Sprinkled throughout the book Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst is the word clutter. Bit clutter, email clutter, file clutter, clutter, clutter, clutter. So you know I love this book. I love the straight forward voice that nets out how to simplify your bits.

One of the most powerful concepts that Hurst emphasizes is clearing your email inbox each day. Yes, down to zero. Not one, not just a few but zero messages. I have been practicing this for about a week now and yes, right now, my inbox has zero messages in it! What I learned about myself is that I allowed the inbox to direct my day and if there was stuff in there, somehow I felt busy and important. When I got it down to zero I felt weird and a little lost. It took me a little time to adjust using my to do list to direct my day rather than my inbox.

Think about it! Hurst says, “Removing emails from the inbox doesn’t mean doing all the work described in them; it just means moving them to the right place.” The right place might be a to do list or a project file in email that holds all related emails until such time that you work on the project. It’s brilliantly simple actually.

Bit Literacy addresses how we write emails and suggests some ways to simplify even this every day task. Photo and file storage is simplified and easy to do with Hurst’s methods.

This book is an enlightening read on the pace of our life and how bits play into that today. It’s a must read!