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
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