The hidden cost of Asynchronous Communication

April 9, 2024

This was originally posted on LinkedIn in April of 2024 It has been copied here for ease of reading and preservation.

Yesterday I spoke about the value of creating clarity in how we seek and utilize our Sync and Async communication.

One of the benefits of Asynchronous communication is the ability for us to time shift our work. I can send a question over to you when it is convenient for me, say mid morning after my coffee. It can wait in your inbox until you have time to read it. You might not have time to reply immediately so you knock out that meeting before replying- or maybe you have some work to do to formulate the reply. Regardless, I am not sitting on my hands as I wait for your reply, I can take that time to make progress on other things.

This time shifting of our communication means that we can both be doing other work while waiting for the other to read and respond to the message. In specific scenarios, this can be very helpful- especially if time is not a factor (or a very low factor). If we are setting up a lunch for next week- time shifted effort can be okay. If there is a significant amount of information that simply needs to travel from one person to the next, the time shift can be very useful (ahem, record meeting where you talk at people for a while, then they can watch them when is useful- not in the middle of their prime brain time).

The value of the time shift can be deceptive and enticing. In the above scenario, let's consider the cost of context switching. Even if we are only spending 15 minutes on this communication throughout the day, we are also spending time and energy remembering what we meant, what was said, and why I didn't offer to go to Red Lobster (it is because my dad is allergic to shellfish and I'm going to hang out with him after lunch). We are also spending time after each bout of communication getting ourselves back onto the task at hand - some reports cite up to 20 minutes each time we context switch. That makes the 15 minute commitment much deeper than it appears.

The value of the time shift work can also reduce our ability to seek feedback or insight from others. An email is better at telling others information, if we are using email - we may shift to that stance more readily. (The same, it would seem, goes for Blog posts over conversations- there are so many perspectives and approaches that I am not able to consider in this space because of the format).

Let's compare that to the cost of Synchronous communication. Not only might we be able to make a decision in shorter than 15 minutes, we are also only context switching once- and don't need to continuously recall where we were in the conversation. Sure, let's not discount the effort needed to schedule that conversation, wait on the conversation to make progress on the problem, or the time we will spend listening to each other come up with solutions in real time. But those costs can be worth it.

Next time you are three messages deep into a text thread or email conversation, ask yourself "can this just be a phone call or a video chat?"

What is interesting to me in this space is the value we feel by "starting to work on the problem sooner" vs "having the problem solved sooner."