Inspired by Mark Hurst’s book, Bit Literacy, I tracked down the author and engaged him the way he suggests we all engage the various bit streams that inundate us with information every day: head-on and purposefully. Here’s how it went down… Curt: Where did the idea for the book come from? Mark: Everyone’s going to end up with a lot of information in the workplace today. How are they going to react to that? What skills are they going to bring to bear to manage that information? I wrote the book to help people to do just that. One of the biggest challenges that comes with all this information is that people are working less productively, and they’re under more stress because of it. But a couple minutes a day of practicing a very small discipline can go a long way toward alleviating that stress and increasing productivity. People have to learn to let the bits go. Curt: After practicing bit literacy for a couple of weeks, my newfound ability to let the bits go really is liberating. Is this method something you’ve always practiced? Mark: Yeah. I developed the method over about 10 years. I mean, I started my career on the Internet, and at first, I wasn’t getting very many emails a day because, well, there weren’t very many emails being sent. I sent and received my first email 19 years ago, back in 1989. So I’ve seen this medium grow up - the emails and other bit streams - and I had to figure out a way to manage them. For years, my coworkers and friends encouraged me to write it, and finally last year, I banged it out. Curt: You’re 35. Do you think bit literacy - or the way people in general deal with technology - is a generational thing? Mark: That’s the common perception. In the media today, you’ll see a lot of reports of how the Gen-Yers and the tweens like to multi-task. They like being on MySpace and Facebook and Twitter simultaneously, listening to music, and watching TV while they do their homework. The myth is that this younger generation has the special skill of being able to do 19 things at once, that they’re being more productive. They’re actually being less productive. When you’re multi-tasking, your brain has to do a good deal of overhead just working out the switching. There is a generational gap with the comfort level some people have with the interface, but I’m more interested in giving people the philosophy and the specific skills they need to really work productively in the face of all this information. If anything, the younger generation is more at risk than we are. By the time they get to our stage of the career arc, the overload is going to be much, much worse. Imagine if our contemporaries had to deal with a 10-fold increase in information: That’s what coming. Curt: And this basic philosophy in the book - how will it be able to handle the increase in information that’s coming? Mark: The book is a combination of theory and practice, of abstract and specific. At any given point, I might get specific and say, “Here’s what you use with the current version of OS X,” and while that operating system might become obsolete, that really doesn’t impact the theory. The mantra is the same: Let the bits go. I don”t know of any other solution, and I’ve thought about this for many years. Bits are infinite now, and in a few years, they will be infinite times 10. Curt: You used the word mantra, and I have to say, that phrase really felt like a meditation. Was that technique particularly suited to the book’s target audience - those poor souls who are drowning in bits? Mark: I hope so. I certainly tried to hammer the point home throughout the book. The entire book comes down to one simple solution, so if people can internalize that, no matter what, they can be ready for what’s ahead. We’re at the beginning stages of our overload. There’s going to be much more coming at us. I promise this basic skill or philosophy of letting the bits go will be sufficient for people, but they’re going to have to learn how to apply it. Curt: How do you respond to critics who say that your approach is too rigid? Mark: I respect their opinion. I happen to see the opposite. All I’m saying is, here’s a very general philosophy that you’ll be able to apply, and here are some examples of how to apply that philosophy, bit stream by bit stream.