Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload

Editorial Reviews. From the Back Cover. Praise for Bit Literacy. This is The Elements of Style for the digital age. - Seth Godin, author, The Dip. Mark Hurst has.
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Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. English View all editions and formats Summary: There's finally a solution for information overload. Bit Literacy, the new book by Mark Hurst, describes how to manage e-mail, todos, photos, a media diet, and other sources of stress for people today.

The book was published before the tidal waves of mobile devices and social media. As such, some of it has a quaint or nostalgic flavor. Nevertheless the principles of digital organization are helpful and if anything more important and as under appreciated as ever. Jun 06, Eddie rated it did not like it Shelves: I had high hopes for learning to better integrate technology pieces in my live, I was hoping for some innovative solutions to better enhance and improve my productivity and general lifestyle.

How to integrate my dekstop with mobile devices, present new, innovative ways that I hadn't considered before. What I found is far from it.

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The solutions were simplictic, and while I agreed with some of them, many I do not. All suggestions were offered with a tone of supreme arrogance in a condescending mann I had high hopes for learning to better integrate technology pieces in my live, I was hoping for some innovative solutions to better enhance and improve my productivity and general lifestyle. All suggestions were offered with a tone of supreme arrogance in a condescending manner. His reasoning is that the file is much smaller as a plain text document, and that you aren't 'locked into a proprietary format'.

Is losing all ability to format text any any way worth several hundred kilobytes of storage on my computer? I would argue that formatting is worth the space just try a bulleted list in notepad. Being five years after original copyright, the book is also somewhat outdated. The author suggests that the ONLY bit literate task list in the world is - shock - the one HE wrote, and every other one fails in every way!

I found some of his suggestions in this respect very hard to take since they weren't without coflict of interest. The chapter then rather than presenting principles of how to take care of todo's in a 'Bit literate' way go into features of this online package. Finally, I tired of his relentless anti-Microsoft stance. I understand that Microsoft isn't always the best or the cheapest software, but the author needs to understand that most of us use Microsoft nearly exclusively in our daily lives. What would have been more helpful, would be concrete suggestions and solutions for HOW to use our Microsoft products in a 'bit literate' method rather than decrying them as unable to be bit literate in ANY way, and then proceeding to unofficially pitch to us unofficial till the appendix Apple products.

Oct 10, Charmin rated it liked it Shelves: Overview of how to maximize technology. The goal of bit literacy is to minimize the time you spend getting organized, so as to maximize your State the most important idea first. State the second most important idea second. End the message as soon as possible. Time for more important things, like working efficiently and enjoying Overview of how to maximize technology. Time for more important things, like working efficiently and enjoying life outside work.

The only way to guarantee your own productivity is to manage it yourself. Bit literacy is the constant attempt, in a world of infinite bits, to achieve emptiness. Success in the bit world comes from creating a quiet, empty place where we can focus on the bits we want, when we want them. There are two reasons why bit-literate users must not rely on paper to manage their to-dos: The four phases in the life of a todo are creation, inactivity, activation, and completion: Always remember that time is your most precious resource, so you must always look for ways to skip, scan, defer, prune, and delete sources from your media diet.

Bit-literate users have to be quick, decisive, and ruthless with the Delete button and not just with photos! Mar 10, Lauren Head rated it really liked it. One of the questions that I fill out on my BetterBookClub. I try to keep my inbox messages to a very minimum of what I am working on currently. If I am going to work on an email later I will drag it to a task in Outlook so that the email no longer shows up in my inbox, but I know that I still need to reply to it. This would be a great book to read if you are feeling the overload from your inbox and especially if you have more than one email inbox!

Bit literacy : productivity in the age of information and e-mail overload

The author's point of the book was neither to delete everything in your inbox when it gets overcrowded nor to live completely off of the grid. The point was to make the bits easy for you to manage. I then took the time to actually unsubscribe to email lists that I no longer have interest in. Usually I would just delete the emails without reading them, but this Bit Literacy made me realize that they were still wasting my time by ever showing up in my inbox in the first place.

This book helped me a great deal when I was trying to organize all the messages scattered around inside my e-mail inbox. The concept of "induction" mentioned in this book was very helpful, and the instructions were clear and easy to follow. By deleting the unnecessary mails in one go, I found everything in the right place in a neat order. Now I can spot the most important messages instantly when I log in my e-mail account, and I won't have to worry about missing mails or neglecting all my to-do This book helped me a great deal when I was trying to organize all the messages scattered around inside my e-mail inbox.

Now I can spot the most important messages instantly when I log in my e-mail account, and I won't have to worry about missing mails or neglecting all my to-do lists. However, some methods the author recommended may not be appropriate in today's tech society. I don't think it's a good idea since that means anybody who knows basic computer skills can hack your PC and steal your personal information within seconds.

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Also, the principle of using keyboard instead of mouse might not be suitable for average users. This book was published around , so I suppose the author didn't foresee the trend of using smartphones or devices equipped with touchscreen nowadays. Sometimes we don't ever have the chance to use keyboard. Maybe this principle still applies to computer engineers, but it's no longer the rule of thumb to most people out there.

Feb 01, Ian Varley rated it liked it Shelves: This is a solid, entry-level book about how not to suck at computers. The point is well taken, that not sucking at computers is hard, and getting harder as the stream of input grows i. The stuff that's probably worth your time: I've been doing it for years, and people think I'm crazy, so I guess it really needs to be said more. Get to inbox zero and stop running your life out of the worst possible tool an email inbox. Stop taki This is a solid, entry-level book about how not to suck at computers.

Stop taking in so many bad bits, and focus more on the good ones. Clean up your damn desktop.

But, if you're not in that class, or do already suck at computers, this criticism is moot; you do need to learn this stuff. That's just not how todos work, at least for me. He's dismissive of GTD without naming it but on that count, he's just wrong. Overall, though, this is a good foundations book. Everybody should know at least this much.


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May 05, Matt Burgess rated it liked it. Bit Literacy , Mark Hurst To be free of overload and the problems it causes, users must choose to become bit-literate.

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload

I've noticed how new technologies are often adopted for their novelty without consideration to their practical use or their best use, and I've seen how mis-management of information can cause the most efficient of people to drown. Mark Hurst does an Bit Literacy , Mark Hurst To be free of overload and the problems it causes, users must choose to become bit-literate. Mark Hurst does an excellent job explaining at a low level how technology works and what is means for us. He also goes into some techniques of making effective use of the more widely accepted technologies and ramifications of those less known.

Being in the information technology industry, most of the content was not new as it might be to most people. Despite my expectation to quickly become bored, I didn't.

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I found his explanations, tips and foresight very well written and to the point, which happens to be one of his own tips. If you are bogged down on a daily basis like most people in the digital world, consider reading Bit Literacy. Throughout your experience, I bet you will gain a better understanding and appreciate for what bits do for us. You might even take advantage of their original intent…to make life easier. Nov 27, Byron rated it really liked it.

This literally costs no money at all from Amazon at least as of the other day , so it's really just a matter of whether or not it's worth the time it would take to DL a copy and flip through it, and then eventually read it, if it's worth your while. If you don't shit but sit around all day in your underwear and troll Amazon for inexpensive reads, it's kind of a no-brainer. But if you've got a few dollars in your pocket, maybe you want to spring for something more This literally costs no money at all from Amazon at least as of the other day , so it's really just a matter of whether or not it's worth the time it would take to DL a copy and flip through it, and then eventually read it, if it's worth your while.

But if you've got a few dollars in your pocket, maybe you want to spring for something more advanced. At few of the lower ratings I saw here complained that this was too entry-level. That was exactly what I enjoyed.


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