Want to survive in the world of business? Read actively.

Reading is something we all do every day. The question is do you read actively or passively. Reading actively is – not — what you think it is. It is not reading slowly and paying attention. That’s fine for some things, but not everything.

The idea here is to get the gist of how the document begins how it develops and how it ends. For this you scan the document. No, you don’t glance at it. You go through looking at the title of the document, the sub heading and enough of the subheads so you know what they’re about. Don’t try to understand everything. That comes nest. Continue to the end of the document.

Now go back to the beginning and give the document a word for word reading. Okay, you’re asking, why did I waste time scanning? Scanning is not a waste, it gave you an understand of what is presented, the order of presentation and an over all understanding so that as you do your word for word read you know where the document is going and what is important.