Author: Francis Wade

As I mentioned in a prior post, there is a great deal that I enjoyed from the book “Bit Literacy” by Mark Hurst.  In particular, the idea of returning to “empty” struck a chord with me.

If you are a frequent reader of this website you might imagine why, because I have described “Emptying” as one of the fundamentals of time management, and I have repeatedly mentioned the importance of the practice.

Even the sample chapter from a book I am working on centered on learning how to Empty properly.

What Bit Literacy, has done however, is to describe in some detail the actual goal of Emptying, which is to have an experience of being “empty.”

This is not something I have written much about, but it IS something I have experienced when my time management system is running smoothly.

It turns out that the feeling of being empty turns out to be a critical accomplishment.

Hurst reports that people who change their habits and are able to arrive at a Zero Inbox at least once each day find the experience a bit disconcerting.  We are used to looking at email in our inbox over and over again, jumping from one item to another without taking a concrete action that results in its removal from that particular folder.

Most of us are intimately acquainted with the feeling of overwhelm that comes from hundreds and even thousands of items sitting in our email inboxes, each of them calling at us to be read, or actioned in some way.

We often find ourselves responding to whatever email is sent to us, and working on whatever our Inbox “tells us” to work on.  This reactive mode is what we are used to, and it’s the reason that we glance at our inboxes over and over gain, looking to see what the next hot item might be.

When we learn to manage a Zero Inbox, however, there are several moments per week or per day when we are staying at an empty space where all the Inbox email used to be.

I can tell you from personal experience that it’s a strange feeling.  It’s a little like that strange  space that one enters after completing a final exam, giving a speech or getting married.

It’s a space filled with a “now what?” kind of question.

This empty space is the one that allows for the best kind of creativity – the kind that comes from nothing, a blank canvas, a kind of quiet in which the best decisions are made.

This flies in the face of the addictive sense of urgency that some of us cultivate.  In Bit Literacy, the author paints the picture of the “Busy Man” who moves from one activity to another, never stopping for a breath, using the continuous busyness as confirmation that, yes, they are important.

They often develop the awful habit of jumping from one task to another, never really finishing what they start.  They also will try to multi-task, interrupting their conversations to read email on their Blackberries, always busy paying attention to the thing they’re not doing.

This idea of getting to empty flies in the face of all that busyness.

In other places in this blog I talk about the importance of the flow state, and of creating the kind of single-minded focus on a single activity that is essential for high performance.  I have mentioned that one of the goals of the 2Time approach is to produce regular and frequent experiences of being in this state.

Reading Bit Literacy has made me think that I should add the momentary experience of being “empty” to the list of 2Time goals, given how hard it is to achieve, but important an indicator it is of top quality time management.

Furthermore, perhaps there is a way of describing the higher belts in terms of these states — flow and empty — and the degree to which they are accomplished  Following this logic, a Green Belt visits these states frequently, while a White Belt either doesn’t know that they exist, or has never had the experience.

This seems to make sense, and is a practical way to accomplish a powerful kind of inner peace.
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There is a major point from the book Bit Literacy that I found some disagreement with.  The idea that “bits are heavy” is fundamental to Mark Hurst’s theory that when they accumulate, the create a burden a user’s life.

He’s right about that, but he’s missing the point that bits by themselves are meaningless.

This can be demonstrated by the fact that the heavy bits on your computer are only heavy for one person – you.  If I were to inherit your computer, the first thing I would do is to wipe it clean of all those bits that you have been working on because they are entirely useless to me.

In like manner, an accusing email from a loved one that is accidentally deleted before being read also has no weight.

Therefore, this statement at the core of Bit Literacy should perhaps be altered to say “Bits are heavy, but only because we make them so.”

Why is this distinction important?

In the first case, it puts the user back in control of their own experience.  The burden that is felt from having too much email is not caused by the email, but by the decisions made around each message, and the immediate decisions and actions taken.

For example, a White Belt will scan email and make mental note to follow up on each item, while leaving the item in their inbox.  Over time, the mental notes multiply and produce an increasing sense of stress every time the inbox is accessed.

To the White Belt, the problem is that the people in their life are sending them too much email.  Some respond by simply deleting all their email, as Bit Literacy notes, arguing that if any of them are important the person will contact them soon.

The Green Belt, however, will read an email once before removing it from the inbox forever.  The email inbox is therefore kept empty, or almost empty.  They know that the White Belt practices produce an increasing sense of stress, and have different habits to protect their peace of mind.

The power that comes from knowing that I am making the bits heavy, can give the user the impetus to go the next step and to devise a system that is built to support their particular commitments.

I can make bit heavy, but my managing them well, I can also lighten the load.
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I recently completed an essential book for those with a serious interest in productivity:  Bit Literacy by Michael Hurst.

While I can’t say that I agree with everything in the book, it was a provocative read that went deeper than anything I have ever read in some essential topics. At the same time, I thought that with respect to time management, he made a similar error to other writers in the field — sticking too much to a time management 1.0 mindset.

His overall idea is a sound one – the latest technologies are being mis-used by the majority of professionals who are applying old thinking and therefore stale practices to workplaces that have been revolutionized by email, iPhones and other technologies.  For example, the person who prints out every piece of email in order to “save it in a safe place” is confused by technology, and thinking in very old ways about data.  This makes them very inefficient, and causes them to not just waste paper and space, but also to create a level of paper-clutter that is inefficient.

He makes the point that we make here on 2Time, which is that you can’t apply old practices to the ever increasing mountain of information that is coming at the average user.  Most of the increase in information is not coming printed on paper, as it used to, but instead is coming in the form of bits and bytes, requiring new practices in the form of what he calls “bit literacy.”

As a minor aside, I found the term “literacy” to be a misleading one, as it only makes sense when compared to the way we use the phrase “computer literacy.”  I think a better phrase would be something like “bit capable” which is really what his book is about — the ability to skillfully process the flow of bits that a professional must face each day.

I’ll continue to share what I learned in future posts, but his overall thesis is a powerful one — things have changed, and a user’s practices must also change if professionals are interesting in even maintaining their current level of productivity.
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