Guest Post by Chris Garrett: Confessions of a PDF Addict
When this showed up in my inbox from fellow Bubba and Internet extraordinaire Chris Garrett (yep; the co-author with Darren Rowse of Problogger: Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six-figure Income), hey, it was a blessing indeed!
Chris reveals a little about himself while contributing a practical tip for those of you who love to download free stuff. (No need to raise your hand; we’re all guilty of this one, I bet.)
A tip o’ the hat to ya, Chris, for being brave and coming clean!
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Confessions of a PDF Addict
My name is Chris Garrett and I am a PDF addict.
OK, there are probably worse addictions, but I really need to own up to this one. You see, I am addicted to downloading free ebooks and whitepapers from web sites, which is not that bad on its own. The problem is I don’t read them!
Rather than helping my productivity, these books, whitepapers and reports are actually causing a problem in that I flit from one free gift to another with an endless list of stuff I need to get around to. That is while ignoring all the paid stuff I have sitting around gathering dust.
I once met a lady who was addicted to downloading and cutting out coupons and vouchers but never used them. She said it was the thrill of finding them that excited her, it didn’t matter if they got used. I think I started to become like that.
There is so much educational material out there, so many great resources, that no sooner have I downloaded something that seems interesting, I have found another equally compelling freebie and I am downloading that. I never sit down and consume these things, they just clutter up my hard disk, and so I never actually learn anything from them.
I worry I am becoming the “MTV generation” that we were warned about – attention span of a gold fish … ooh! shiny!
So I have come up with a solution, and luckily it does not require 12 steps.
- Only download anything that will absolutely definitely help with a current challenge
- If it does not match the criteria of #1 then bookmark it (I bet you never go back to it)
- Most free reports come with a stream of emails – if you don’t get value from the first two then unsubscribe
- Read the PDF immediately – no delays
- Implement what you learn as soon as you learn it – if you do not implement you are likely to forget any lessons gained
With this new system I am much more productive and actually making use of all the glorious free stuff that I come across – try it yourself!
Chris Garrett blogs at http://chrisg.com and ironically also writes for Cogniview, a leader in PDF conversion tools.
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By the way, if YOU’D like to write a guest post for the Middle Zone, talk to me! Remember, as it says up there on the label, “it’s about lessons learned from life”.
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13 responses so far
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I am also a pdf addict, but usually I will only download stuff from 1) people I know that I respect their advice and professional opinion about the subject matter and 2) from a site that offers value in content that I can also expect from the download.
The same as you, I often don’t read (This is definately NOT the case with Creating Flagship Content) however
I often think that I will do a writeup about the content and share the resource with other people, which is a fabulous idea so I need to quit procrastinating.
I also need to keep up with my learning and I have decided to put 4 hours per week aside just for reading (books, whitepapers, pdf’s ) this does not include blog posts, longer reading. My creativity tanks when I don’t absorb new insight and ideas.
Great post, I’m quilty too!
Vicky Hennegans last blog post..Easy, Fast, & Free Photo Editing
Good to see you here Chris, I am the exact opposite. I’m more of a free download skeptic, or pdf phobic. I admit fearing that they want to loop me into some scheme, some buy,buy,buy “bigger picture” idea!! Or if it’s in pdf format then I won’t be able to share it – I’m the type of person who enjoys sharing. I do love to learn though and will peek at something white paper -ish, if it’s recommended by someone I know! Like you!!
I must admit that I love pdfs. I see them, get them, and then I put them somewhere for “reading later”. Which I sometimes do (later). I think #4 ist important for me – read them immediately after downloading. Thanks, Chris!
Ulla Hennigs last blog post..Someday maybe or: what do You really want to do?
@Vicky – You have a talent for de-geeking things so you would definitely be a good person to digest content and share what you learn
I also am more likely to consume something from a person I always trust, for example anything by Brian Clark or Sean D’Souza
@Karen – There is nothing wrong with being PDF skeptic
I have had to unsubscribe from lots of email lists lately because the content was thin and the ebooks were essentially brochures.
@Ulla – I have a terrible habit of losing stuff I even pay for. I just bought a new copy of a book in print form because I lost the digital version!
Chris Garretts last blog post..UsefulTools Critique
I am there with PDFs and paperbooks. Our home is overrun with bookshelves (almost no room for children!)
Did you know you can email PDFs to Kindle? I’m outta memory now.
Herte are 18 FREE EBOOKS worth reading immediatly http://budurl.com/freebooks (couldn’t resist tempting you) hehe
Thanks for advice.
Chris, Thanks for covering this delicate topic and helping all of us information junkies to come out of the closet. While I dislike PDFs, I accumulate web pages in my various bookmarking locations at a furious rate. And just as you say – I rarely go back and read something I failed to read right away. Unfortunately, my bookmark areas are so overrun with links I’d have a hard time finding something if I needed it. Some of your tips – and the philosophy behind them – will help, so thanks!
Brad Shorrs last blog post..This Is So Ironic … Or Is It?
I am so right there with you, only it’s ALL books for me
I have to say tho, PDFs are wonderfully handy. I bought three Poor Richard books years ago, I think from Chris Pirillo. I was rereading two of them this week and so MAD at myself because the third book is a hardback, languishing in a box somewhere never to be found, while the two I was reading were PDFs and easily findable with the search function! Granted, I may someday have to buy them their very own hard drive, but it will be worth it
One thing I am doing to help myself get to them better is saving all new ebooks to a file marked UNREAD. Then I make sure to take at least a few with me on long plane trips. They are great on full planes where I’m too scrunched to work on my laptop.
Speaking of book addictions, I won’t even get into my podcast collection…
I’m guilty of this myself. I likely have hundreds of PDFs and ebooks in my “to read” folder that I haven’t glanced at or thought of since downloading.
Worse yet.
They aren’t all free ones :-/
LOL, I couldn’t help but read this post with your clever title. I have similar addictions, but I am very unorganized, so you can imagine the mess I get in to on my windows desktop
Brad,
regarding the bookmarks problem: I had that myself. I’ve got a pc at on office which has firefox and ie, both with separate bookmarks. I’ve got a pc at a second office which has ie and a lot of bookmarks. And I’ve got a notebook at home with firefox.
I did two things:
1. I try to use delicious for saving bookmarks. I can access delicious from every computer with internet access, so this solves the problem of having differing bookmarks on three computers.
2. I try to go through my bookmarks regularly in order to check whether they are still important to me or not. I still should do that more often than I actually do it, but it helps. and sometimes I find proper juwels again…
Ulla Hennigs last blog post..Someday maybe or: what do You really want to do?
WoW, Robert. Am I dreaming here? The co-author of Problogger, Chris Garrett is guest writing the post here! It’s truly unbelievable…
By the way, I agreed with this sentence, “Read the PDF immediately – no delays”. As I normally downloaded the PDF files and let it over at the desktop for over months or years! Shame on me…
[...] Confessions of a PDF Addict, by Chris Garrett [...]
I am not a PDF addict but i like freeloading and freebies
. Its the privilege of people who uses internet to find free movies,books,and many others. I think there’s nothing wrong with it since people are paying for their connections anyways 