Quick Review of Mark Hurst’s Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload.  By Mark Hurst.  New York: Good Experiences Press, 2007.  180 p.  (ISBN 978-0-9793681-0-3).

Mark Hurst provides a set of tools in this book to help the busy, information overloaded worker regain control of their work and home environments.  By following these tools the user will become “Bit Literate” and be able to spend their time doing the work they are paid to do rather than being overwhelmed the sheer volume of unsorted information they are confronted with. 

Hurst identifies the misuse of the e-mail inbox as one of the main reasons that people become overwhelmed.  He feels that people use the inbox for many purposes for which it was never meant such as a todo list, a filing system, a calendar, their bookmarks list, and an address book.  As he says, “[t]he inbox is appropriate only as a temporary holding place for e-mails, briefly, before they’re deleted or moved elsewhere.” (loc. 273).  By moving e-mails out of the inbox and into the appropriate location, be it your web browser’s bookmarks, your address book, or whatever todo list that you use, you can become far more organized and spend less time searching for what you need.  Hurst is a proponent of the “zero inbox” theory that says that you should strive to keep your inbox empty by moving items to the appropriate location as they arrive.  This is the chief “hack” offered in the book and many of the other hacks build upon this concept.

After you have moved everything from your inbox the next hack Hurst suggests is that you do the same thing for your sent mail box.  He suggests that users BCC themselves on all e-mails that they might wish to save and to then manage these items through the inbox.  He is a fan of automating various functions and among his recommendations is that the sent mail box should be automatically emptied after a certain amount of time.

Hurst argues that the most important resource that any worker has is their own attention.  Accordingly he suggests that to help avoid information overload the worker should put themselves on media diet.  Basically, you must accept that there is only so much time that you have to consume media and that we should focus on those items that provide the most information that you need and filter those of only tangential interest out.  Tested items become part of what he calls the “lineup” and he suggests that other items be rotated in for “tryouts” periodically to see if they are better suited to your information needs than any of your existing sources.  As a librarian, this is perhaps the hardest part of the book to implement.

Hurst also provides considerable advice on “bit literate” information creation.  He suggests ways that you can name and organize various bits of information from reports and your own e-mails to digital photographs and music files in order to make them more accessible and less cluttered.  The suggestions here range from standardizing the ways that you name files to choosing the right file format for any given file.

Bit Literacy focuses on organizing the digital information that we each deal with on a daily basis.  The principles contained in the book are equally effective in managing our analog information.  Simply put, we must use the tools we have for the purposes that they are best suited and we must accept that there is a practical limit to the amount of information we can consume.  If like me you have often felt overwhelmed by your inbox, your to-read box, your bedside reading pile, etc., then this book may be a good place to start in your quest for greater productivity.     

Quick Review of Samantha Hines' Productivity for Librarians: How to Get More Done in Less Time

Productivity for Librarians: How to Get More Done in Less Time. By Samantha Hines.  Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2010.  158p. (ISBN 978-1-84334-567-1).  

Samantha Hines, a librarian at the University of Montana-Missoula, delivers in this small volume the tools for a busy librarian to begin organizing their work life.  In this book she surveys a number of popular productivity/organizational strategies and helps the reader decide which system, or which parts of which systems, would be most effective in their own work life.  Perhaps one of the better qualities of this book is that rather than dogmatically push a "one size fits all" approach to productivity she begins by asking the reader to define for themselves what they see as their vision of a productive work life.  This theme of asking the reader to consider their own goals, needs, and work habits runs throughout the book and make it far more useful to a wider variety of readers.

In working through the book, a better description of the experience you will have than to simply say "reading" it, the reader will learn how to set better goals and to identify commitments and habits that are limiting their productivity.  Many organizational and planning tools are presented, most of them common to the productivity literature.  Few librarians have not previously encountered SMART goals, To Do Lists, the concept of information overload, or goal setting exercises.  The added value in this book is the thoughtful way they are discussed and reconsidered in light of the duties of librarians.

Hines' provides an extensive survey of the various systems that are currently popular with business professionals such as Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Effective People, David Allen's Getting Things Done and Timothy Ferriss' Four-Hour Workweek system.  Her short summations of the approach that these systems employ, along with a simple quiz she provides, should allow the reader to pick a system or two to look into further though the basic organizational skills she provides will suffice for some.  Finally, she provides a list of further resources to explore for those who are so inspired.  If like myself, you began the year hoping to finally get more organized at work, I highly recommend this book.