste of async communication — though I doubt that was then a term in vogue outside telecommunications — way back in 2004. I was working for NIIT and my brother had gone to the US for his job. Those were not the days of free WhatsApp calling and I was not earning enough to give him an ISD call whenever I fancied.

What is Async communication

When you communicate with someone without expecting an immediate response, that is async communication.

Email is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of asynchronous communication. However, studies have shown that the average email response time is two minutes, making it very much a mode of synchronous communication.

Async vs sync communication

As opposed to async communication, you need to be present in real time for synchronous communication. Telephone calls and in-person meetings are excellent examples of sync communication.

But the expectations set by sync communication can get very disturbing, especially in the modern age of smartphones, where we carry all our communication channels in our pockets. Okay, may be handbag too!!

When I started freelancing in 2012, I felt overwhelmed by the pressure to respond to all communication immediately, or quickly. I realized I was not getting much writing done and most of my time was spend drafting and sending responses.

That’s when I restarted on my async communication journey, but first some background.

How I got hooked to async communication

As I was telling you, my brother and I used to communicate using Yahoo chat. I remember, he was the one who had created IDs for both of us because they were very funny ones; one was main_kaun_hoon (who am I) and the other one was sab_bewkoof_hain (everyone is a fool)! Apparently he got frustrated with attempts to create “meaningful” IDs (😁🤣).

Every morning, when I reached office, the first thing I used to do was to switch on Yahoo chat and drop a message. Even during the day, when I knew he was definitely not at his work desk, I would drop messages whenever I had something to discuss or just wanted to share a thought or an idea. And he would respond when he opened his chat.

I don’t know about him but it helped me keep hinged in the city of Delhi where I was staying all alone.

Those were challenging days for me as I was finding my footing in the corporate world and my brother’s guidance at every step was ever so helpful.

I knew that I had to leave this world soon but I enjoyed my work and hence wanted to make the most of it while there. In my short stint I had come to the conclusion that when you work in an organization you need to do much more than your core work. And for everything you needed to communicate well with your boss, your colleagues and your reportees downstream.

And so whenever I had a doubt, I would consult him. He had already been working for 5–6 years and hence had more experience, which he was more than willing to share.

That continuous communication kept me anchored while I tried to settle into a routine. There was no pressure of compressing everything in a short 10 to 15 minutes duration when you call someone. In a phone call, if you miss something, you have to wait for the next time when you talk!

This experience made me a fan of async communication and later on I realized that it works wonders even when the two people communicating are not separated by seven seas or eleven time zones.

In this article I will be diving deep into the benefits and challenges of async communication, so that you also understand why you should embrace it.

Disadvantages of sync communication

Let me start with the disadvantages of always on real time sync communication.

Constant interruptions (distraction and context switching)

When you are expected to respond immediately, they act as interruptions to the task you are already doing. And constant interruptions make you lose focus and produce low quality output.

Imagine you are preparing a presentation but your boss or one of your colleagues chooses this time to chat you up with the status of another project. You find yourself adding elements to the slides while also chatting with them.

Do you think you will be able to finish the presentation in the time you have allocated for yourself? Or will it be as good as you expected it to be in the first draft?

Definitely not.

So what is happening here?

The interruption distracts you and hence you lose your focus on the task you were doing. You lose your flow and hence add slides or slide elements that don’t gel with the previous elements. This obviously results in poorer output and you need to devote more time to bring it up to the mark.

If one interruption could do this to you, imagine what will happen when you respond to every email, phone and message notification immediately.

Constant interruptions deviates your mind and repeated context switching doesn’t allow you to focus on the work at hand.

Result? A subpar output.

I constantly talk about removing distractions while you are doing focused work. Muting notifications on your devices is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of what distracts us the most.

Prioritizes being connected over being productive

With sync communication, your ability to remain connected becomes more important than the quality of your output.

I am sure you can identify the basic flaw here.

Instead of what you “do”, your ability to “remain connected” becomes more important.

I have had clients in the past who wanted me to respond to their emails within 10–15 minutes. I dropped them like hot cakes because that is something I cannot afford to do.

I have my deep work or writing time blocked and if I want to be fully productive, I cannot let distractions ruin my deep work.

It’s not just writing or creating, even while doing my research I find it difficult to concentrate if I am being interrupted continuously.

Research is like a rabbit hole where one article leads to 10 more and so on. Now it’s not humanly possible to read all those articles in depth and also write the pieces within a stipulated time frame aka deadline.

So what I actually do is first skim the content and then decide if I need to read it word by word. The skimming must be done with full concentration so that I do not miss out on finer points. The constant interruptions and context switching waver the focus and lead to a poorer quality research, which then finally will reflect upon the quality of my article.

Undue stress

Synchronous communication also creates undue stress. Here is how.

Before smartphones were the way of life, you were supposed to be available only when you were at your workstation. With smartphones you carry your workstations with you all the time and hence the expectation to be available shoots up proportionately.

The fear of missing out on an important communication that needed to be responded immediately creates unnecessary stress. You could have been using that mindspace for more productive work or enjoying life with your friends and family.

Lower quality communication

How many times have you thought — oh! if only I had more time I could have argued my case more strongly or expressed my views more thoroughly?

When you are forced to give a response immediately, it’s not generally the best one you are capable of. If you read a message or an email and then process it for some time, you come up with a better response. The more time you get to process the communication and draw upon your prior knowledge, the better your quality of communication.

In fact, studies have proved that group brainstorms are actually a waste of time.

Which brings us to the benefits of async communication

How many of you like being interrupted when you are focusing on your task at hand and do not want any disturbance? But the world continues at its own pace while you are focusing on your deep work. Once your work is finished, you would need to be updated on what all happened, at least whatever needs your attention now or in future.

And that is where async communication works wonders. While you are working away, all the information related to a task, can be relayed to you through emails and messages. And you respond to them when you are free to do so.

With async communication, you have more control over your own time, which leads to a more productive day and a happier you. A win-win situation for both you and your employer/client.

Here are some other advantages of async communication.

You give higher quality responses rather than knee-jerk reactions.

When you are not forced to respond to the communications instantly, you can stick to the schedule you have created for yourself. And then, get onto responding to the messages when you have allocated time for it. Yes, depending upon the number of emails that land in your inbox every day, you must allocate time for responding to them at a cadence that does justice to it.

Deep work gets done

It doesn’t need reiterating that the more deep work you do, the more productive and effective you are.

With the pressure and distraction of sync communication out of the way, you can focus on your deep work and get more done.

Better transparency and documentation

Since async communication is either through written or pre-recorded audio/video messages, there is more transparency in your communication and it is easier to document at every step.

Seamless collaboration across time zones

Async communication enables seamless collaboration across time zones because everyone can respond to the same message in their own time. You no longer need to stay awake at ungodly hours for anyone.

Since embracing async communication without any feeling of guilt or stress, I have been able to take on more global clients. In fact, taking on clients in different time zones was what started me on my async communication journey professionally.

Now I prefer taking clients that are in different time zones because then the expectation to respond immediately is not there 😉 When I take Indian clients I need to establish communication protocols, and not everybody takes kindly to it.

Better planning outcomes

When async becomes the preferred mode of communication, you can plan your day better and stick to it too. Because there are no interruptions and urgent tasks that come up, well, unexpectedly.

Final thoughts

However async communication is not suitable for building relationships and hence some amount of synchronized communication must be inbuilt into communication protocols. This can take the form of one-on-one meetings or group chats at pre-scheduled times, at a cadence that suits everyone.

What do you usually prefer — sync communication or async one? And why?