So what do we do? My co-worker Tara recently returned from the GEL Conference in New York City with nothing but good things to say about it. GEL stands for “good experience, live” and is a conference for “…exploring good experience in all its forms — in business, art, society, technology, and life.” The GEL conference is organized by Mark Hurst’s company, Creative Good, and one of the goodies she came home with was a copy of his book, Bit Literacy. And I got to read it this weekend.
The basic premise of Bit Literacy is that being computer literate (knowing which buttons to push to make software do what we want) is inadequate. We need to be bit literate.
What does that mean? It boils down to knowing how to:
- Manage your inbox (or inboxes, as is often the case);
- Managing the various bitstreams vying for your attention;
- Managing your to-do list;
- Getting a handle on file types, file names and folder structure; and
- Managing your digital photos.
Bit Literacy is an easy read. The most challenging advice is to completely empty your inbox at least once a day. Hurst goes into specifics on how-to do this, both for the initial purge that I’m going to have to tackle as well as on a regular basis. And his advice here makes sense.
As someone who regularly scans the Internet for the latest trends, news and technology, it’s also easy to accumulate a long list of bitstreams. They could be email newsletters, Google news alerts, RSS feeds, podcasts or whatever. They all vie for my attention. Hurst likens them to my “trusted advisor.” Interview them for the job, maybe even on a trial basis, but keep that list of advisors as short as possible, and review it regularly as you would with any employees.
While I liked the book overall, I had two gripes. The chapter on managing your to-do list read like a testimonial for Hurst’s online to-do management system, gootodo.com. I looked at gootodo before and was unimpressed. After reading about it, I’m slightly more impressed, but a bit annoyed at the sales pitch. And while I agree with the concepts behind gootodo, I’m not entirely sold on that particular solution. As complex as Outlook is, it works for me, and it syncs with my iPAQ.
My only other gripe was with his advice for file naming. Hurst recommends using author initials – creation date – keyword. This very review, were it a file on my hard drive, might be named jh-0528-bitliteracyreview.txt. First, on my home computer (which only I use), putting in my initials is redundant. Hurst himself admits that it may not be necessary. Second, the date is automatically captured when the file is saved. True, if you open and save the file again at a later date, the date will change, but frankly, I want to know that. In my opinion, embedding the date is a bad idea.
Overall, Bit Literacy is a excellent book and it fills a huge need in the market. Bit Literacy is exactly the book my mom needs. My daughter needs it. Heck, I need it. In fact, most people I know could benefit from it (although for many of the techies it will seem pretty basic). It’s good, common sense advise for getting control over the bitstreams flooding your life and bringing order to the chaos.
Related Links
- Order Bit Literacy on Amazon
- BitLiteracy.com – Official website for the book
- Good Experience – An excellent weekly email newsletter from Hurst
- gootodo.com – Hurst’s free online todo management system
Get this, the manager in charge of my department has read this book and decided it’s worthwhile to buy a copy for everyone in the department (myself included). So I get to read this book (and keep it) for free!
Wooooooooooo!
Get this, the manager in charge of my department has read this book and decided it’s worthwhile to buy a copy for everyone in the department (myself included). So I get to read this book (and keep it) for free!
Wooooooooooo!
Tigerblade, ‘Bit Literacy’ is the kind of book that you want to share. Let me know what you think after you get a chance to read it.
Tigerblade, ‘Bit Literacy’ is the kind of book that you want to share. Let me know what you think after you get a chance to read it.
Ok, I’ve only just begun BL, but here are my comments thus far:
It’s not all that practical to completely empty your inbox every day. I certainly don’t face quite the overload that he mentions in his opening chapters (i.e. “Busy Man”), but completely wiping out my inbox doesn’t work for me.
I try to keep my inbox floating around ten e-mails on any given day. Yes, most of my incoming mail can be immediately sorted into one of several dozen project folders and subfolders. Meeting requests are saved to a calendar and discarded, and the same goes for tasks. I routinely check through my folders to see if I can delete e-mail strings that have since been updated (instead of the one from two days ago with messages D-C-B-A, I keep the one from yesterday with messages G-F-E-D-C-B-A).
But… some of my e-mails don’t merit a folder of their own, yet can’t be deleted yet. For example, one of the e-mails currently in my inbox *technically* could be moved to a project folder, but it’s an extremely short reminder to check the status of a project once it launches. If I move it to the associated project folder, it’ll quickly get lost among the other, more important e-mails, and I’ll be back to overload. Things like that.
I have no problem keeping some e-mails in my inbox without getting overloaded. I think Hurst is trying to be a little too gung-ho on a problem that doesn’t merit such an extreme solution. No?
I’ll let you know how it goes once I get further into it. I was at my sister’s wedding this weekend, so I had precious little time to read.
Ok, I’ve only just begun BL, but here are my comments thus far:
It’s not all that practical to completely empty your inbox every day. I certainly don’t face quite the overload that he mentions in his opening chapters (i.e. “Busy Man”), but completely wiping out my inbox doesn’t work for me.
I try to keep my inbox floating around ten e-mails on any given day. Yes, most of my incoming mail can be immediately sorted into one of several dozen project folders and subfolders. Meeting requests are saved to a calendar and discarded, and the same goes for tasks. I routinely check through my folders to see if I can delete e-mail strings that have since been updated (instead of the one from two days ago with messages D-C-B-A, I keep the one from yesterday with messages G-F-E-D-C-B-A).
But… some of my e-mails don’t merit a folder of their own, yet can’t be deleted yet. For example, one of the e-mails currently in my inbox *technically* could be moved to a project folder, but it’s an extremely short reminder to check the status of a project once it launches. If I move it to the associated project folder, it’ll quickly get lost among the other, more important e-mails, and I’ll be back to overload. Things like that.
I have no problem keeping some e-mails in my inbox without getting overloaded. I think Hurst is trying to be a little too gung-ho on a problem that doesn’t merit such an extreme solution. No?
I’ll let you know how it goes once I get further into it. I was at my sister’s wedding this weekend, so I had precious little time to read.
Tigerblade, I agree that you need to do what works for you. I think for newbies who don’t have an established, viable strategy for managing email, Bit Literacy offers a good practice.
Theoretically, it makes sense to deal with email daily; moving tasks to a task list; moving events and appointments to a calendar.
Of course, I am a worst case example. I have my work account, my BigBlueBall account, and a Gmail account that I all check daily — and all of them still hold months (or even years) of old emails. I also have accounts on Hotmail and Yahoo, but I rarely even check those.
What I really should do is have three accounts. One for work, one for my website businesses, and one for personal email. Get rid of the others and do a thorough purge of what remains. I’m going to give it a try this week and report back.
Tigerblade, I agree that you need to do what works for you. I think for newbies who don’t have an established, viable strategy for managing email, Bit Literacy offers a good practice.
Theoretically, it makes sense to deal with email daily; moving tasks to a task list; moving events and appointments to a calendar.
Of course, I am a worst case example. I have my work account, my BigBlueBall account, and a Gmail account that I all check daily — and all of them still hold months (or even years) of old emails. I also have accounts on Hotmail and Yahoo, but I rarely even check those.
What I really should do is have three accounts. One for work, one for my website businesses, and one for personal email. Get rid of the others and do a thorough purge of what remains. I’m going to give it a try this week and report back.
Tigerblade – I’d encourage you to try it. People are often skeptical until they start really practicing the method. I think you’ll be surprised at the benefits the empty inbox brings.
Tigerblade – I’d encourage you to try it. People are often skeptical until they start really practicing the method. I think you’ll be surprised at the benefits the empty inbox brings.
I’m still reading through the book when I get some spare time every once in a while, so by now I’ve just gotten through the chapter on managing photos. (bear in mind it was Sunday I finished that chapter, and this is now Tuesday.)
For the to-do list, I have to agree with you Jeff that Outlook works just fine for me. That’s not a knock on gootodo, but in a corporate environment like this, Outlook is the best tool for the job. Not that it’s the best tool for every job, but in an Exchange environment where everyone needs to be on the same system to be productive, Outlook folders and such are sufficient. Dare I say almost irreplaceable? Without a complete corporate overhaul to shift to some new system, we have to make do. Gootodo or a similar system might be a good supplement, but not a replacement for practical purposes.
And, for the first time, yesterday I zeroed my inbox. This morning I came in, sat down, weeded through the deluge of new e-mails from last night, and once again my inbox is at zero. It’s… an odd feeling. I can relate to the example in the book of someone who said, “well now what do I do?” Of course, that’s just my work inbox.
My personal inbox(es) are almost never at zero, but none of that is work-related or action-required material: just quick notes from friends or the like that don’t really need to be moved anywhere at the moment. They just serve as quick reminders. I don’t want to start a to-do list of personal things like calling my brother-in-law… it’s unnecessary.
You know… I think once I finish the book I’ll just write my own review instead of pouring out step-by-step reviews here. Not to say I won’t be back to this page.
I’m still reading through the book when I get some spare time every once in a while, so by now I’ve just gotten through the chapter on managing photos. (bear in mind it was Sunday I finished that chapter, and this is now Tuesday.)
For the to-do list, I have to agree with you Jeff that Outlook works just fine for me. That’s not a knock on gootodo, but in a corporate environment like this, Outlook is the best tool for the job. Not that it’s the best tool for every job, but in an Exchange environment where everyone needs to be on the same system to be productive, Outlook folders and such are sufficient. Dare I say almost irreplaceable? Without a complete corporate overhaul to shift to some new system, we have to make do. Gootodo or a similar system might be a good supplement, but not a replacement for practical purposes.
And, for the first time, yesterday I zeroed my inbox. This morning I came in, sat down, weeded through the deluge of new e-mails from last night, and once again my inbox is at zero. It’s… an odd feeling. I can relate to the example in the book of someone who said, “well now what do I do?” Of course, that’s just my work inbox.
My personal inbox(es) are almost never at zero, but none of that is work-related or action-required material: just quick notes from friends or the like that don’t really need to be moved anywhere at the moment. They just serve as quick reminders. I don’t want to start a to-do list of personal things like calling my brother-in-law… it’s unnecessary.
You know… I think once I finish the book I’ll just write my own review instead of pouring out step-by-step reviews here. Not to say I won’t be back to this page.
Thanks for the helpful review. I found the book full of immediately-applicable ideas, and I thought Mark’s perspective was unique. Regarding the file-naming, I have a client who was having serious trouble managing documents and versions. Rather than a full-blown source control system (or using Word’s revision feature) I showed him Mark’s convention. He loved it! Simple, I think is one of the book’s strengths. This is a plus for me – I read a ton of personal productivity books, and many are padded out to hundreds of pages – unnecessarily, IMHO.
P.S. I just interviewed him a few days ago, and he gave me additional ideas to think about, esp. from a GTD perspective.
Thanks for the helpful review. I found the book full of immediately-applicable ideas, and I thought Mark’s perspective was unique. Regarding the file-naming, I have a client who was having serious trouble managing documents and versions. Rather than a full-blown source control system (or using Word’s revision feature) I showed him Mark’s convention. He loved it! Simple, I think is one of the book’s strengths. This is a plus for me – I read a ton of personal productivity books, and many are padded out to hundreds of pages – unnecessarily, IMHO.
P.S. I just interviewed him a few days ago, and he gave me additional ideas to think about, esp. from a GTD perspective.