When Synchronous Work Helps—and When It Holds Teams Back

In a recent LinkedIn post, Seth Godin 🌔 examines the trade-offs between synchronous work, which happens together in real time, and asynchronous work, which people do on their own schedules. This article covers Godin’s argument and examples from that post; it is not written by him.

“Synchronized work happens together, on a shared schedule, in real time.”

Two ways to organize work

Godin frames sync and async as distinct approaches, each suited to different tasks. He contrasts phone calls with texts, staff meetings with memos, and live concerts with streamed recordings. In his account, synchronous settings create a shared experience, while asynchronous formats let people engage when it suits them.

That difference, he suggests, matters because people’s energy and attention vary. Godin argues that workers can match independent tasks to their own rhythms—for example, doing creative work when they feel energized and routine administration when their capacity is lower.

Why teams still need real-time collaboration

Godin identifies three advantages of synchronous work: it can amplify energy, make tightly sequenced processes more efficient, and allow contributors to respond to reactions as they happen. His donut-shop example illustrates the timing point: frosting must follow frying, so the tasks depend on people being in the right place at the right time.

“When someone is contributing, others seek to catch up.”

According to Godin, that shared momentum can help a group build on ideas in the moment. He also notes that real-time interaction enables one kind of inspection and control, since participants can observe responses and adjust their contribution immediately.

The costs of making everything synchronous

Godin’s post also cautions that coordination has a price. Meetings and other real-time demands can consume time, leave little room for slack, and fail to align with workers’ needs or market conditions. A person who is disengaged or absent can affect the group’s energy, he argues, while assembling everyone at once can involve substantial waiting.

“Organizations that don’t account for the cost of sync-meetings waste not just billions of dollars but the insight and energy of the people who might be able to contribute if the timing and approach were different.”

He further points out that the pressure to act together can make it harder to be deliberate about details or a project’s overall direction. The post’s central implication is that organizations should consider the purpose and cost of a shared schedule, rather than treating meetings as the default.

Choosing the format deliberately

Godin presents sync and async as tools with different strengths, not as a universal choice between good and bad. His examples invite leaders to ask which work depends on immediate coordination and which can benefit from flexibility. That distinction, as Godin’s post argues, can shape how teams use their time, energy and attention.