The Async-First Quarterly Planning Playbook for Distributed Teams
The classic two-day planning offsite is broken when half your team is asleep. Here is a two-week, async-first cadence that produces better OKRs without 18 hours of Zoom. -
Schedule calls for 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM in Lagos — your colleagues in San Francisco will be online from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM. San Francisco is 8 hours behind Lagos, so you only get about 2 hours of overlap a day — worth locking in a standing time like 4:00 PM in Lagos (8:00 AM in San Francisco) before it slips. These times hold for most of the year, but San Francisco's daylight saving (which Lagos doesn't use) shifts them by an hour twice annually. To edit hours, add more timezones, and share with your team, create a free collaborative board.
| UTC (GMT+0) | 12am | 1am | 2am | 3am | 4am | 5am | 6am | 7am | 8am | 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | 5pm | 6pm | 7pm | 8pm | 9pm | 10pm | 11pm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lagos Africa/Lagos | 1am | 2am | 3am | 4am | 5am | 6am | 7am | 8am | 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | 5pm | 6pm | 7pm | 8pm | 9pm | 10pm | 11pm | Next Day 12am | |
| San Francisco America/Los Angeles | 5pm | 6pm | 7pm | 8pm | 9pm | 10pm | Previous Day 11pm | 12am | 1am | 2am | 3am | 4am | 5am | 6am | 7am | 8am | 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm |
The classic two-day planning offsite is broken when half your team is asleep. Here is a two-week, async-first cadence that produces better OKRs without 18 hours of Zoom. -
Three client calls before breakfast and an inbox that never sleeps. A practical playbook for freelancers and agencies working with clients in five different countries, without sacrificing your evenings. -
If your 1:1 keeps getting moved, cancelled, or wedged into someone's evening, you have a structural problem, not a calendar problem. Here is how to run 1:1s that actually build trust across time zones. -