Extreme Productivity - Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours

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READING EFFECTIVELY

Once when I was trying to help two young science students improve their reading skills, I looked at what they had underlined in a twenty-page chapter from their chemistry textbook. One student had underlined every other sentence on every page. The other student had underlined only three sentences in the whole chapter. Both of those approaches reflect poor reading skills; it is impossible that so much of the chapter—or so little—was important enough to be underlined.

These two students were not unique. In 2003, a large study tested the reading skills of thousands of American adults; it found that only 31 percent of U.S. college graduates could be considered “proficient” readers.¹

READING THE NEWS

If you want to be an effective ...