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Managing digital overload with... paper?
Bit literacy is a system for managing information in these days of infinite bits... and even thriving in such an environment. It starts with managing e-mail, continues with using a bit-literate todo list, and moves into many other areas I've touched on.
And bit literacy is a digital system - by, with, for, about bits. It stands to reason that if the cause of overload is digital, then the system to combat overload would be digital as well. The system has to match the challenge. If you want to learn to swim, you don't take cello lessons. If you're traveling to Poland and you want to speak the local language, you don't take classes in Tibetan. If you want to manage bits, you've got to learn to manage bits.
And which is why, with no disrespect meant to the good people who teach or practice it, I've never understood the appeal of other organizational systems, aimed at today's knowledge worker, that focus on paper.
For example, from a blog post I came across recently, My GTD Implementation (emphasis mine):
So of course I have gone through several iterations of how I utilize the methodology. First, I was solely in Outlook - keeping all of my appointments and Next Actions within Outlook using the white paper released by DavidCo as the instruction booklet for implementation. Then I moved to paper. And there are countless notebooks and binders in my home office from the numbers of attempts at creating the "best" GTD system I could get.
You're learning to manage bits by... writing in paper notebooks and on 3x5 cards?
Of course paper is more effective at some things than bits. I carry pen and paper to many meetings, not a heavy laptop or an expensive and fragile PDA. A fifty-cent notebook and five-cent pen do just fine to jot down notes.
But what happens when I want to share those notes - or follow up on a todo someone promised to accomplish - or back up what I wrote - or edit, extend, and add them to a presentation I'm building or a column I'm writing? Editing, sharing, transmitting, backing up - those are all things that bits do better, often infinitely better, than paper.
With that said, I'll say that getting organized on paper is MUCH better than not being organized at all. For that matter, organizing oneself with any system, in any medium, no matter how relevant or irrelevant, is better than not being organized. But in the age of bits, as we engage more and more information, it will become so much more important to know how to manage those bits. Paper won't cut it.
Wouldn't it be more efficient just to learn how to use the computer in the first place? Again I point to step one, step two, and so on.
If you read on he says "...I then moved (briefly) to using a full Web 2.0 implementation of GTD, using applications such as Remember the Milk and 30 Boxes but soon learned that portability was an issue. And then soon after I began work in an environment where I didn’t have access to the public Internet so that implementation was killed."
See, his goal was not alone to fight the ditigal bits, but also the offline and analog ones. Are we painting ourselves into a corner by solely relying on digital ways to fight the bits in our lives?
(BTW: When I click "Remember personal info?" there's a JavaScript error in line 104 (I use IE6)).
I really appreciate your site, newsletter and thinking on most issues. I do have to take exception here.
I think there are two fallacies in the article; "people manage bits" and "managing paper means you don't know how to manage bits"
"people manage bits"... actually, people manage information, which can sometimes be coded as bits. This isn't just pedantic; boarding passes, theater tickets and plenty of other things just aren't readily converted from paper to bits. And converting to and from bits, and displaying representations of bits takes devices, power, and perhaps bandwidth that isn't uniformly available in every situation someone might find themselves in (Issac Asimov wrote a great piece on the reading device of the future; the paperback book). And, from an experience point of view, typical digital devices don't engage the kinesthetic parts of the brain in the way that paper and writing do.
"managing paper means you don't know how to manage bits" ... "Instead of pulling out a stack of 3x5 cards, then, wouldn't it be
more efficient just to learn how to use the computer in the first place?"
If you can read about their efforts on the web, doesn't it suggest that they know how to use computers? It might be worth digging deeper to understand the motivations of people who can set up sites, blog and do many other sophisticated digital tasks, but choose to use paper.
With those two points out of the way, keep up the good work!
p.s. I filled in name and email, previewed the post, and when I went to post, was queried again because the site had dropped the fields when I previewed. It'd be nice if it remembered!
I agree with Pat Morrison that people manage information, not necessarily bits, and that people may have motivation to choose paper. Consider someone who has a ritual each morning to copy their to-do list from yesterday's 3x5 card to a new one. Crazy, when a computer can do this so easily? No! It's a great way to make sure the information is in your head, to make sure you understand what's on your list, to have an opportunity to re-prioritize, and to take a little time to think about what you want to accomplish today. There's a (perhaps subtle) difference between *using* computers and *relying* on them, and maybe the most bit-literate people understand this and choose to do some things by hand for very appropriate reasons.
A related musing: Since mobile phones store numbers so easily in directories organized by name, I wonder if the skill of remembering a few important phone numbers is being lost. I don't know, for example, my wife's mobile number (although I call her often; the number's stored in the phone). This is a problem if I ever lose my phone or get it wet or let the battery lose its charge, etc., etc. If I dialed the number "the long way" (dialing the 10 digits) regularly, I'd remember it, and having that information in my head has some value that ought to be judged against having that information stored in an electronic repository, no matter how well backed up it is.
I would agree with Troels. People manage information, not bits. At the level of our experience, to-do lists are still made up out of words, not 1s and 0s.
The turn to analog organizational tools is not some Luddite rejection of technology. Rather, I see it as in keeping with the flexibility required of knowledge workers, which includes the constant search for new and better ways to manage information. Since we straddle both material and digital worlds, shouldn't we feel free to use tools from both worlds? In some instances, paper can still have its advantages (as some of the other comments have so eloquently pointed out).
Thus, while there are some analog purists out there, I think the interest in paper actually reflects the desire among knowledge workers to use whatever tools work best. Sure, computer literacy is essential. But does that mean we all have to become digital purists? If anything, thinking about the inherent limitations and possibilities of paper can actually help us see new possibilities within digital technology.
I think Matt's post said it really well, particularly "I think the interest in paper actually reflects the desire among knowledge workers to use whatever tools work best."
I didn't think of them for this morning's post, but I'd point toward two resources for further consideration of the matter:
1) 43folders.com - Merlin Mann seems to be making a career out of showing how to combine techie gadgets with 3x5 cards to be productive... with reflection on when and why to do one or the other.
2) Edward Tufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/) has a great deal to say about the value of paper for understanding information, among other things how poor screen resolution is compared with paper's resolution.
I've found that the further forward I go in my career and life the more I depend on paper. For solving design problems no computer is as valuable a tool as my engineer's pads or jumbo-sized Rhodias and when I'm on the go no PDA or phone can match the speed, durability or usability of a small pad and a pen. I keep all my meeting notes in a single inch and a half thick bound notebook so everything stays in order and in place.
My main complaint with the GTD approach is that it advocates integrating your work and personal life completely. In fact now that I am more disciplined about keeping those things apart I get more done than. I like having a division there and just like I use separate email clients for work and personal email I use different paper for different aspects of my life. The physical aspects of the objects I'm handling are important to me and allow me to quickly identify and categorize things. If I take notes on my laptop I can't identify them by that doodle I made in the corner.
For me the computer is the ultimate production tool but there's nothing quite like a big piece of graph paper and a soft pencil for actually solving problems. If I come up with something really good I'll be more than happy to transcribe it. In fact that frequently gives me an opportunity to iterate and improve my ideas.
Just came across this post and saw my GTD implementation article quoted. I get your point Mark. But I don't think the most effective method of solving issues in our lives is best using the same methods we used to create the issue in the first place - meaning handling digital overload with digital means. To quote Einstein, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Bottom line, paper is just better than digital...for me. Last point, it's not about learning how to manage bits...it's actually just managing the bits however you can. Analog or digital. I'm a Sr. Project Manager with a background in development...I can manage my digital bits. :) Thanks for the post Mark. Your blog is great and on my reading list!