Bit Literacy summary

As you learned before, bits are merely electrical impulses – they have no weight. And yet they have the power to weigh people down, both mentally and emotionally.

Today, we have more channels than ever before to interact with one another across various bitstreams, all demanding our constant attention and engagement. Text messages, instant messages, Twitter, Instagram, multiple e-mail accounts, Facebook, and so forth – how many of these channels demand your daily attention?

How many unread e-mails are in your inbox? 1,000? More? The most commonly mishandled bitstream of all is e-mail. But why?

In part, this is because people use their e-mail inbox to do things it wasn’t designed for, thus leading to an ineffective and demoralizing workflow.

Once you’ve emptied your inbox, savor the feeling for a moment. Enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.

Now it’s time to move on to your to-do list.

Do you ever feel guilt or embarrassment for not being well informed? Perhaps you wished you could take part in a heated pop-culture or political discussion, but instead stuck to the sidelines, smiling and nodding.

In today’s world, it’s easy to get information about anything online. Since the information is there, you might as well become an expert, right? Actually, wrong.

Most people’s desktops are cluttered with files. The problem is that they follow the “organization by default” scheme, saving files to the destination suggested by the program they are currently using. This strategy quickly reduces our desktop to a chaotic and confused stockpile.

A better approach is to minimize potential locations for files and photos by using a two-level storing system and naming your files effectively.

When people get excited about something they’ve found online, they understandably want to share it. But they aren’t always mindful of how they share. They send you e-mails with cryptic or unhelpful subjects, like “Read today’s business section” or “Saw you in the newspaper.” Luckily, with just a few tricks, you can share information in a more bit-literate way.

A bit-literate message structure gets to the point as fast as possible, backs up the information and then ends. This is called frontloading – the ordering of pieces of information from most to least important.

What would you think if you saw someone start their car by getting out, opening the hood and fiddling with the wires, then closing the hood again and getting back into the car. You’d probably think: “What a goof! Why don’t they just use the ignition?!”

Well, this is basically what computer geeks think whenever they see you use the mouse to save a document.