Something to think about
Tony Schwartz (President of The Energy Project, Author of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working) has an interesting article “The Death of Depth: Less and Less of More and More” on the Huffington Post. You can read the full article here.
It gives an insight into the present “time” of short messages, headline reading, Twitter and blogging… often to the detriment of reading more in-depth analysis of various topics. The “fast-food” as it applies to reading.
To me it was an eye opener as I often “skim through” the material that I have to read. Useful in my profession as a writer, but less useful when I set out to learn something.
My method for serious reading is often a quick read-through (the “skimming”) and when I have determined the usefulnes of the information I give it a better and more thorough read. I also use the “serious” reading to take notes, underline text or – in the case of digital PDF files – make annotations both as highlights and as inserted notes.
Valuable texts I file away as “resource” files and I often return to them for additional information.
I like the PDF files as they permit me to do a search of all the documents in a given resource file.