A Fine Read In The Tradition Of A Fine Wine

When I was still working there was never enough time in the day. Now that I’m retired, there’s even less time. Which makes no sense, but there you have it.

So I am always looking for ways to save time, or at least waste less of it. One of my major, serious, time sinks was The Economist. The magazine arrives every week – keeping up is impossible. But when it comes to international news and analysis The Economist can’t be beat. What to do?

The trick (which I discovered by accident) is to age each issue for two weeks before reading. You don’t need to put it in oak, just leave it on the reading stand.

Returning in two weeks you’ll find that a significant number of articles are out of date, and there’s no sense in spending time on them. It’s like a current events ‘spoiler’. You’ve cut your reading time by 50%!

At the same time the most important analysis and insights are still timely after two weeks. So you’re not missing anything.

Untimely News Doesn't Need Reading

There’s much more to say about The Economist, so if you are still with me…

Several other strategies come to mind. The most obvious would be to just not read some of the articles. Unfortunately you don’t know which ones will drop off and solve themselves.

Another strategy is to not get a print subscription, and just read articles from the website. Actually I tried this; there were two problems. The first is that I can’t read for any length of time from a computer screen.

The second is was that in the process of getting web access The Economist convinced me to renew the print subscription even though I didn’t want it. So now I was back to looking at the magazine every week.

Come back for our next post the subject of which is Dan Ariely’s book, “Predicably Irrational”. He explains how The Economist got me to pay for a print subscription I didn’t want, and also who to take with you on your next bar-hopping experience.