I have to admit, I was excited to read this book, but once I got to chapter 7 on managing photos the excitement dwindled (you can imagine how unexcited I was when I got to chapter 11 entitled “Storing Files”.) And that’s the point for me: almost without fail, I was already practicing all of Mark’s tactics for managing Bits, perhaps I’m already Bit Literate. On a side note, literacy used to mean one couldn’t read, and now it seems to mean that one reads too much (and can’t keep up). That’s a strange twist.
Back to the book. The central premise is that we are all bombarded with information (bits) and instead of thinking that we need to keep up with everything we need to LET THE BITS GO. There you have it.
I will say, the chapter on email management is worth the price of the book. His basic advice, “Empty the inbox at least once a day”. Why, you may ask, is it so important to empty the inbox at least once a day? Mark states, “By letting the bits go in this way, the user is free from an unnecessary task and can get on with more important things.”
Finally, his Todo list software (gootodo.com) is wonderful. The best feature is that it allows me to forward emails to the the todo list for a specific day, which allows me to forget about certain todos until I absolutely need to think about them.
Net: if you are overloaded with information and don’t already have a discipline in place for dealing with it, Mark’s book is a must read. If, on the other-hand, you already feel like you can manage the information in your life, then skip it, but do check out gootodo.com as a Bit Literate todo list.
