Active Reading: Magazines and Professional Journals

Question: Any way to cut to the essential ideas of articles in professional journals and magazines?

Answer: A two-step preview

In reading professional journals and magazines, you want to find the important ideas quickly. Here’s how.

1. First and Last Paragraph
Read the first and last paragraph of the first article. If you have learned all that you need from the first and last paragraphs, simply jot a very brief summary and move on to the next article. You need to jot down that summary or you will find that later, when you pick up the journal or magazine, you will have forgotten what the article was about.

2. First Sentence of Each Intermediate Paragraph
If, after reading the first and last paragraph of the article, you have questions, go back and read the first sentence of each paragraph. Answered your questions? Know the main idea and details? Know enough? Go on to the next article.

Important Ideas in Little Time
My experience has been that for most articles in journals and magazines, reading the first and last paragraphs of the articles is usually enough to tell me what I want to know. With three or maybe four articles in a journal or magazine, I need to read the first sentence of each paragraph to find important details to answer my questions.

Only VERY RARELY is the article good enough that I have to read the entire article—at the most, one article a journal or magazine, but often none. When the article requires a complete reading, I never resent it. I want to know all that the author can tell me. Articles that require me to read everything are very special.

Reading for Ideas
This way of reading is what I call reading for ideas. And you can gain twenty to thirty ideas in just one fifteen-minute session with professional journals and magazines by reading the first and last paragraph and, occasionally, the first sentence in each intermediate paragraph. Remember to summarize briefly the article and the ideas that are important to you or you will forget what the article is about later when you pick it up again.