10 Steps To Read A Magazine

Magazines. They are the result of a lot of effort by a lot of people to bring you pertinent content. I personally know a few people who work in the magazine business and I appreciate all that they do. But how do you get the most out of a magazine? Here are 10 steps that I trust will help answer that question:

1. Subscribe to the right mags in the first place. Cancel all subscriptions that don't support your life mission (you do have a life mission don't you?)
2. Go straight to the table of contents. Don't let your eye wander.
3. Read the synopsis by each article. A good mag will provide a short recap of what each article is about.
4. Circle the articles that sound like they will help you move toward your desired life results (you do have desires results don't you?). Don't circle more than 3 or 4. Even if you find more than 4 that look interesting, you will only have so much time to devote.
5. Rip each article out of the mag. This assumes the mag is yours. The impact of ripping them out is to symbolically create a hard separation between the unnecessary content from the content that is likely to be useful to you.
6. Throw away the rest of the mag. Again, this symbolizes you are walking away from unnecessary content. It also removes all temptation to look back.
7. Read just the first sentence of each paragraph. Read more only when a sentence grabs your attention.
8. Jot down all bullet point thoughts of ideas, principles that are new to you. Jot them in your growth journal (you do have a growth journal right?)
9. Throw away the articles. Now that you have captured the essence of each article, you don't need the entire text. Don't worry. There will always be a constant stream of data flowing in this world.
10. Reflect on the bullet point list you generated. Do this over the weeks and months until the next issue rolls around, when you can start the process all over again.

Making the most of reading time is vital to serving strong. New data helps augment your efforts. But it doesn't help if the augmenting process takes you too long or you focus on the unnecessary content.

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