Reading strategy tips?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I work at a teaching-oriented state school, and I usually do not have much time for research. People shared a lot of strategies for writing, such as starting your day with an hour of writing, blocking some time everyday for writing, finding writing peers, etc. I find them very helpful. However, there seems not to be many tips for reading, which is the part of research I am struggling with. For example, I tried to reserve one hour each day for my own research, but it is usually not enough for me even to finish reading one paper, especially when I need to stop and think about some interesting points or arguments. Can people share some tips or suggestions on the "reading" part of research?

This is an excellent query, and I am curious to hear whether readers have any helpful tips. Here are two that immediately occurred to me:

1. Skim first, noting things that need greater attention: For me, one aim of reading is to get a broad picture of what is in the literature. While the details may matter if I need to dig into a piece more carefully, in the first instance I just skim. Along the way, if there are particular parts of a paper that are especially difficult or that I need to think about carefully, I'll usually highlight and make a margin note. I think if you skim an article, it's easy to read an entire article in one hour. Perhaps if you're in the OP's situation, you spend one hour of one day skimming, and then one hour the next day reading and thinking more carefully about a difficult part that you noted on day 1.
2. Write to read: I've heard a lot of really productive people say this, but in general it seems right to me. The most effective way to read for the sake of one's own research (as the OP says) is to actually have an idea that you're writing up. Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. First, spending all of your time reading before you begin writing can turn, in effect, into a procrastination method--as you might continually read and think about new things, but never actually put pen to paper. Second, setting this aside, what you are writing can, in effect, tell you what you need to read (and read particularly carefully). That is, writing can help you winnow down your choices of what to read, and what to focus carefully upon when you do read. 

But these are just two quick tips that I've found helpful. What about you all? Do you have any reading strategies or tips that you think the OP might find helpful?

Comments

[Tim]

I endorse Marcus' idea of skimming first. I normally say that there are different levels of reading: skimming, careful reading, a deep dive. I only increase the level of the reading if it is necessary for the paper that I am writing.

Here's something worth experimenting with. When I read, my "notes" consist in just extended quotations from the paper that I have verbatim copied. Then I add my commentary in between them. For a given paper, I will keep all of these "notes" in a single document/file. I like doing this because it means I don't have to re-read the entire paper--I can just look at the extended quotes. And all of the notes are in the same file, so I don't have to go flipping back and forth through many papers/PDFs/books.

[Guy Crain]

It is so easy to get overwhelmed in reading. Unless you're dealing in a super niche area, there will likely be mountains of semi-relevant articles/books you could go through. My initial grad school curse was the haunting feeling that I needed to read everything before I wrote a single word. That was a terrible strategy, but what's scary is it can make good sense--"What if I write something that I later find out is garbage if I had just read the next paper on the list before writing?"

Now, I read with a view toward looking for ways to cut down the reading list as brutally as possible.

First, the stuff I do read I read as though I'm looking for a reason why I don't need to read the entire piece. If I can say upon skimming 2-4 pages that I can't clearly incorporate this into a written project, I need to stop reading the moment I make that decision. Then I chuck it in a "already read and don't use" folder. Sometimes I revisit those papers if the ones that I can clearly use all cite one of them I initially abandoned.

A second way I have managed to cut down the reading list or "skim" more efficiently is to find out if that author has given a podcast interview concerning that work. Ten minutes into one of those interviews while I'm driving, walking, cooking, or at the gym can already tell me whether the actual paper is read-worthy or should go in the "don't use" folder. This has saved me a lot of time.

The reason I keep the abandoned stuff rather than deleting is that even if a piece isn't usable now, that reading wasn't wasted time. I can likely find a use for it later on, and I've saved a lot of time by already skimming it weeks or months earlier--I'm not doing an initial blind search for relevant sources anymore.