Are meetings necessary? Do I really have to be on that call? If you often thought about it during your working hours, you are not alone – 65% of senior managers said meetings keep them from completing their work. 

GitHub, Trello, Toggl, Gitlab, and many others went remote, some of them went fully remote, now we are seeing more and more companies implementing asynchronous work principles, and some even going fully async. 

Sahil Lavingia from Gumroad takes it to the extreme – he has no full-time employees in his startup: “If we include everyone who works on Gumroad, it’s 25. If we include full-time employees, it’s none. Not even me. We have no meetings, and no deadlines either. And it’s working: our creators earn over $175 million a year, and we generate $11 million in annualized revenue, growing 85% year-over-year.”

Though the concept may seem very simple, it actually requires significant preparation. When creating a message you have to consider: 

– do the colleagues have all the context?

– am I clear enough or does something sound confusing? 

– did I provide all the resources needed

and so on. 

This level of thoughtfulness will eventually lead to a more clear, productive communication. 

Have you gone fully async? Or would you like to? Share your thoughts on how to do it best or why you think it’s not possible in your case.