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.

An Update on Zoho CRM Support

I wanted to provide an update on Zoho CRM, and particularly on the customer support they offer. I had written in a post several days ago that I had had some unsatisfactory experiences thus far with Zoho CRM's support, which was true. But it's now looking like those problems were the exception rather than the rule. There may be a few wrinkles in their support system, but as of now, I think our support needs will be well taken care of.

A phone and web-meeting session was arranged for this morning with Gopal, who had described himself as being assigned to support my account. While we talked on the phone, I was able to watch him using the software on his own desktop. Gopal had actually worked on customizing the software to handle the processes that I had asked about, which in fact hadn't been available in the system: a double-opt-in email list signup function. He explained that he had tested out his customization on his own local system, but that within a few days it would be added to the actual Zoho CFM software so that it would be available to me and everybody else with the appropriate type of account.

This was a lot more than I had expected, and I'm really pleased. The fact that the software is under ongoing development, and that the programmers are so closely connected with the requests of users, seems like a major advantage.

Zoho CRM for Customer Relationship Management

I've been working with Zoho CRM for a couple of weeks now for a client, and I'm really impressed.

Zoho CRM is Customer Relationship Management software, designed to help a business keep track of its customers and sell them more stuff. It has so many features and functions that I don't think I've tried out 1/3 of them yet, but the ones I'm using are excellent.

I've been able to create a database of my client's contacts, and include information on them in custom fields that I create. Having done that, I'm now about to "select and sort" from the database. For instance, I can run a report of all contacts who took a workshop in March or April 2008, and print a report of them showing their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and the names and ages of their children. From that list, I can send a bulk email, or print labels for a snail-mailing.

I'm still waiting to see if the technical support is going to be adequate. So far, it has been a lot less than what I need and hope for. My emails have waited several days for an answer, which is too long. The one phone call I tried was very disappointing; the person on the other end seemed in an enormous rush, and once he had directed me to the menu item which was the first 1% of my question, he made it clear that it was time to get off the phone. I'm hoping that these were anomalies, or that I just haven't yet found the best method of getting support.

Zoho has dozens of other online applications, and they are apparently still in the process of developing them, and integrating them with one another. So things will probably get better. It does seem very promising.

I don't like chaotic file structures!

Yesterday, I worked on an existing web site that was brand new to me. My client had a rush request for a very simple edit. Once I had the FTP connection information, everything should have been nice and easy - but nooo!

I've seen this before on badly-maintained servers, so should have been wary, but unfortunately it caught me. For some reason, the previous web person had two sets of site files. One set of files was in the root directory; but when I made the edit and uploaded the page, the change didn't appear live. After scratching my head for awhile, I figured out that the domain name was actually pointed to a subdirectory, where another set of almost identical site files resided. When I uploaded the edited page to that location, the change appeared live.

It's hard to guess why there would be a setup like that; to me, it's just asking for confusion and problems. If the root directory files are old files, they should be moved to an archive and the root directory left to hold only files that need to reside there.