WeWork’s Director of Real Estate, Nicholas Shiya, gives an introduction to asynchronous work and an overview of the benefits. In this blog post, Shiya uses the async analogy a 4×100 relay race where all team members are doing their most high-value work when they have the baton creating an opportunity for more sustained productivity.

The main benefits of working async according to Shiya, is having longer periods of uninterrupted time for deep work, less distractions, and more autonomy over how they structure their productive time.

Why is this important? Because, to run you need to walk and this article is an excellent introduction to the concept behind async and why it’s working for some of the world’s most innovative companies.