There is a document sitting in your inbox right now that deserves more than a scroll. A board pack, a proposal, a strategy deck. You will read it on a screen, in between other things, and you will miss half of what it is telling you.
Print it out. Read it with a pen.
What Happens When You Read on a Screen
Reading on a screen is fast. It is also shallow. Research on reading behaviour shows that people scan digital text rather than read it. Your eye jumps to headings, numbers, and bold text. You extract the surface without engaging the detail underneath.
For most things you read, that is fine. For a document that will shape a decision, it is not.
A board pack is not a news article. A proposal from a potential partner is not an email. These documents reward careful reading, and careful reading is harder on a screen than most people realise.
What You Notice on Paper That You Miss on a Screen
When you read on paper with a pen in hand, a few things change.
You slow down. You cannot skim as easily, so you read the sentences you would otherwise skip. Those sentences are often where the assumptions live.
You mark what does not add up. A question written in the margin stays there. On a screen, the thought passes and is gone by the time you reach the next page.
You see the shape of the argument. On paper you can flick back easily, hold two pages open at once, and see how the document holds together. On a screen you are always in one place.
Senior leaders who read proposals on paper consistently catch things their screen-reading peers miss. A number that does not match a figure three pages earlier. A claim with no evidence behind it. A section that answers a question no one asked while avoiding the one that matters.
How to Do It
Print the document before you read it. Set aside time with no other screen open. Read with a pen and mark anything that raises a question, anything you want to push back on, and anything that changes how you think about the decision.
When you finish, you will have a marked-up document that is ready for a conversation. You will also find that the conversation is sharper because you went in having actually read what was in front of you.
The Bigger Point
The documents that land on your desk as a founder or MD carry real weight. The way you read them should match that weight.
Printing a document and reading it with a pen takes longer than scrolling through it on a screen. That extra time is not a cost. It is the work.
