Working Across Time Zones Without Losing Your Momentum
There’s nothing quite like rolling into a meeting five minutes early, only to find out you’re actually 55 minutes late! Or that your “quick question” ping on Slack hit someone else’s screen at 4:57 a.m. Welcome to the glamorous, slightly chaotic world of working across time zones and schedule preferences.
If you’re part of a distributed team, you already know the challenges: the mental gymnastics of scheduling, the art of asynchronous collaboration, the delicate balance between flexibility and unavailability. Whether you’re working across time zones or just with folks who have different working schedules than you, you’ve probably felt this at some point. But here’s the good news – you can master it! You can maintain momentum and your sanity. You just need the right mindset, a few good tools, and a healthy sense of humor.
First, accept that time is fake
Okay, not fake fake. But in this line of work, time is stretchy. Your “Tuesday morning” might be someone else’s “Tuesday afternoon,” and your “end of week” might fall smack in the middle of someone else’s normally scheduled day off or weekend. The sooner you internalize this, the less personal it feels when your calendar becomes a Tetris board of colored blocks at odd hours.
Instead of fighting it, start thinking in terms of overlap windows. When does everyone have at least an hour in their workday that lines up? That becomes your sacred time – for live meetings, decision-making, or anything that really benefits from real-time dialogue. At transform.forward, we’ve given these times a nickname: “Power Hours” (also known as “We All Exist Simultaneously O’Clock”). We have two blocks per week when all of our team members are committed to being online synchronously. Sometimes we use this time to ask each other the questions you might “pop into someone’s office” for in an in-person work environment. Often, we intentionally plan to use this time to brainstorm or collaborate in real time, either virtually in Slack or in a video meeting. We know the request to connect or engage should be convenient for all of us during these times, which makes it easier to plan for time to work together.
Scheduling is a team sport
No one wants to be the person who always books meetings at 7:00 a.m. their time – or worse, 7:00 a.m. your time. But it happens. And unless you’re international, those scheduling decisions can start to reinforce power dynamics (e.g., headquarters always gets the comfy time slot and satellite offices adapt).
So, rotate your meeting times. Use tools like World Time Buddy, Calendly’s time zone features, or Clockwise to find the best overlap. Always be explicit about whose time zone is being referenced (we’ve seen meetings missed because someone forgot to add that “EST” or “MST” at the end of an invite).
And if someone suggests meeting at “10 your time,” don’t be afraid to follow up with clarity: “Just to confirm, you’re referencing 10:00 a.m. CST, correct?” As Brene Brown says, “Clear is kind!”
Not everything needs to be synchronous
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: If it can be an email, let it be an email! The same goes for collaborative document editing, Slack threads, Asana tasks, and voice notes. Distributed teams thrive when they stop trying to replicate the in-office experience and start designing for asynchronous collaboration and flexibility.
Try these tricks to get more done without needing everyone online at once:
Record voice notes to explain more complicated topics quickly and personally
Use comments strategically to ask questions or assign tasks to collaborators
Default to shared documents instead of sending “FINAL_version_11.doc” of an attachment
Use AI features to summarize long threads or recorded meetings (with action items!) so others can catch up quickly
Over-communicate… Then communicate a little more.
In a distributed environment, your tone, intent, and context don’t travel with your message unless you put them there. That means the friendly “sure” you typed could be interpreted as passive-aggressive. And that meeting invite with no agenda? Might as well come with a jump scare soundtrack.
So be generous, and give people what they need:
Add agendas, objectives, and/or goals to meeting invitations
Use time zone abbreviations and city names in communication (e.g., “Let’s regroup at 3:00 p.m. Chicago / 1:00 p.m. Seattle time”)
Include when you’ll be online and when you’re unplugging (pro tip: use automations or status updates on Slack to make this one simple)
Repeat things. It’s okay.
A little clarity goes a long way in reducing crossed wires – and those awkward follow-up messages that start with, “Wait… were we supposed to meet today?”
Let time zone mishaps keep you humble (and laughing)
Everyone who works in a remote environment or on a distributed team has at least one time zone horror story. One of our team members recently told a story about how she once missed an interview for an award because she didn’t realize her computer hadn’t automatically updated the time zone on her calendar while traveling (okay… it was me). Another time, a colleague accidentally scheduled a major announcement email at 2:00 a.m. instead of 2:00 p.m.
If you’re new to time zone work, know this: you will mess up at some point. It’s not a character flaw. Learn from it and maybe add a few sticky notes to your monitor as reminders, but don’t let it ruin your day or week.
Protect your boundaries (and your bedtime)
It’s easy to feel pressure to be available 24/7, especially if your team is fully remote or global. But that’s not sustainable or healthy. Burnout doesn’t care that you were “just hopping on for 15 minutes” after midnight. It catches up with people who truly never log off.
Set clear working hours, and stick to them. They don’t have to be 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, but they should be somewhat consistent (for both you and your teammates). Use the “schedule send” feature on Slack and emails. Block off focus time for yourself and “Power Hours” for your team. Add a friendly line to your email signature like: “I work on Central Time and may send messages outside of your working hours – please reply whenever works for you!”
If someone regularly asks you to stretch outside your boundaries, don’t default to guilt or acquiescence. Default to a conversation. Time zone equity means everyone flexes sometimes (I’m a night owl and have a 7:00 a.m. meeting coming up!), and candid conversations help ensure that everyone’s time and boundaries are valued and respected.
Make space for connection, not just coordination
Working across time zones can sometimes feel like ships passing in the night: efficient, but not exactly warm. To keep morale and team culture intact, you need to intentionally build in connection moments. This may look like:
A rotating “Coffee Across Time Zones” 1:1 buddy system
Async team rituals, like “Weekend Wins” posts in Slack on Mondays
Slack channels for music recs, pet pics, or memes (ours is called #watercooler)
These little moments add up. They remind your team that behind each calendar is a human – with a life, a sense of humor, and probably an elaborate color-coding system.
You don’t have to be a time wizard to make this work. You just need to:
Embrace flexibility
Communicate clearly
Collaborate intentionally
And keep a little grace (for yourself and others)
Distributed teams aren’t a compromise – they’re an opportunity. Done well, they give you access to broader perspectives, greater agility, and more work-life balance for your team members. So whether your team spans two time zones or twelve, know that momentum and well-being are possible.
…Just don’t forget to double-check that meeting invite before you hit send.
