European Business Coach

Managing Your Media Diet - Bit Literacy Tips

cindy — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:04:01 +0000

Bit Literacy - Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload is a book written by Mark Hurst. It covers many different tips to help improve your productivity in today’s age of information overload.

We reviewed Mark’s book. There are some more points I wanted to go deeper into over the last three posts.

Of course there are other methods to improve your productivity. I don’t necessarily think Bit Literacy offers the best methods. It’s just that its good to be reminded every now and again that we need to clean up our response to our information overload. Web marketing through information products requires good productivity tools.

Bit Literacy has one big advantage: it’s simple (and you should buy the book!).

Get On A Media Diet

One of the things Mark presents in his book is a very effective style of handling what he refers to as your Media Diet. Your media diet is the information avalanche that you live under right now.

How many different types of information media are calling for your attention right now?

This list is not counting the movies you see and books you read for entertainment.

Your Media-Diet Suppliers

Magazine & newspaper
TV & radio
Newsletters & mailing lists
Websites & new media

If you live in a digital world you will have these, at the very least, in your media diet. Some people also have a private email or two. These essentially double the amount of newsletters and other online direct mail you have cluttering up your media diet.

In order to use any of this information effectively, you need to reduce the volume and manage the rest. You need ways to skip, scan, defer, prune and delete the excessive sources of information.

You have three options to handle your information overload.

Either you do nothing, and remain where you are right now (bad choice).
You can opt-out of everything, just stop reading and live knowing that ignorance is bliss.
You can practice bit literacy and create your own media-diet.

To Create Your Media-Diet

Take what is important to you and serves you
Ignore the mass of information
Keep things as pertinent as possible
Keep things as small as possible

Your media-diet must contain as few sources of information as possible. At the same time as reducing the information you process, you still have to get all the information you need.

Learn to skip items in your media diet that don’t serve you. Scan and prune the media to find exactly the parts that are important to you and don’t be afraid to delete or ignore information that will not help you.

Categorize

Categorize your information the information you get. This helps to manage your time.

Star

A star is the information that we would all like to find. It is that one thing which always gives us the best information and will help us the most. This should be the core of your media-diet.

Scan

Information you only need to scan will probably make up the majority of your mail. This information comes from appropriate sources to your needs. Almost every time you read them you get something useful out of it. The downside of a scan is that an eight page newsletter will give you only one or two pieces of information that can be used and the other seven pages are probably going to be deleted.

Try Out

Only take on new sources of information after trying them out. Be choosy, intentional, and international. Remember that your list can only get so big. It is important to keep up to date and the only way to do that is to try new things. Don’t get buried here by trying out too many things at once.

Maintenance

Always ask ‘is this worth my time?’
Do you trust the source ?
Do you need the source?
What can you gain by continuing to read this source of information?

Ask yourself these questions and you will learn to manage your media diet so it gives you all the key information you need without taking up all of your time.

Mark Hurst’s book, Bit Literacy - Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, gives you a series of simple approaches to get things done well. They are easy enough for just about everyone to implement.

Let’s look at how Mark handles his inbox tomorrow.

Here are a few more Uniquely Cindy Sunday Book Reviews:
- Website Optimization by Andrew B. King
- How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
- Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
- How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
- Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
- The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
- The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
- Letting Go Of The Words - Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
- Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash

Here is another Uniquely Cindy article on Productivity:
- Mind Mapping Makes Life Easier

Managing Your To Do’s A Partial Book Review Of Bit Literacy

cindy — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:00:21 +0000

We already reviewed Mark’s complete book later we will be going deeper into Mark’s Bit Literacy by going on a Media Diet and Inbox Management. Today let’s do the To Do List.

Here is one more simple way to improve your productivity.

One of the things Mark presents in his book is a very effective style of handling the long list of things you have to do.

The “To Do” List

First you need to create a “to do list” or a “To Do”. There are several products available, but Mark recommends choosing one with about the fewest features possible. Mark offers his software that is an inexpensive online tool as being the best solution because it was built to do exactly this.

Here are two important guidelines:

To Dos are action items.
To Dos are not intended to be lists.

An action item can be Go Shopping. You need to create a separate list associated with the Go Shopping action.

To Do Actions

Each To Do is assigned to a specific date
You can create To Dos by email
Each To Do is ranked by priority
Each To Do can contain a summary

Set The Date

Each To Do is allocated a specific day to be done. They can be moved as far into the future as possible so you don’t think about them until you have to. If you have a cake to pick up in 10 days, any time thinking about picking it up beforehand is as waste of time. If you have time available and choose to, you can start on the To Do list for future tasks.

Use Emails To Yourself As Reminders

Users should be able to create To Dos with their email. There are tricks you can do, such as emailing yourself at a future date. If someone tells you to call back in 3 months, it is possible to place an email in most systems with a future mail date. Forward yourself the email to arrive in your inbox just before the date in question. This keeps you totally on top of all situations.

Set Priority

You must give each To Do a priority. You should list your daily To Dos in the sequence of importance. This way if you do not accomplish all your actions, the least important is the one that is missed.

Summary To Follow Up With

Create an appropriate follow-up and completion process. Every To Do that you delegate must be confirmed as having been accepted by the person in question. The person who receives a To Do must send a completion notice.

This may see like micro-managing at first, but if you assign a To Do and the action is not completed, it is you that will probably have the problems. Assigning a To Do that is due in 3 weeks deserves a follow-up if the person assigned the task has not replied on time. That length of time will differ depending on each circumstance.

A To Do System Helps You Get Things Done

If you spend a little time to select a good system you will find one to help you get more things done.

Mark Hurst’s book, Bit Literacy - Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, gives you a simple approach. It is easy for just about everyone to implement.

On Managing Email - Bit Literacy Tips

cindy — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:00:48 +0000

We reviewed Mark’s complete book earlier this week. Let’s continue today with some advice that you will probably only consider in dire circumstances.

I do find this inspiring. A little scary. But still inspiring.

Here is one more simple way to improve your productivity.

Beyond Email Overload

One of the things Mark presents in his book is a very effective style of handling email overload.

His first step may be the hardest.

Delete all the mail in you inbox.

Drastic as this may seem, if you follow this process through you will no longer be bogged down by an inbox with hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox. These hundreds of mails just show how much work we have, or appear to have.

Mark says you should do this daily and keep your inbox in a steady-state of emptiness.

In his own company he says he actually uses this process as a set of rules.

The first rule is “read personal mail first”. You might find this hard to accept. Mark believes that telling your employees that their family is low priority to all other email, including the interoffice memo, is simply bad for the morale.

Here is a brief outline of his email management system:

Read personal mail first
Delete all spam
Engage FYIs and action items, then delete

Delete FYI after reading
Any action that can be done in under 2 minutes, do it
Any action that takes more than 2 minutes gets assigned to the todo list

Delete every email from your inbox as soon as you do it or as soon as you move it to your todo list. The todo list becomes your actionable item list, your inbox is empty and some emails have been filed where appropriate.

Newsletters And Bulk Mailing

These are read as much as needed, then deleted. If you have 2 consecutive newsletters, delete them both. If you have not read the old one yet, you probably never will.

FYI Email

These are emails that only give you information and do not require you to take real action. These are the true informational emails. Some need filing, some require a note on your calendar and maybe some other administrative action. Do the required action and delete the mail from your inbox.

To Do’s

Use the 2 minute rule. If you can do it in two minutes, get up and do it. If you need more than two minutes to complete the action assign it to your to do list. Once you have done the action or moved the action to your to do list, delete the mail.

How To Get Rid Of All Your Old Mail

Since an inbox will not be empty when you read this, Mark has also supplied a way to clear out your old mail.

Sort by subject and look for newsletters with several issues. Delete them. If you have not read them you won’t. If you need to file them for posterity, then file them and delete them from your inbox. File delete.
Find FYI and CC mails by sorting your mail by subject. Delete the ones that you know you can. File delete.

Next sort by date with oldest message on top.

If the message is FYI, scan, file, delete.
If the message requires action follow the 2 minute rule then file, delete.
The bigger action items are easy to deal with, they go to the todo list and then file and delete.

This is not a halfway solution. Do this once, even if it takes a full day, until your inbox is empty. After the fist cleaning you will decide if you do mail twice a day or leave it open all the time. No matter what how often you decide to check your emails, when you close your inbox it has to be empty.

File, scan, action, delete.

Once you are done with this process you will be able to spend more time actually working on other projects. You will have more time for your real job… or for your hobbies.

Tomorrow is the last day I’ll look at Bit Literacy…and it’ll be about To Do Lists.

Here is another Uniquely Cindy article on Productivity:
- Mind Mapping Makes Life Easier

Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst

cindy — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:52:35 +0000

Bit Literacy - Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload is a book by Mark Hurst.

Who Should Read This Book

I think this book should be mandatory for people that are starting out in the corporate world.

Any company whose business depends on email should spend a day training everyone in the practices outlined in this book.
I also think that kids going off to University would benefit from reading it because they have a massive information overload plus the new social media.

Book Outline

This book outlines different ways to improve your productivity and manage your information overload.

It tells you how to:

Keep up with magazines and newsletters
Sort, name and store digital photos so you can find them later
Understand some of the alphabet soup we see all the time such as - png, pdf, aiff, jpg, jpeg, gif and doc, just to list a few.

Email Inbox

Mark’s first step may be the most radical concept:

Clear out incoming emails as they come in.

Delete all of the mail in you inbox. File some, to be sure, but totally empty your inbox. This is not something that you do once, but every day.

Drastic as this may seem, he has a logic that will free you from being bogged down by an inbox with hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox. These hundreds of mails just show how much work we have, or appear to have.

Although bits have no real weight, bits are heavy. A full inbox makes people feel overwhelmed and Mark says you should empty your mailbox daily and keep your inbox in a steady-state of emptiness.

In his company he actually uses these processes as rules. The first rule “read personal mail first” is hard for some to accept. His logic is that telling employees that their family has a lower priority on all other email, including the interoffice memo is simply bad for the morale.

Mark has an effective way to work with Newsletters and bulk mailing, FYI mail and advice on how to build a proper to-do list.

His system for dealing with older mail would be seen as dramatic by some - delete everything. He has a process to follow. Totally clear your inbox and keep it clear to never feel overwhelmed by email again.

This is not a halfway solution. Do this once, even if it takes a full day, until your inbox is empty. After the fist cleaning you will decide if you do mail twice a day or leave it open all the time. No matter what, when you close you inbox it has to be empty. File, scan, action, delete.

To-do list

Mark Hurst has a very effective style of handling your to-do list, which he refers to as “todos”.

Mark recommends choosing one with about the fewest features possible because this is not a tool to do one hundred things. This is to manage your list of things that you must action. Mark offers his software that is an inexpensive online tool as being the best solution because it was built to do exactly this.

One point that Mark teaches is to use email to help manage your to-do list. Set up an email to be sent to you on a future date to remind you to follow up on a future to-do item. All too often people like to get out of answering by saying “I’ll do that next week” and a to-do list should be able to keep track of these open promises so you can follow up the week later that was requested.

The Media Diet

Mark describes the information avalanche that we live under today and offers some solutions to get out from under it. These are steps that will help you deal with your information overload.

You can do nothing, and remain where you are right now.
You can drop everything and live knowing that ignorance is bliss.
You can practice bit literacy and create your own media-diet.

Your media diet must contain as few sources of information as possible. You need to find the balance between:

Limiting these sources of information to not waste time
Keeping the information that you need away from you.

You will learn to skip items in your media diet that don’t really help you. You also learn to leave yourself open to new information, at least enough to decide if it you’re your needs.

Get Faster on the Keyboard

Speed is a priority, so using a typing tool to save time is advised. Mark teaches some shortcuts, including moving to the Dvorak keyboard, potentially a real time-saver.

Mark concludes with a message to programmers, a request to make programs that

Serve the user properly
Make the most common tasks the easiest
Make them accessible on the keyboard.

His valid point is that moving 3 fingers to do an action is much faster than moving your hand to grab the mouse.

Overall A Good Review In Information Management

Bit Literacy - Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload provides some real tools to manage the volume of information we are all faced with today. Mark makes several very useful suggestions. Some of them are not new ideas, but they are worth reviewing again to help you to get a grip on your time again.