Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [25]
A healthy media diet, however, pays long-term dividends from a relatively tiny investment in time and discipline. Bit literacy allows you to create a media diet that...
is based on what’s important to you, not to any other person, publisher, or company;
draws on the tiny minority of sources that do serve you some purpose;
ignores the huge ocean of irrelevant or redundant sources;
is an active portfolio that you can change, in order to keep it as pertinent as possible; and
is as small as possible.
The last point, on minimizing size, deserves some focus. In creating your media diet you must draw on as few sources as possible, and spend as little time as possible, in order to be fully informed. Always remember that time is your most precious resource, so you must always look for ways to skip, scan, defer, prune, and delete sources from your media diet. “Let the bits go” in this context becomes “let the sources go.” As with e-mail and todos, removing the overload leads to greater productivity and more peace of mind.
Once you have a media diet, you—and no one else—are in control of what you read, watch, and listen to. And you know the specific reasons why you engage each of your sources. Think of the media diet as a team of advisers you’ve hired to inform you about the world, on your terms. As the boss, you have to start by interviewing candidates, making some hires, and then continually evaluating how everyone is doing.
The media diet is a portfolio of sources with two main components: the lineup and tryouts.
Lineup
The lineup is the set of periodical media and other sources that have earned their place in your media diet and which you’re most likely to stick with (though you always have the ability to let them go). These are your most valuable sources, and you must know exactly why you engage each of them. There are three types of sources in the lineup: stars, scans, and targets.
Stars: These are the rare sources that consistently give useful, relevant information pertaining to one or more of your professional or personal interests. Stars are the sources most worth engaging (reading, viewing, or listening to), from beginning to end or close to it, on a regular basis. As such, they demand a good bit of time, so your media diet shouldn’t contain many of them. In fact, depending on your available time and interest areas, you might do fine without any stars. In general, though, it’s healthy to have one paper periodical and at least one website that fit this category. (Two of my stars are the print edition of The Economist and the popular website boingboing.net.)
Scans: These comprise the majority of your lineup, perhaps three or four sources from a range of media types. Scans are sources that reliably deliver at least some relevant information. (My scans are the daily paper edition of the New York Times and a few websites and newsletters I read occasionally.) Scans are good either for engaging frequently for a subset of their content (as I do with the Times) or occasionally for all their content (as I do with some of the newsletters).
Targets: These are sources that are good for a single targeted use. For example, you might subscribe to a competitor’s newsletter just to read about their recent work. Or you may read a trade magazine to see if any of your clients or potential clients are mentioned, allowing you to send them a followup. When reading targets, be ready to clip: scissors for paper sources, copy and paste commands for bit-based sources.
The only way sources can make it onto a lineup is by going through the tryout phase.
Tryouts
Tryouts are sources that are not yet on the lineup, but are applying to be there. They must go through the tryout phase, almost like an extended job interview, in order to prove their worth for the media diet. Since a healthy media diet is as small as possible, it’s likely that a given tryout will not be accepted onto the team. Still, it’s worth continually being