Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [23]
Date: September 6, 20..
From: reader@example.com
To: march1@gootodo.com
Subject: Fwd: Re: sign up for the Z1 training session?
> Date: September 6, 20..
> From: jane.williams@example.com
> To: reader@example.com
> Subject: Re: sign up for the Z1 training session?
> R.-sure, just get back to me in early March and I’ll be ready to sign up.
> Jane
Having sent the e-mail, you can forget about the todo for several months and focus on other work. Only when March 1 rolls around will your todo list contain the todo, showing the following title:
(Some users may prefer to rename the Subject line when they forward the e-mail, so that the todo has a clearer title when the todo pops up in March. A Subject like “Jane re Z1 training?” might be a good one.)
Whatever the name of the todo, the detail field will contain the body of the e-mail, reminding you what the todo is about. You can paste the todo body in your followup note to Jane, and BCC 1w@gootodo.com to make sure you get a response to this followup. Best of all, you’ll be sending the followup right on time:
Date: March 1, 20..
From: reader@example.com
To: jane.williams@example.com
BCC: 1w@gootodo.com
Subject: checking in—sign up for the Z1 training session?
Jane,
Just checking in on your e-mail from last September, pasted below - you said you’d be ready to sign up for Z1 training in early March, and here we are! Are you ready to sign up?
R.
> Date: September 6, 20..
> From: jane.williams@example.com
> To: reader@example.com
> Subject: Re: sign up for the Z1 training session?
> R.—sure, just get back to me in early March and I’ll be ready to sign up.
> Jane
Using Gootodo in this way, I’ve found that many people will respond immediately out of sheer amazement, shocked by my freakishly accurate timing. Weeks or months can pass by and I can get back to them, exactly on time, quoting their original note. This is to their delight or chagrin, depending on what I’m bringing up. More than one recipient has asked me if I’m psychic.
And that’s the beauty of bit-literate todo management: by using bits to their advantage, I can have near-perfect accuracy and timeliness—even the appearance of psychic powers!—with less mental exertion than what other todo lists require. If I send a todo six months into the future, I can totally forget about the todo—letting the bits go—until it becomes relevant again and Gootodo brings it back to my attention.
There are many other ways Gootodo can be used for followup. Bit-literate users should explore Gootodo, or some other bit-literate todo list, and stay on the lookout for other ways to improve their effectiveness. Todo management, like all of bit literacy, is a lifelong discipline of continual improvement.
Chapter 6: The Media Diet
There’s a saying at my alma mater: getting an education at MIT is like taking a drink from a firehose.12 The same could be said for staying informed in the information-saturated environment we live in today. As Richard Saul Wurman put it in his 1989 book Information Anxiety: “One of the most anxiety-inducing side effects of the information era is the feeling that you have to know it all. Realizing your own limitations becomes essential to surviving an information avalanche; you cannot or should not absorb or even pay attention to everything.” That book was published at a time before e-mail was popular, so the quote refers to the deluge of print-based information. The sentiment is even more relevant today. The age of bits has brought on a stupendous multiplication of information we’re now invited to engage.
Consider the many kinds of media that vie for our attention today on a regular basis. These are just the periodical media, the sources that ask us to commit to reading, viewing, or listening on a regular basis. (“One-offs” like books and movies add even more to the noisy media environment.)
Offline media:
Magazines
Newspapers