Async first
If you only take one thing from The Whimsical Way, this is it. Asynchronous communication is what everything else is built upon. We believe it’s the way of the future.
What is asynchronous (async) communication?
Async means “not happening at the same time.” Instead of a live meeting or discussion, async communication prioritizes rich artifacts—documents, diagrams, comments, video recordings—and gives the respondent control over when they consume it and reply.
Being async-first isn’t about eliminating all real-time interactions, but rather being intentional with synchronous time to protect deep work hours and facilitate collaboration across time zones. Our team prioritizes async communication, enabling members to engage with work when it best suits them while ensuring thorough documentation of processes and decisions in a central location. Or, said differently, we are very intentional about reducing meetings and real-time distractions like notifications.
The async-first approach promotes thoughtful exchanges, reduces pressure for instant responses, and creates an inclusive environment where team members can contribute autonomously. While async work may feel slower day-to-day, it enables faster decision-making and execution over time by cultivating more complete ideas, clearer documentation, and well-informed decisions that don’t require constant revisiting.
While particularly effective for remote teams, this approach benefits hybrid and in-office teams, too, by making more time for deep work and maintaining accessibility to critical information.
What this looks like at Whimsical…
At Whimsical, non-managers spend an average of just 2.5 hours in meetings per week. They can be wildly productive because the vast majority of their time is spent heads down on the work itself. The way we accomplish this is through our async working style. Here are a few practical tips:
- Status updates are rarely live. Individual check-ins and project updates are shared in writing or via a screen recording instead of during a meeting.
- Brainstorming is often best done before the meeting. This requires some advanced planning but it allows each individual to spend time thinking and generating ideas without the pressure of a ticking timer. Then the live meeting can be used to develop things further, draw out themes, or figure out next steps.
- We rely heavily on commenting. Discussion about work is best where the work actually happens. That way context isn’t lost in an isolated chat conversation. For example, we comment directly in the design files in Figma or the pull request in GitHub, or in the doc/board/task/post in Whimsical.
- Documentation > real-time discussion. Ever notice how things often get forgotten and lost when they are discussed in meetings and chat? That’s why we bias toward documentation instead. We’ve found it’s better to develop more complete thoughts that persist so they can be read, commented on, and developed as you go. A doc, flowchart, task, video recording, or a post are some of our favorite places to share our thinking.
- Meetings are used primarily for relational connection. For example, 1:1s, team syncs, and monthly all-hands. Our engineers also do ad hoc pairing sessions to work through problems together.