Filtering and Fast ways to read Magazines.

I felt like I wasted my day today. Did a bit of email, read some trade/business magazines, ran some errands but other than that - nothing. It was pointed out to me that I should not feel that bad - I did fly in on the red eye this morning.

My time saving tip for the day is to share magazines with someone else who can higlight the important articles to read. My father started doing this with Business Week many years ago. He would read it and mark on the page numbers and pass it on to my brother Glen or I to pass on to the other.

Another favourite speed reading tip that I sometimes use is to read the first and last paragraph of any article. In many cases, you will get 90% of the content of the article in a fraction of the time.

One Business Week article that caught my eye (it was old (Jan 30/06) since our technique of passing magazines around can take a while) was an article on Stealth Sponsorship. This is where "independant" journalists or writers write an article with a favourable view on something while being paid by the company that gets the favourable view. This was apparently done in the payday loan industry. Some influential syndicated journalists lost their jobs over it.

This brings me to a topic I discuss often - filtering. Just because something is in print (or on the internet) does not make it true. I am very wary of ulterior motives. I am also aware that I need to accept others' opinions just as ideas and fliter them. Accept the ones I like and reject or modify the ones I do not.