Remote work isn’t about replicating the office online. Remote workers need to communicate more, less often. Instead of relying on constant, synchronous, and often interrupt-driven interactions, remote workers embrace asynchronous, and often higher-fidelity, forms of communication, such as long-form writing or thoughtful videos.
I’ve written before about the benefits of working asynchronously, but there’s a less obvious one: it changes the way we think and work. Async work leaves room for reflection, research, and synthesis. Those working async can and should take the time to think, learn, and synthesize before sharing their ideas, opinions, or solutions, distilling them down to the most critical. This improves the quality and clarity of the communication, and most importantly, the overall throughput of the communications channel.
Think of it like gzip compression, but for human-to-human communication. Yes, there’s slightly more processing overhead at the start, but it allows greater communications throughput using fewer “packets” (communicate more using less).1
How to communicate more, less often
Here are a few tips I often keep in mind:
- Choose the right medium for the message. Remote workers should use the most appropriate and effective form of communication for the purpose, audience, and context. For example, use writing for documenting, explaining, or persuading; use video for demonstrating, teaching, or storytelling; use chat for coordinating, clarifying, or socializing.
- Write clearly, concisely, and comprehensively. Remote workers should write with the reader in mind, using simple language, short sentences, and clear structure. They should also provide enough detail, context, and evidence to support their points, answer potential questions, and avoid ambiguity.
- Record videos with empathy, enthusiasm, and engagement. Remote workers should record videos with a human touch, using eye contact, facial expressions, and voice modulation. They should also keep their videos short, focused, and interactive, using visuals, examples, and questions.
- Communicate proactively, regularly, and asynchronously. Remote workers should communicate their goals, plans, and updates without waiting for prompts, requests, or deadlines. They should also communicate their availability, boundaries, and preferences without assuming or imposing. They should communicate asynchronously as much as possible, using synchronous communication only for urgent, complex, or sensitive matters.
Compress before you send. Your team spends less time talking about the work and more time doing it.
Footnotes
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Not to mention, thoughtful, written communication helps ideas to scale more effectively (there’s a reason the printing press spurred the Renaissance). It shifts communication from a one-to-one relationship to a one-to-many. Next time you’re about to “send a quick DM” or “schedule a quick chat,” consider what steps you could take to optimize for the long tail of information retrieval and discovery. Just like building a web app, “writes” are expensive, but “reads” should be “cheap,” so avoid introducing mental N+1s into the system whenever possible. ↩︎
