If you read a lot for your job

[SchoolHours]

Do you read on the computer screen? Tablet? Print everything out? Read on a screen and annotate or make notes on paper? What's normal these days? I always find it easier to read on paper, but is it a case of getting used to reading on a screen?

I hate having loose bits of paper and avoid them at all costs, to the extent that if I am given a paper handout in a meeting I will scan it into my iPad. I read everything for work on an iPad and annotate with an Apple Pencil.

I read from various sources and then have to analyse and synthesise. I draft by copying and pasting chunks of text from different on-screen docs and then editing it on screen either in word or a blank email.

I print out less than 5% of what I read, mainly longish documents, like contracts or policies, that I need to flick back and forth to make sense of it or make cascading changes. I find I am doing this less and less and increasingly getting used to drafting and annotating docs on screen. I agree with the other poster that there are more typos and things missed out if you draft on screen than if marking up docs by hand. In my previous life as a practising lawyer, I used to work on massive contracts and I always marked up in long hand but did word searches on screen to catch all the global changes.

If I am taking notes of a meeting, I will usually write them in long hand on reverse of printed paper (so recycling the back of that paper). After the meeting, I pull out the action points and either throw away that paper or keep it with the rest of the notes on that project, held together with a bull dog clip. When the project is done, I chuck the entire stack. I find that easier to handle than blue jotter books that my colleagues like to use.

Everyone has their own style. My dh who is also a lawyer is almost completely paperless and he works on contracts all the time.