How I Read Reports and Take Effective Notes
How I Read Reports and Take Effective Notes
Effective strategies for reading and summarizing papers, and improving on your reports.
In Brussels, reports are being issued every week.
While not all are important for all lobbyists. But a few of them have a major relevance for most of us, including last month’s Letta report, and upcoming Draghi report.
The Letta report is 150 pages, while the latter is assumed to last for a wooping 500!
Therefore, if these two reports are relevant for you (or any other paper), how do you make sure you can read them fast, effectively, and report accurately on them to your managers?
Let’s get to it.
Know what to look for
Title and Table of Content
The first part of effective reading is to understand what you are reading.
For that, I first read the title — don’t laugh, this is a real thing, imma prove it to you.
The title of the Letta report is Much more than a market. That already tells you a lot about the content of the report. A report titled Recommendations for the Single market will be radically different, although it will cover the same topic.
After the title, I go through the table of content, if there’s any. This allows me to understand how the report is divided, and how the writer organises his arguments.
Going through the table of content also helps you identify the chapter which is most relevant for you. Depending on the content of the report, its overall importance, and/or the time allocated to you for the analysis of the report, you might want to start with this chapter.
Key terms and definitions
Once I understand what the paper, book, or report is about, and I’m ready to start, I start going through its content.
The first thing I am looking for is to find the key terms and definitions that the author uses. In the Letta report, for instance, a key term is “market”. It is important because it is in the title. But what does Enrico Letta mean by “market”? Certainly not the market stall in your village. He rather means the European Single Market.
Once you understand that, you can start having a conversation about the text.
Underline and comment
How do you speak to a piece of paper — or for the more modern of us, a pdf document?
I do that by having a pen and highlighter in hand. Even now that I have switched to a tablet to read work-related documents, I still make sure I highlight and comment on what I’m reading.
When I find an important piece of text (a sentence, a word, a paragraph), I underline it. If a question, a comment, a context, arise from what I’m reading, I write it in the margin. If a passage is really important, I note a little star next to it.
This way, I can really have a conversation with the text, where it teaches me what it knows, and I reply when I disagree, when I want to add a remark, or when I find it insightful.
By “discussing” with a text, you start to integrate its ideas into consideration. But that’s far from being able to report on it.
Summarize for complete understanding
So how do you report on a text that you’ve read?
You summarise it. I summarize my books at two levels. First, when I’m done reading a chapter, I jot a few lines about what it is about and what I learned thanks to it. Sometimes the summary is short because the paragraph didn’t teach me much. Sometimes I need a few pages just to list the many insights I got from it.
Then, when I’m done with the book, I summarise it in its entirety. What is, in a single sentence, the book about? What is the main point of the author? His main arguments? What did I learn from this book? etc.
Once you make this effort, you can report accurately on the reports you’ve read and, quite logically, remember it better.
Here is a photo of the summary I made for Ted Gioia’s How I Take Notes, from whom I stole many ideas about note-taking.
Pro-tip: you can now add the summaries you have made to your personal note library, creating a system for storing and remembering notes that you have been taking over the years.
I’m currently building this kind of library for myself, so I might write an article about it later on.
Until then, good reading!
Thanks for reading!
I’m Alexandre Météreau, EU lobbyists and campaigner.
The Beubble is a side project where I share insights and practical advice on EU policymaking and influence.
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