Time Management Techniques for Remote Teams in Latin America

Most of South America sits between GMT-3 and GMT-5.

That means if you’re on the U.S. East Coast, you’re looking at anywhere from the same time zone (Colombia, Peru) to just two hours ahead (Argentina, Brazil).

Six to eight hours of overlap with North American workdays.

You can have real-time conversations. Morning stand-ups that don’t happen at midnight. Quick Slack exchanges during normal business hours.

Now here’s the problem part.

That overlap makes people lazy.

Time management for remote teams in Latin America isn’t hard. But it does require intentional design.

Let me show you what actually works.

Setting Up Core Hours Without Demanding 24/7 Availability

Here’s what works: core overlap hours.

Not “be online whenever I need you.”

Pick 3-5 hours where everyone is expected to be available for collaboration. The rest of the day? Async by default.

Let’s say you’re a company on the U.S. East Coast working with a team in Brazil (GMT-3, so two hours ahead).

Your core hours might be 11 AM to 3 PM EST, which is 1 PM to 5 PM in São Paulo.

That’s four hours. Plenty of time for stand-ups, quick decisions, pair programming sessions, urgent questions.

Everything else happens in tickets, documents, and recorded videos.

For Colombia or Peru (same time zone as EST), you could do 9 AM to 1 PM overlap if mornings work better.

The key is being explicit about it.

Write it down. Put it in the employment agreement. Make it visible in Slack or wherever you communicate.

This protects the worker’s time. They’re not checking Slack at 8 PM wondering if they should reply.

And it forces you to plan better. You can’t just fire off questions whenever and expect immediate answers.

The best remote teams aren’t the ones where people are always online.

They’re the ones where communication is so clear that being online at the same time matters less.

Building Async Workflows That Actually Work

Async isn’t just “send an email instead of a Slack message.”

It’s a system.

I’ve seen this play out dozens of times. A company says, “We work async,” but there’s no process. Just random messages scattered across Slack, email, Google Docs, and WhatsApp.

Nobody knows where to look for information.

Here’s how to do it right.

Pick one source of truth for project work.

Asana. Jira. Trello. ClickUp. Doesn’t matter which one, pick one and use it religiously.

Every task gets a clear owner, a deadline, a status, and comment threads where all context lives.

No more “quick question” DMs that lose important information.

Require written daily or weekly updates.

Not meetings. Written updates.

A short comment in the project management tool:

• What I did today/this week
• What I’m doing tomorrow/next week
• Any blockers

Takes five minutes to write. Takes two minutes to read.

Record important meetings and share the decisions.

Sometimes you need a real-time conversation. Fine.

But record it and follow up with key decisions made, action items with owners, and deadline changes.

Post it where the whole team can see it.

The goal isn’t to eliminate meetings.

It’s to eliminate the meetings that could have been a ticket update.

Scheduling Meetings That Don’t Wreck Someone’s Day

Let me tell you about meeting fatigue.

It’s what happens when one person on the team always gets the 7 AM slot because “it works for everyone else.”

Just because the math works doesn’t mean it’s reasonable.

Keep one recurring team meeting at a time that’s reasonable for everyone.

If you have people spread across the U.S. and South America, that might mean 11 AM EST. Mid-morning for the U.S., early afternoon for Brazil.

And if it’s really not working for someone? Rotate the time.

Use world clock tools before you send calendar invites.

World Time Buddy. TimeandDate. Google Calendar’s world clock feature.

It takes 10 seconds to check what time your 2 PM meeting is for someone in Bogotá before you hit send.

Cap routine meetings at 25-30 minutes.

Come in with an agenda. Stick to it. End early if you can.

Make local business hours non-negotiable.

Just because your Brazilian developer is only two hours ahead doesn’t mean 7 PM meetings are okay.

Treat 9-6 local time as sacred.

Tracking Holidays and Local Schedules

A U.S. company hires someone in Mexico and schedules a big project kickoff on November 2nd.

Día de los Muertos.

The Mexican team member is offline. The project stalls.

This is easily preventable.

Create a shared global team calendar.

Mark every country’s major holidays: U.S. holidays, Brazilian holidays (Carnival, Independence Day), Colombian holidays, Mexican holidays (Día de los Muertos, Revolution Day), Argentine holidays.

Put it in Google Calendar. Share it with the whole team.

Ask your team members what their preferred schedule is. Write it down. Respect it.

For roles that need coverage, design it intentionally.

If you’re running customer support or operations that need 12+ hours of coverage, don’t just expect people to “be flexible.”

Build rotating schedules. Create on-call systems with clear compensation.

Using Time Tracking Without Turning Into Big Brother

Time tracking is useful.

It helps freelancers bill accurately. It helps managers understand capacity and spot overwork.

But it can also feel like surveillance.

Tools like Toggl, Harvest, and Clockify are common in remote work. Some platforms like HireTalent.LAT have built-in time tracking that automatically logs clock-in and clock-out records, which makes invoicing straightforward without feeling invasive.

Be clear about what you’re tracking and why.

Are you tracking billable vs. non-billable time? Total hours per week? Time per project?

Say so upfront.

Review time reports with the worker, not on them.

Once a week or every two weeks, look at the time data together. Are they overworked? Adjust the scope. Are tasks taking way longer than expected? Maybe the requirements weren’t clear.

Time tracking should be a conversation tool, not a gotcha tool.

Time Management for Remote Workers: Designing Your Day

If you’re the one working remotely, whether you’re a freelancer juggling multiple clients or a full-time employee for a U.S. company, here’s how to structure your day.

Map your client’s schedule first.

Figure out when they’re most active. When do they send emails? When are their team meetings?

Then build your schedule in your local time to overlap the important parts.

If your client is in New York and you’re in Bogotá (same time zone), you might work 8 AM to 4 PM, giving yourself deep work time early and saving meetings for after 10 AM.

Block your time intentionally.

Here’s a simple structure:

Deep work block: 60-90 minutes on your most important task of the day. No Slack, no email, no interruptions.

Admin block: 30-60 minutes for email, Slack catch-up, updating tickets, invoicing.

Meeting block: Whatever time you’ve reserved for client calls and collaboration.

Buffer time: 10-15 minutes before and after big tasks to prep and wrap up.

Start with small focus sprints if you struggle with distraction.

The Pomodoro Technique is popular: 25 minutes work, 5 minutes break.

But try starting smaller. 5 minutes focused work, short break. Repeat 4 times.

Once 5 minutes feels easy, move to 10-15 minute sprints.

The point isn’t the exact timer. It’s training yourself to focus for a set period without checking your phone or switching tabs.

Batch similar tasks together.

Context-switching kills productivity.

Batch similar work: all client communications on Monday morning, deep project work Tuesday through Thursday morning, meetings and collaboration in afternoons, admin on Friday morning.

The idea is to group tasks that use the same part of your brain so you’re not constantly shifting gears.