Keeping on top of work reading

[shrumps]

i have recently been promoted to a senior role and am really struggling with the amount of information I have to process (think government policy updates etc.) My day to day is very busy and I don’t seem to have time to sit and read reports without interruption - am I just doomed to a life of evenings and weekends lost to catching up with the necessary reading or does anyone have any tips for how I can better manage this?

Do you have protected time in your calendar for reading in the day? I found that people who have just been promoted into a more senior role are often trying to maintain the same level of input into tge general teamwork that they used to when the reality is you can't do that and be effective at G7 or above. Make sure you're really delegating!

The only options are block time in working hours, read outside working hours, or don't do the reading.

The first one is the best option!

Block a piece of time each day and observe it unless you are in a work culture that would expect the overtime approach.

Put the reports/reading in Co-pilot or Chatgpt and ask it to summarise the relevant points It will take AI seconds to give you a one page synopsis of the relevant points.
Co-pilot is a revelation and heaven sent as far as I am concerned it has made my life a million times easier.

Put the reports/reading in Co-pilot or Chatgpt and ask it to summarise the relevant points It will take AI seconds to give you a one page synopsis of the relevant points. This is only ok if shallow knowledge is sufficient but not if you want to actually understand things! Plus AI often misses the key points, and has no contextual understanding.

Agree that blocking time is the way to go, but sometimes you need to be clever about when that is depending on your role! In my old job, I would have blocked myself out first thing because everything always kicked off as the day went on and id end up prioritising more pressing tasks at the end of the day to get ahead. In my current role, I dont have a lot of urgency but I do have lots of 'regular' work so I do that up front, meetings in the middle, time blocked to catch up on reading at the end. (Disclaimer: my role includes research time so its slightly easier for me to justify letting other things wait than it might be for you)

Thanks so much all for taking the time to reply - I guess I’m just getting used to the new level of work load, will definitely work on blocking out time - first thing in the morning could work well.