You and I were trained in a print and broadcast world. Those are our native languages. We live in a digital world and many of us feel like we're drowning to bits. Before I read Bit Literacy I had months of emails stored in my in-box, multiple folders and dreaded sifting through the pile of bits to find what I was looking for. It was like looking for a bit in a haystack.

A November issue of the Wall Street Journal gave this wonderful assessment.

Last year, the average corporate email user received 126 messages a day, up 55% from 2003, according to the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto market research firm. By 2009, workers are expecting to spend 41% of their time just managing emails.
 

Ask yourself the follow questions:
 

• How many emails do you have in your in-box?
• Can you find any email (or file), anytime in the snap of a finger?
• Do you end up reading the same emails over again when you are hunting for the one you want?
• How many weeks or months of emails do you keep in your in-box?

Do you use your in-box as a:
 

• Todo list?
• Filing system?
• Calendar (keeping dates of future events just in case)?
• Bookmarks (emails that reference web addresses, passwords etc.)?
• Address book (messages containing contact info for future follow up)?
   

Would you like to have an empty in-box at the end of the day, locate any file immediately or a simple means to manage Todos?

Here is my testimonial: "After reading Chapter 4 I was able to make the mindshift. I now have an empty in-box at the end of every day (pwnd n00b) and now have a system to find any document I need in the snap of a finger." If I look at myself in just the right light I think I've even shed a few bits.

Bit Literacy is not the deepest and most thought provoking book you'll ever read - but it has been the most useful book of 2007.

These two chapters were worth the price of the book:

Chapter 4 - Managing Incoming E-mail
Chapter 5 - Managing Todos