The majority of workers are headed back to their offices, but I've doubled down on remote work in the past 2 years.
I work for a Los Angeles-based company, and I live in Cape Town, South Africa.
In other words, I'm 9 - 10 hours ahead of my team, and I work from home full-time. I've been in my job since Dec '21, and I've loved every second.
A significant reason why I’m successful in this situation is because the leaders and my colleagues at my company have supported me working asynchronously and remotely, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I also do just love my job, which is a big part of it.
i.e. I have some lucky circumstances.
But, there are some things I (and my team) have done to make this work. These things amp up my productivity, while also being making me healthier and feel like I'm on top of my personal life. For anyone considering (or currently on) this path, I hope sharing some of these things resonates or helps.
But first, let's talk about toxic productivity and work-life integration
Feeling like we have to be "always on" at work is a sure-fire path to burnout, which we all know got worse in the pandemic, as we worked from home (3 strides from our beds).
Setting clear boundaries between work and life is especially important for remote workers - 1/3 of remote workers don't have a clear start/end time for work and/or spend more time thinking about work in their free time.
However, the goal of "work-life" balance has become outdated. The idea that we should somehow find a clear, sustainable balance between our work and personal lives just doesn't seem to be holding up in a post-pandemic world.
Rather, I reckon we should be aiming for a more fluid blend of work in our daily lives, that both a) removes the need for constant pressure to be productive (toxic productivity), and b) allows us to juggle work and our personal commitments and needs.
Typical 9-5 work leaves us task switching endlessly. Async work gives us space to do deep work.
Back in 2015, in my first post-consulting job, I got a taste of regular office life. I was trying to cram everything into an 8-10 hour workday with constant task switching, with the “reward” of relaxing at the end of the day.
This is how that played out:
5:30AM: Wake up. Read and reply to urgent emails. Get delayed for my run but still go. Get back, eat breakfast on the go, rush to work, arrive 10 minutes late, more email, hurry to my first meeting, in my gaps between meetings - intend to work on budgets but get distracted by emails and IMs, more meetings, lunch (at my desk), major crisis pulls me away from everything and I'm away from my desk for 1.5 hours, meetings, oh shit it's 5pm, let me spend another hour working on this presentation I need to get out, work till 7 (took twice as long as planned because I was exhausted from the day), rush home for 7:30 pm dinner, collapse in an exhausted heap in front of the tv/computer. Might do some more work because hey, want to get on top of it before tomorrow.
This must sound familiar to some of you.
To be honest, I loved this job and I loved being in an office. I didn’t think I could do it any other way, and with the onset of the pandemic, I thought I’d miss my colleagues and office life terribly.
But with asynchronous work, your day is split between three activities, that you can flex around depending on how much time you need to spend on them:
- Personal stuff (eating, exercise, chores, relationship stuff)
- Deep work (thinking, strategizing, researching, presentations, models etc)
- Facetime work (meetings, crises, emails and IMs)
To illustrate, let me show you what my average day looks like (local time):
8:30 - 9:30 AM - Wake up (without an alarm, so sometimes earlier), have some coffee in bed, read a few pages of a book. Answer any urgent emails or Slack messages.
9:30 - 11 AM - Head-down time working on my most important project
11 - 1PM - Exercise, meditate, have lunch, shower, chores, etc.
1 - 3PM - Read and nap or write
3 - 6PM - More focused work. My colleagues start to come online and I start to get Slacks and emails.
Break for dinner and to spend time with my partner (I eat pretty early because I do intermittent fasting)
6:30PM - until somewhere between 11PM and 1AM - Have meetings, respond to messages, etc.*
Then I hit the hay.
- This is 3PM PST/5PM EST so natural wind-down time for most of my team. Occasionally I will work later than this, and I’ll sleep in the next day.
Fridays are a bit of a quieter day for me. I don’t usually have meetings past 9pm and I use some of the day to plan, review, revise etc. If I've been productive the rest of the week, this usually works out well and sets me up for a good next week. I sometimes see friends on Fridays too if I’m free.
Total hours worked: 10 hours per day (less on Fridays) or 45 - 50 per week
This is exactly the same as my last two jobs in eCommerce, but I can objectively say I get more done in these hours.
Because I work asynchronously, I complete tasks on my own timetable by splitting my "deep work" time with my "facetime" in meetings and responding to stuff.
As a result, I'm much more productive. And I'm happier, because I have plenty time for myself blended into my day.
The awesome and fun thing about this type of schedule is that I can mold it around to suit what’s going on in my life/work, as long as I’m online when my colleagues are, and I get my work done.
If I’m rolling nicely on a project, I’ll work through the early afternoon.
In December, work was quiet and my partner was on leave, so I took a morning off to go kayaking. Hopped online later and still got all my work done.
These are the guidelines I abide by to make this work - both for myself personally and for my team
- Set non-negotiable “focus time” every day where you work to push forward key projects. Maximize the time when your colleagues aren't online and whenever you're most productive (for me, this is mornings and late afternoons).
- Set non-negotiable "me-time" where you do whatever you need to to unwind, catch up, relax, etc. This works best for me around lunchtime, and when I resume work later in the day, I'm recharged and feel like I've made time for myself first, before work.
- Set up monthly/quarterly meetings with leadership (and other critical stakeholders). Bring a full agenda with questions to the meeting. This way, you maintain connection and focus on what's critical for the broader business. If you don't do this, you risk being insulated from what's going on in other areas. For remote workers without the benefit of in-office chat and brainstorming, this is critical.
- Make time to chat informally. Use meeting time with team, colleagues, and others to connect with colleagues on a personal basis. You don't have a physical water cooler to congregate near, so create connection wherever you can. If you're trying to push initiatives forward, it's much easier to do so when you have personal connections with people. This sounds transactional, but having a personal connection with my colleagues is actually the #1 thing that makes me enjoy my job. Build on that.
- If you manage or work with a team, have a shared workspace to manage tasks and ongoing issues (notion, Trello, Monday, Google Sheets - whatever works for your team). Stick to the habit of using this as your source of truth on ongoing projects or risk constant pings at odd hours about status updates. I also have a weekly 1:1 with my boss and direct report where we run through agenda/priorities for the week using this task list. I use this time to answer questions and resolve issues. This is probably the most important meeting in my week.
- Make time to connect with your friends and family. I have a mental reminder to message/call a couple friends a week and always make time to see at least one friend on the weekend. It’s easy to get caught up in your solo routine and let relationships fall by the wayside.
I deliberately blended work and personal items on the above because, well, that's how it works for me - I’m striving for healthy work-life integration, not an unachievable notion of work and life perfectly balanced on separate ends of my life.
Ok, I admit, my life is different from the norm, so let's be real...
I've sacrificed some things:
- Blissful 5am earlybird wakeups
- Early morning runs and gym classes
- Wine after work with my partner in front of Netflix
- Meetups with mates on a Thursday evening
- Most Friday night parties
- Getting to know my colleagues face-to-face and banter in the office
- Occasional missing out on threads when I’m asleep.
(This happens surprisingly less than you’d think, and I’m grateful mostly to my team here for being patient with me and not expecting a response at 6PM PST / 4AM SAST)
But I feel like the things I've gained are much more powerful:
- Sleep! I sleep in and nap as needed which we know is critical to performance
- Time back from not having to commute
- A daily exercise routine that isn't capped by when I start work. I exercise longer and harder, and the resultant fitness boosts all other aspects of my life
- Plenty of time in the day where I can attend to chores and errands (= better weekends)
- Time to think, read, reflect, and meditate early in the day, before I feel pressed with urgent issues. Better problem solving because of this.
- The ability to singletask on projects instead of task-switching between meetings, emails, and model-building like I used to, which was a huge energy suck (= more output at work in less time). This is, I think, the big benefit for employers here.
And other things have stayed exactly the same:
- I still have regular meetings with my colleagues for most of their workday
- I still see my partner at home plenty, in the mornings, afternoons and evenings around our work schedules (and of course on weekends). We prioritize time to connect.
Overall pretty good tradeoff, I'd say.
TL;DR:
My async, remote work life has had significant overall benefits that outweigh the sacrifices. With effective practices and habits, this can be a great move towards achieving better productivity and work-life integration.