Numinous Nonsense

Bit Literacy, originally uploaded by vincenthorn.

This is no longer the industrial age, the atomic age, or the space age. We are now living in the age of bits. Those who know how to work with bits wil master the age; those who don’t will be left further and further behind in every profession and creative pursuit that bits infiltrate. - Mark Hurst, Bit Literacy

I just finished Bit Literacy, and I can honestly say this book has already doubled my personal productivity. Just taking his suggestions on how to manage e-mail (bringing your e-mail box to zero once a day–meaning that your box is completely empty!) and using a todo system that is able to hibernate todos (meaning that you can set todos to be done on a specific day in the future) has already revolutionized the way I’m getting stuff done.

That he has a particularly cool tech-slant to his productivity message, and that he actually defines bit literacy as “the constant attempt, in a world of infinite bits, to achieve emptiness” makes it even cooler. Now, I definitely won’t argue that he is talking about the Buddhist notion of Emptiness (sunyata), but there are some interesting correlations that might be work exploring some other time.

Now I’m moving on to Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, and after that I think I’ll get around to reading Getting Things Done (by David Allen). I never knew business could be so fun!