Book & Product Reviews

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 here last Sunday. But there are some more points I wanted to go deeper into over the next three days.

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.

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.

1. Either you do nothing, and remain where you are right now (bad choice).
2. You can opt-out of everything, just stop reading and live knowing that ignorance is bliss.
3. 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.

Read more Book Reviews:

Communication For International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with communication for international sales:

• A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs By Victor C. Pellegrino
• Content Rich By Jon Wuebben
• Get Content Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett
• Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
• Stories That Sell By Casey Hibbard
• The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
• The Magic Of Pre-Writing By Steven Osborne
• The Secret To Writing A Successful And Outstanding Blog By Liz Strauss

International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international sales:

• All of the Little Sales Books by Jeffrey Gitomer
• Asinine Advertising By Herschell Gordon Lewis
• Influencer: The Power To Change Anything by Kerry Patterson – Joseph Grenny – David Maxfield – Ron McMillian & Al Switzler

International Web Marketing

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international web marketing:

• Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
• Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
• How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
• How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
• Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash
• Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
• Multichannel Marketing By Akin Arikan
• Online Competitive Intelligence By Helen P. Burwell
• ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
• Stats Faceslap By Ed Rivis
• The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
• Website Optimization by Andrew B. King

Here are some Product Reviews:

• Ed Rivis’ Stats Faceslap
• Success Chef’s Marketing E.S.P.
• The Management Tools I Use For Content Created To Be Re-Packaged
• The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach By Tony Flores
  
• Web Video University And International Marketing
  

All of the book and product reviews here are totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books I have read recently and only the ones that I share with friends. So all of the reviews you find here are on books and products that I highly recommend.

Also, as these are books and products that I have recently read since, this is not a list of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully I will get around to reviewing my favorite culture and international business books sometime soon.

Use these skills in your international tactics on the…
Get International Clients International Sales Road Map:

Guide To Multichannel Marketing • Do you know how to communicate with different countries? This guide shows you how

Guide To International Web Marketing • Do you know how to pull all of your different international marketing pieces together? This guide shows you how

Step 5 – Connect With Your International Markets Connect… • With culture customized content • With trust and empathy • With strong cross-cultural communication

International Business Success Basics • Do you feel at a loss with regards to dealing with international business? This guide gives you the background information you need right from the start.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Bit Literacy Tips on Managing Your Media Diet