Email doesn't cause stress and distraction, PEOPLE stress and distract THEMSELVES
It seems like the latest thing among computer-using professionals is the idea that email is somehow a major cause of a distracted, over-busy lifestyle.
I mentioned this a few months back when I had just read Connect!: A Guide to a New Way of Working from GigaOM's Web Worker Daily by Anne Truitt Zelenka. When I bought this book, I expected it to be very relevant to my "web worker" lifestyle, but didn't find it to be so. One of her main points seemed to be avoiding using email in favor of other means of communication such as instant messaging, social networking sites, blogs, and wikis.
An article from yesterday's New York Times seemed to be making the exact same point: I Freed Myself from E-mail's Grip by Luis Suarez.
I continue to be somewhat puzzled by this advice, simply because email has never become a problem to me. I have been using the Internet for about 12 years now, and I run two Internet businesses, and have the usual family and friends to communicate with - yet, somehow I've never gotten into the position I hear so many complaints about, in which email has become a terrible burden and taskmaster.
Even when I recently spent five weeks in a small town in Mexico, and even being the owner of a business which operates 100% over the Internet and depends upon email, I was able to keep up with my email correspondence without any stress at all.
So I don't seem to have the problem that apparently is more and more common these days, having email correspondence become something whose "grip" I need to be "freed from". I'm not sure where all of this stress comes from for so many people, but I suspect that it's much more the product of a corporate environment in which much too many pointless emails are sent, than the fault of the medium itself. I don't work for or with that size or type of organization, and maybe that's why I don't suffer with that particular ill.
I can tell you, though, that if I did suffer from an excess of email, the replacements suggested by both the Suarez article and the Zelenka book would not be my solution. Social networking sites - now why would logging into yet another web site to check digital messages - exactly like email - be easier? As for instant messaging, I've used it a lot, and have basically given it up as a poor excuse for a method of contact, because I find that it fosters careless, thoughtless, valueless communication.
I think email is being given a bad name by people who don't know how to manage their email or their time, and are looking to hit a nerve with other people who have the same problems.
Email isn't the problem. Used properly, is a brilliant method of communication. It shouldn't be used thoughtlessly, and it shouldn't take the place of more human methods of communicating (such as the phone) when a situation is touchy or complicated. But used intelligently, it has all of the advantages of other quick ways of talking to one another - it's easy and instantaneous - and all of the advantages of traditional written communication, because it leaves a permanent record. And best of us, it doesn't demand the recipient's attention until he's good and ready to read it - at least, if he is the boss of his email, and not the reverse.
I mentioned this a few months back when I had just read Connect!: A Guide to a New Way of Working from GigaOM's Web Worker Daily by Anne Truitt Zelenka. When I bought this book, I expected it to be very relevant to my "web worker" lifestyle, but didn't find it to be so. One of her main points seemed to be avoiding using email in favor of other means of communication such as instant messaging, social networking sites, blogs, and wikis.
An article from yesterday's New York Times seemed to be making the exact same point: I Freed Myself from E-mail's Grip by Luis Suarez.
I continue to be somewhat puzzled by this advice, simply because email has never become a problem to me. I have been using the Internet for about 12 years now, and I run two Internet businesses, and have the usual family and friends to communicate with - yet, somehow I've never gotten into the position I hear so many complaints about, in which email has become a terrible burden and taskmaster.
Even when I recently spent five weeks in a small town in Mexico, and even being the owner of a business which operates 100% over the Internet and depends upon email, I was able to keep up with my email correspondence without any stress at all.
So I don't seem to have the problem that apparently is more and more common these days, having email correspondence become something whose "grip" I need to be "freed from". I'm not sure where all of this stress comes from for so many people, but I suspect that it's much more the product of a corporate environment in which much too many pointless emails are sent, than the fault of the medium itself. I don't work for or with that size or type of organization, and maybe that's why I don't suffer with that particular ill.
I can tell you, though, that if I did suffer from an excess of email, the replacements suggested by both the Suarez article and the Zelenka book would not be my solution. Social networking sites - now why would logging into yet another web site to check digital messages - exactly like email - be easier? As for instant messaging, I've used it a lot, and have basically given it up as a poor excuse for a method of contact, because I find that it fosters careless, thoughtless, valueless communication.
I think email is being given a bad name by people who don't know how to manage their email or their time, and are looking to hit a nerve with other people who have the same problems.
Email isn't the problem. Used properly, is a brilliant method of communication. It shouldn't be used thoughtlessly, and it shouldn't take the place of more human methods of communicating (such as the phone) when a situation is touchy or complicated. But used intelligently, it has all of the advantages of other quick ways of talking to one another - it's easy and instantaneous - and all of the advantages of traditional written communication, because it leaves a permanent record. And best of us, it doesn't demand the recipient's attention until he's good and ready to read it - at least, if he is the boss of his email, and not the reverse.
posted by Patty Ayers at
9:41 AM
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