We’re a distributed, mostly asynchronous team, and that comes with unique challenges, opportunities, and trade-offs.

This guide covers how we communicate, collaborate, and stay aligned without constant meetings. It emphasizes clear communication, team awareness, focus management, and the importance of public feedback.

Effective communication

Good communication is essential to keep a mostly async team running smoothly. It helps us avoid confusion, work better together, and get things done without multiple round-trips.

Default to public communication

• Keep all non-sensitive work-related communication on public mediums. Public communication increases the area for team contribution and makes it easier to recall prior discussions.
• Share the summarized outcome of syncs on Twist—doing so allows people who haven't attended to collaborate. [1], [2]
• Be comfortable saying “Let’s move this to a public thread” when there’s no need for privacy.

Communicate comprehensively

• Prevent unnecessary back-and-forth by writing messages with enough context and actionable information, put in the extra effort to make sure that those reading your message can understand the next steps and write a good reply.
  • Examples of great Twist communication can be found here.
• Prioritize sharing information promptly rather than waiting for meetings. Communicating as soon as possible, especially when providing feedback, is always preferable.
• Share negative or non-ideal news as soon as possible to find solutions together—never keep bad news to yourself.
• Use Loom to bridge the gap between conversation and presentation—that is a great way to communicate a lot in a short time or add more nuance to complex subjects. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
• Share Looms liberally and don't worry about them being perfect or too long, there’s no need to re-record looms if you make a mistake, mistakes are okay.

Be mindful of the communication type you use

• Use Twist threads and Looms to keep communication public, organized, and easy to follow.
• Use async communication first, but recognize when sync discussions improve clarity or speed. If you have a quick question or want to bounce ideas around with people who are currently online, public chats are a good option.