Reading With Intent

When I was in Uni, I thought I was a great reader. I’d blast through dense papers, get the key facts, scribble some notes, and move on. After graduating and starting work, reading emails and documents I did the same – until I started seeing how much was lost between the lines.

The way a document is read shapes how future documents are written. When teams read carefully, they write with more precision. But when skimming becomes the norm, bad assumptions multiply.

Skimming is fine for novels. Your brain fills in the gaps, keeps up with the plot, and you enjoy the ride. But when you skim work documents, you’re not just skipping fluff – you’re missing the facts. Worse, you’re opening yourself up to being misled. Whether through laziness or intent, people lie. They omit crucial details. They bury important truths in a flood of words, sometimes deliberately, but often because they haven’t fully thought things through, or have made unsubstantiated logical leaps.

The only defense is to slow down, read properly, and think critically about what’s being said – and what’s being left out.

Recently, in our weekly business review, I noticed something interesting. The report noted that our API fault rates had dropped significantly, crediting a recent release for the win. That sounded nice – but also suspicious. As far as I knew, we hadn’t touched anything API-related, just some UI tweaks and dependency updates. So I followed up with the author and the engineering manager.

Well. Turns out, a dependency update had quietly changed a default config and stopped shipping logs to our metric server. The numbers looked better, but only because we were flying blind. No real improvement – just an illusion of success. If I hadn’t paused, questioned, and dug deeper, we wouldn’t have caught it. A missing detail in a document can be a clue, a warning sign, a little red flag that tells you: something here doesn’t add up. Spotting that gap led to a real fix.

Reading actively means engaging with the words, not just letting them pass through your eyes. Sub-vocalize – hear the sentences in your head. Every comma, every stat, every footnote was (hopefully) placed with intent. If you rush past, you won’t learn from the doc, and you won’t notice when something doesn’t add up. What seems like a minor phrasing shift might actually be the difference between an honest statement and a deceptive one. When the details matter, every single one deserves scrutiny.

Tips: Critical Thinking Guide, UNSW

You also need to consider the ramifications. What does this document really mean? What’s the hidden assumption? If someone is presenting an outcome, a plan, a budget, or a strategy, ask yourself: Who benefits? Who gets screwed? If a claim relies on a number, check that number. If a conclusion seems obvious, ask why it wasn’t reached sooner. Reading critically is a skill, and like any skill, it gets sharper with practice.

How to Read Like It Matters

Tips: Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls

On note-taking: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking

Slow down. If you skim, you’ll miss what’s important. Read every sentence as if the truth is hidden between the words.
Sub-vocalize. Hear the text in your head. It forces your brain to process it properly instead of just recognizing words on a page.
Look for deception. Lies by omission, misleading stats, conveniently vague phrasing – if something feels off, dig deeper.
Take notes. With a pen. Print out the doc and mark it up. The kinesthetic feedback of writing helps long-term memory, and hinders skimming.
Think about consequences. What is this document really saying? Who benefits? What happens if this plan is followed?

The Problem with PowerPoint

PowerPoint isn’t a document. It’s a trick. A magic show for people who don’t have time to think.

See: Edward Tufte, PowerPoint Does Rocket Science – and Better Techniques for Technical Reports

It wasn’t built for depth – hell, it wasn’t even built for truth. It was built to skim. Bullet points strip the meat from an argument, leaving only the bones. Charts smooth out the ugly wrinkles of real data. The whole format lulls you into thinking you understand something when all you’ve really done is glance at it.

You don’t read a PowerPoint. You sit back, half-listening, half-scrolling on your laptop, letting it wash over you like highway hypnosis. You absorb just enough to feel like you were paying attention. And that’s dangerous.

PowerPoints are for salesmen and politicians. People who need you to believe something without thinking too hard about it. They promise clarity, but what they deliver is the illusion of understanding. And illusions? They don’t just mislead – they blind you.

What to Do Instead

Write it out. In full sentences. With full thoughts. Because if an idea matters – really matters – it deserves more than a slide.

Real thinking takes time. It takes effort. It takes words strung together in a way that makes sense. A document forces you to connect ideas instead of just stacking them in a list like firewood.

And if you must use slides, use them to add spice to your presentation, not a crutch. Slides are no substitute for real data.

The real story is in your voice, not in a bullet-pointed list floating on a blue gradient background.

The Bottom Line

Reading isn’t just about getting information – it’s about understanding it. Understanding is what keeps us from making bad decisions.

And more than anything, reading with intent is about getting real feedback to the author. That helps you, the author, and your team.

A well-written document makes for better discussions, sharper thinking, and fewer stupid mistakes.

Skim a novel if you want (though you’ll miss the best parts). But when it comes to real work? Read. Think. Take the time.

Because a bullet point never helped anyone.