Mastering Async Work Across Time Zones: The Developer's Survival Guide

Greetings, citizen of the web!

Your standup is at 6am. Your code review sits for 8 hours before anyone sees it. Your "quick question" on Slack gets answered... tomorrow.

Welcome to async work across time zones.

Done wrong, it's productivity hell. Done right, it's liberating.

Here's the playbook.

The Async-First Mindset

Traditional (synchronous) thinking: "I need an answer NOW → I'll wait for someone → My work is blocked"

Async thinking: "I need an answer → I'll document the question thoroughly → I'll work on something else → I'll check back later"

The shift: Blocked time becomes parallel work time.

The Communication Stack

Documentation is Infrastructure

In async teams, written communication is your codebase.

What to document:

Architecture decisions (ADRs)
API contracts and examples
Deployment procedures
Debugging runbooks
"How we work" guides

Where:

Notion/Confluence (team wiki)
GitHub discussions (technical Q&A)
README files (always start here)
Loom videos (show, don't just tell)

The rule: If you have to explain it twice, document it once.

Over-Communicate in Pull Requests

Your PR description should answer:

What: What does this change?
Why: Why is this needed?
How: How does it work? (architecture decisions)
Testing: How did you test this?
Screenshots: (for UI changes)

Assume the reviewer is 12 hours behind you. Give them EVERYTHING they need to review without messaging you.

Status Updates are Async Standups

Instead of: Real-time standup at inconvenient hours

Do this: Daily async update in Slack/Linear/GitHub:

Yesterday: Finished user auth refactor (#123)
Today: Starting payment integration
Blockers: Need API keys from @DevOps

The benefit: Everyone reads when convenient. No one loses sleep.

The Timezone Overlap Strategy

Find Your "Magic Hours"

Calculate when your team has overlap:

Example: SF (PST) + London (GMT) + Singapore (SGT)

SF: 9am-5pm
London: 5pm-1am (next day)
Singapore: 12am-8am (next day)

Overlap window: 9am-10am PST (5pm-6pm GMT)

One hour. That's your real-time window. Use it wisely.

Schedule Real-Time for What Matters

Use synchronous time for:

Complex architectural discussions
Conflict resolution
Onboarding new team members
Brainstorming sessions

Use asynchronous time for:

Code reviews
Status updates
Implementation work
Documentation

The "Follow the Sun" Workflow

Hand off work across time zones:

SF finishes coding → London reviews → Singapore fixes issues → SF merges

Result: 24-hour development cycle.

The Tools That Enable Async

Communication:

Slack (with norms: no @ mentions after hours, use threads)
Loom (record video explanations instead of meetings)
GitHub Discussions (async technical conversations)

Documentation:

Notion (team wiki, process docs)
Linear (project management with good async defaults)
Miro (async whiteboarding)

Code Review:

GitHub PR templates (force thorough descriptions)
Conventional Comments (structured feedback format)

The Personal Productivity Hacks

Batch Your Communication

Bad: Check Slack every 5 minutes, respond immediately

Good: Check Slack 2-3 times daily, respond in batches

Time blocks:

Morning check-in (9am)
Midday check-in (1pm)
End-of-day check-in (5pm)

Between these? Deep work with notifications OFF.

The "Update Before You Sleep" Protocol

Before logging off:

Update PR status
Respond to pending code reviews
Document blockers
Leave clear next steps

Why: Your teammates start working when you sleep. Give them what they need.

Use Status Effectively

Slack/Teams status is async communication:

🔴 "Deep work, async only"
🟡 "Available for quick questions"
🟢 "Available for calls"
🌙 "Off hours, respond tomorrow"

The Meeting Protocols

Record Everything

Every meeting should be:

Recorded (Loom, Zoom)
Transcribed (Otter.ai, Claude)
Summarized (action items, decisions)

Why: Teammates in other time zones can catch up asynchronously.

The "No Meeting" Zones

Protect deep work time:

No meetings before 10am (morning deep work)
No meetings after 4pm (afternoon deep work)
No meetings Wed (full deep work day)

Async-First Meetings

Before scheduling a meeting, ask: "Could this be a Loom video + async Q&A?"

Often, the answer is yes.

The Cultural Norms

Async teams need explicit norms:

No expectation of immediate response (document response SLAs: 24hrs for non-urgent, 4hrs for urgent)
Meeting recordings are mandatory (not optional)
Written > verbal by default (if it's important, write it down)
Respect time zones (no 3am meetings unless critical)
Over-communicate (when in doubt, share more context)

The Realistic Expectations

Async is Slower (Initially)

Decisions take longer. Clarifications take longer. Everything takes longer.

The tradeoff: Deeper thinking, better documentation, less burnout.

Some Things Still Need Real-Time

Crisis response (production down)
Sensitive conversations (performance reviews, layoffs)
Complex negotiations (architectural debates)

The rule: Default to async, escalate to sync when necessary.

The Starter Protocol

This Week:

Calculate your team's overlap hours
Set Slack status expectations
Create PR template with "async-first" sections

This Month: 4. Start recording important meetings 5. Build a team wiki (even if small) 6. Establish communication norms (document SLAs)

Async work across time zones isn't a compromise. It's an upgrade.

You get deep work time. You document better. You think before communicating.

The synchronous era is over. Welcome to async-first.

Emmanuel Ketcha | Ketchalegend Blog Currently async across 3 continents. Probably asleep while you read this.