The assumption that coworkers must be awake at the same time is barely a century old.
Asynchronous work describes any arrangement in which collaborators contribute at different times rather than simultaneously. The concept predates its name. Letter correspondence between trading partners in the seventeenth century was asynchronous. So was every manuscript passed between editors before the telephone existed.
The term gained currency in software development during the early 2000s, when distributed teams working across time zones needed a vocabulary for what they were already doing.1 Open source projects like Linux, developed by contributors in dozens of countries who rarely occupied the same hours, demonstrated that complex products could emerge without synchronous coordination.2
The expectation that all employees should work at the same time in the same place was itself an invention of the industrial era. Factories required synchronized labor because machines ran on shared power sources and each worker's output fed the next station on the assembly line. Office work inherited the factory schedule without inheriting the mechanical reason for it.3
Basecamp / 37signals became one of the most visible companies built around asynchronous principles. Co-founder Jason Fried argued that real-time communication tools like meetings and instant messages created constant interruption, while written, asynchronous communication gave workers the freedom to respond when they were ready to think clearly.4
The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of workers into remote arrangements beginning in March 2020, accelerating adoption of asynchronous tools by several years. A 2022 survey by Owl Labs found that 62 percent of workers aged 22 to 65 reported working remotely at least part of the time.5
Synchronous work remains the default in most organizations. Asynchronous communication requires deliberate investment in writing, documentation, and trust that colleagues will respond without a manager watching.6