The Future of Work Isn’t About Where We Work - It’s About When
- Travis Bogard
- Jan 23
- 5 min read
The Breakthrough We're Missing in the Future of Work Conversation
For the past five years, we've been having intense discussions about distributed work, remote work, hybrid models, and the future of the workplace. But I think we've been focusing on the wrong variable.
The real breakthrough isn't where we work. It's when we work. And a growing body of work has already proven this. What’s changed is that we can now take it further than those early models technically allowed.
The real breakthrough isn't where we work. It's when we work.
More precisely, it's about breaking free from the tyranny of synchronized schedules.
The Asynchronous Revolution
Asynchronous work isn't new—but it hasn't fully landed as the central story it deserves to be. While we've debated office vs. home, we've overlooked the more fundamental shift: moving from a world where work requires everyone to be available at the same time, to one where we can collaborate effectively across time and space. The early async pioneers (see their pieces below) captured the significant benefits of async work, but they largely framed work around two modes: asynchronous, which usually meant text or one-way video, and synchronous, which was reserved for nuanced, higher bandwidth conversations.
Async voice plus AI is a new unlock. It allows teams to have real conversations while preserving the core benefits of async, flexibility, reflection, and documentation, without without reverting to meetings. We find that teams adopting this approach spend roughly 60% less time in meetings!
Meetings persist not because people like them, but because they’ve been the default way to get rich conversation. Without naming that problem — and offering a real async alternative — the habit continues to drain teams’ energy.
Async work was always the right direction. Async voice is what makes it the default.
Here's what async-first teams have found:
More Thoughtful Communication When you're not expected to respond instantly, you have time to think. As Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad puts it, communication becomes mindful rather than reactive. A thoughtful voice message maintains tone and intent, often conveying more nuance than a rushed meeting ever could.
Deep Work Becomes Possible Again Async work eliminates this constant context-switching, protecting what Paul Graham calls the "Maker's Schedule"—long, uninterrupted blocks where real creative work happens. Many complex discussions no longer need to be pushed back into meetings.
Radical Transparency Through Documentation Async teams operate on a model that documents everything. This creates a searchable, permanent knowledge base. GitLab's handbook, for example, would be over 3,000 pages if printed. New hires can understand the full context of decisions made before they joined. This used to require a heavy investment in writing. Now, with transcripts and AI, documentation becomes effortless.
True Flexibility and Autonomy Async work means judging output, not hours. People structure their days around when they're most productive. Parents can handle school pickup. Night owls can work at midnight. Geography becomes irrelevant—timezone differences don't matter when collaboration doesn't require simultaneity.
Lower Anxiety, Higher Happiness The absence of artificial urgency is profound. No more waking up to a calendar packed with back-to-back meetings. No FOMO about missing discussions. Multiple studies show remote-first, async-first workers report feeling calmer and more focused.
Making the Shift: Over-Communicate the "Why"
Here's the reality: this way of working will feel uncomfortable to some people at first. When you start declining meeting requests in favor of async communication, colleagues might find it off-putting or even interpret it as you being difficult.
People resist async not because it’s ineffective, but because it’s unfamiliar.
This is where James Beshara's advice becomes crucial: over-communicate why you're choosing this approach. Don't just say "let's do this async"—help people understand the benefits:
"I want to give you a more thoughtful response than I could in a rushed meeting"
"Let me record a Loom so you can watch at 2x speed on your own time"
"This way we'll have documentation everyone can reference later"
"I'm protecting deep work time so I can deliver better results on [project]"
As Beshara recommends, share articles and resources. Link to the GitLab handbook or Sahil's thread. Help colleagues understand that this isn't about being unavailable—it's about being more available, more thoughtful, and more effective.
The transition requires bringing people along on the journey. That means educating them on what you see: that constant synchronous coordination costs everyone time, focus, and sanity.
The Missing Piece
For years, async work had one clear weakness: some conversations needed to be discussed in voice. Complex decisions, nuanced discussions, moments when you need to talk through an idea—these seemed to require synchronous meetings.
Asynchronous voice removes the last real excuse for calendar-driven work. You get the richness and nuance of voice, the ability to talk through complex ideas naturally, but without the scheduling overhead.
“Asynchronous voice removes the last real excuse for calendar-driven work.”
And documentation becomes automatic. Conversations become knowledge, action, and insight to be referred back to over time.
Carbon Voice is built specifically for this evolved async model: voice-first, asynchronous by default, and automatically documented. When teams stop treating voice as something that requires a calendar invite, meetings drop by roughly 60% — not because communication decreases, but because it finally fits how people actually think.
When teams stop treating voice as something that requires a calendar invite, meetings drop by roughly 60%
That's not a marginal improvement—it's transformational.
Why This Matters Now
Async work was always the right direction. Async voice is what makes it the default.
Voice allows us to detach from screens and still moving work forward, enabling real work-life integration.
The conversation about the future of work has focused too much on location and not enough on temporal liberation. The breakthrough isn't in-office vs. distributed. It's synchronous vs. asynchronous.
When you eliminate the requirement that everyone be available at the same time:
Global teams actually function globally
Business travel doesn’t disrupt the team’s flow
Parents don't have to choose between meetings and family
Deep thinkers get the uninterrupted time they need
Documentation becomes automatic, creating institutional knowledge
Stress decreases while output increases
Asynchronous work isn't just a nice-to-have distributed work perk. It's the fundamental innovation that makes knowledge work faster and more scalable while being sustainable, humane, and effective.
The question isn't "Should this meeting have been an email?"
The question is: "Why are we still organizing work around everyone's calendars instead of around everyone's best thinking?"
The next phase of knowledge work isn’t about debating where we sit. It’s about redesigning how conversation itself flows.
“Why are we still organizing work around everyone’s calendars instead of around everyone’s best thinking?”
This perspective builds on years of thinking from people who’ve been pushing async forward. If you want to go deeper:
Ness Labs: Sustainability Over Speed by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD
Ari Meisel Posts daily videos about Async work. Also checkout his world-first Async podcast.
Read other great articles on async? Share them in the comments.
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