At least a few of you are suffering from “ebook overload.”
I know this to be true because you have told me so.
I have a solution for you. A way to help you reduce the clutter. A way to know when you have enough. Because you won’t ever get around to reading – in depth – everything you have sitting on your hard drive.
Here’s how you know when you have enough material:
Your next step is to execute on what you already have.
Don’t read, execute
There’s two points of view with respect to technical material: 1. you can read it, or 2. you can execute on it. Execution produces tangible results, reading doesn’t. (An hour of WordPress consulting to the first person who will leave a comment on which rhetorical device I used in that last sentence.)
Here’s how I evaluate and execute on ebook material:
- Scan the sales or promotion page If it’s something that looks interesting, fills a gap in my knowledge, I’ll grab it.
- Scan procured material at a high level. If I see something instantly useful, I’ll execute it on immediately. Speed of implementation and all that.
By “instantly useful,” I mean something I can get into play within an hour’s work during the same day.
- Later, budget time for carefully reading. But only for selected material with an emphasis on finding something more involved, something which will take a bit of time to learn, but will pay off in traffic, sales, or capability.
For example, I have material on ethically acquiring backlinks, and how to build compelling content using anticipation. Both of these will require some investment of time to learn. I’ll budget for it. - Know when to let go. Sometimes, I’ll pass on areas which open up too broad of a topic for me. For example, there is some list-building information I would like to learn, but I won’t clutter up my hard drive – and my head – with reams of information I have absolutely no time to process right now. I’ll get around to it later. It’s not like it’s going away.
Stash ebooks for later perusal
I’m sure, having hung in this far, you are computer-savvy enough to have some sort of backup or archiving scheme. If not, create a few folders on your PC for organizing. For random or general information, I sort by topic area: “list building,” “copywriting,” etc. Prolific authors get their own folders.
You can save these long with your usual backups… or do what I do, add them to a subversion archive running on a remote host. I use Wush.net, and have been extremely satisfied with their software and customer services. Revision systems have been traditionally relegated to the arcana associated with hard core developers, usually for compiled languages working on large systems. But their day is dawning for the regular computer user. It’s sort of a next step in your computer evolution. Subversion is a great first system to learn. Drop me a line if you need a leg up.
While your at it, go ahead and index all your pdf files for easier search. This will pay you back later.
