“Done doesn’t matter if people are wrecked along the way”

Overwhelm seems to be everywhere. Too many online meetings. Too much chat chatter, too much email. No time to get the real work done.

And, it seems, no time to tackle the overwhelm itself.

Instead, as stressed people always tend do do, leaders keep on reaching for the sugary snacks of communication. We dash off a quick message, or call a quick Zoom meeting – without thinking about the long term effects of that behaviour on ourselves or others.

Like the after-effects of a sugar-rush, online meetings expand to fill everyone’s head-space. Email and chat expand exponentially. Frantic people struggle to keep up. Important messages get missed. Constant fire-fighting. More stress.

The experts agree on what needs to happen instead. A switch to more nutritious approaches: the communication equivalent of well-planned, well-balanced meals full of veggies, nuts and seeds.

We need to design ways of working to minimise meetings and maximise deep work, by using long-form written materials, shared in ways that firmly link the communication with the task context. Shared documents, or messages on a Trello board, for example.

There are lots of managers out there who love group chat because they can pop-in-and-out quickly and speak to many people at once, but there are a lot of employees out there sweating all day long trying to keep up appearances of being involved but knowing they have actual work to do. They can’t stop thinking about how they’re going to have to work late. They can’t stop thinking about how the constant distractions during the week days means that Sunday night now belongs to their job. It’s absolutely a real problem…

So, whichever side you’re on, whatever tools you use, keep in mind how they affect other people, not just what they appear to help you get done. Done doesn’t matter if people are wrecked along the way.

Jason Fried of remote-work success story 37Signals

I appreciate that it’s tough to choose the nutritious approach (she writes, reaching for a square of chocolate!)

It can be challenging to write considered, long-form text. To make a post like this one happen, I need get clear about what I want to achieve, and then structure my thoughts into words and sentences. I probably need to sleep on it. And finally, add visuals. Even after all these years, all these posts, it’s still not a trivial effort.

But it’s not optional – especially if we genuinely seek to make our globally-distributed workplaces more inclusive.

That’s because meeting-based busywork is optimised for certain individuals: for extroverts, for native speakers of the office language, for people with the freedom to easily travel.

Flexible distributed work, with people working from locations that suit them, at times that work for them, provides opportunities for a much wider range of people. And long-form writing makes flexible distributed work, work.

Having a culture that prioritizes writing is a great way to allow everyone to contribute more. 

Fadeke Adegbuyi of remote-work success-story Doist.

What needs to happen for you and your colleagues to think more about what you’ll write, and where, to progress the work you do together? What’s the first thing you might do to move in that direction? Please comment below!