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. -
San Francisco and Istanbul live on different parts of the day. With 10 hours between them, standard working hours simply don't meet. Make the most of handoffs — end-of-day in one city becomes start-of-day in the other, so pass work along rather than meeting live. Note that San Francisco follows daylight saving while Istanbul stays put, so the times above drift by an hour seasonally. 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | |
| Istanbul Europe/Istanbul | 3am | 4am | 5am | 6am | 7am | 8am | 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | 5pm | 6pm | 7pm | 8pm | 9pm | 10pm | 11pm | Next Day 12am | 1am | 2am |
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. -