Is this you?

Your e-mail chime dings, adding yet another message to the inbox stack you’ve pretty much given up hope on. You look at your digital camera and wonder just how you’re going to sort yet another few gigabytes worth of pictures. The mail popup reminds you (for the third or fourth time now, no less) that your co-worker needs a report you’ve already made, and now it’ll take a good half hour to find it in your now vast collection of office documents that are scattered on your computer, your company servers, flash drives, and who knows where else.

If it is, you suffer from a lack of bit literacy.

For 2011, I’ve decided to take up a “read at least one book per week” challenge. To keep me honest, I’ll write a little about what I’ve learned from each book. The first book I’ve tackled is Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst, published in 2007.

The core premise of the book is “let the bits go”. Mark encourages a liberal application of the delete key to many of the various “bit streams” that modern life features, but also the application of sane filing strategies for files, e-mail, photos, and more. Of course, making use of these techniques requires some measure of time and discipline, which is something else Mark encourages readers to do (for example, setting a time of the day to clean one’s e-mail inbox(es)). For those of you who are buckling under the load of sifting e-mail, the advice in the chapter on e-mail alone is worth the book by itself.

Mark covers several areas where we need to be “bit literate” in order to deal with the rather ubiquitous problem of information overload, including:

  • How to become a “zero count inbox” person
  • Four factors of effective to do lists
  • Slimming down what you consume bitwise in a “media diet”
  • Ways to effectively manage your digital photo collection
  • How to name and store files efficiently

The book is directed at typical computer users (Mark takes a few shots at ‘techies’ every now and again, mostly on account of them loving technology for technology’s sake), though it does not give step-by-step directions on any specific topic. This can be a good thing, as it would seriously bog down the book; if you need said directions, just supplement the book as appropriate. More advanced users will find this book useful, though if you like following hundreds of people on multiple social media sites, maintaining a vast number of RSS feeds, and so on, you may find Mark’s work isn’t so geared towards you.

Speaking of social media, Mark doesn’t touch these “bitstreams”. With sales guys like Jeffrey Gitomer and Rory Vaden encouraging adoption of various forms of it in a business context, nevermind your friends, family, and others likely pestering you to friend or follow them, this feels like a significant miss. With a 2007 publish date, there’s no real excuse for it either. Even if Mark doesn’t care for them (and given his ‘media diet’ chapter, it’s likely that he would not), some users do need to deal with them effectively.

Another curious point is that Mark does take a few shots at others in his coverage of efficient todos; fans of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system will definitely note these. I also couldn’t help but think Mark took cues from Jakob Nielsen of Useit.com fame in arguing for simplicity and portability of one’s bits.

You can find the book’s website over here, and the book can be had for free through iBooks now. Of course, Kindle and hardcover versions are available via Amazon.

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