Chase Warrington
Head of Remote at Doist
Welcome to the first edition of Async Chats! This letter is all about candid conversations with people like yourself. If you’d like some more context see this letter. Otherwise, let’s get into this.
Chase Warrington is Head of Remote at Doist. He is located in Valencia, Spain and a 100% remote worker.
Why remote work?
When I was in college, my first internship was in the insurance industry, and it was actually remote! I worked from home and traveled a good bit to visit the company’s customers, and immediately knew I was not meant to sit in the office like most of my counterparts. From that point on, I pretty much only pursued opportunities that involved a remote element. I truly believe going remote-first and adopting asynchronous communication will allow more people flexibility and opportunity globally.
What are your interests outside of work?
Traveling, cooking, CrossFit, snowboarding, American football 🏈 and football ⚽️.
What are some of your favorite digital or physical tools?
I pretty much live in: Todoist, Twist, Notion, Calendly, Loom, Doodle, Zoom, Dropbox Paper, and G Suite.
Do you prefer to work / communicate asynchronously or synchronously?
I prefer to work async 90% of the time. Why? This gives me the freedom and flexibility to work on my terms and craft my perfect workday. I can work when I want and from where I want, which maximizes my productivity and provides me with a balance between my work life and my real life.
Questions of the week:
Based on this letter.
How does context switching affect you and your work?
Context switching is the root of most productivity failure. We are constantly interrupted and dragged away from focus mode via countless pings, notifications, meetings, and “urgent” matters. Few things are actually that urgent, but we live in an ASAP society where being present is often considered working. Eliminating these distractions and defaulting to deep work where focus on one task at a time is the core way in which we work, is a relatively simple way to boost productivity and cut down on number of hours worked at the same time.
Do you context switch?
I have developed a system using time blocking and Todoist to ensure I am not tempted to switch contexts very often. It still happens, but I am happy to say not that often anymore.
What are some best practices to fight the urge to context switch?
Turn off all notifications, check your email/Slack/Twist/etc only 1-3 times per day, have emails delivered in batches, when you hit inbox zero don’t go back in, work asynchronously, time block deep work sessions on your calendar and ruthlessly protect them, theme your days around central areas of focus, use a second brain productivity tool to automate this (I obviously recommend Todoist).
What is something few people know about you?
As much as I love remote work and asynchronous work, I think there is a strong case to be made for intentionally creating space for synchronous work in-person.
Anything new or important you’d like to mention to the readers?
I have a side project, About Abroad (aboutabroad.com), which is a podcast dedicated to exploring life in foreign countries around the world through the eyes of expats, remote workers and digital nomads.
We recently gave Twist, our async messaging tool, a face lift and it looks amazing! You can check it out for free at www.twist.com. It was built for remote teams to make communication less stressful.
I recently moved into the Head of Remote role at Doist 🚀
On February 7th, I’ll be speaking at Growmotely's Align Summit 2022 on the panel: The New Remote Model with GitLab and Mailbird. Attendance is free!
Links
Attend the Growmotely's Align Summit 2022
Interested in contributing – fill out this form
Know someone that would be a great fit – comment on this letter or reach out to me on Twitter