You are not alone in believing creative work and collaboration are much more difficult in a remote environment.
But yesterday I watched the movie "A dangerous method" about Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein. Well, at the time, collaboration was via paper mail. And my feeling is that they were more creative than we are.
I'm not suggesting to go paper mail, but I couldn't help but observe this fact.
Unfortunately I think remote work is the worst of both worlds by comparison.
IMO collaborating via paper isn't about the actual medium of communication, it's time and freedom. When every reply takes at least a few days to arrive to you you've got enormous space for experimentation, even if only in your own head. Meanwhile in remote work world we're plugged into video conference meetings multiple times a day. There isn't a lot of mental space.
You are comparing synchronous and asynchronous work, not in-person and remote. There's no reason remote work needs to involve multiple meetings a day, just like there's nothing preventing your boss from requiring multiple meetings a day when working in person.
In fact, remote work is usually more asynchronous than in-person when it's a core part of how a company works. Remote-first companies might have people working in 3 timezones with 8 hours between each of them (I've been in this situation), so meetings are a pain in the ass for everyone and everything that can possibly be done via email or other tools, is.
That’s an interesting hypothesis. I could see how paper mail, by virtue of forcing you to put extreme effort into clarity and thoroughness, could spark some novel thinking. On the other hand, as much as I think I work with great people, I doubt they’re all great in the level of those three!
