The article is yellow from top to bottom, and you still cannot say what you will do with it. You’re staring at the 12-page industry PDF you pulled up for this project, half your highlighter ink gone, all you have to show for it is a wall of neon that blends every key point into every throwaway anecdote. That neon felt like progress an hour ago, but now you can’t pick a single next step to tie any of that text to the work you’re actually doing this week.
Arrange your three materials before you touch the highlighter
First, pull the article tab into its own separate browser window, close all other open tabs and turn on do not disturb mode on your laptop so you don’t get pulled to Slack, your inbox, or a social media notification mid-pass. Second, open the lined notebook sitting to your right to a completely clean spread, tuck any half-written to-do lists or scrap paper under the notebook so they don’t distract you. Third, set a physical timer or your phone timer for 10 minutes, no more, even if the article is 12 pages long – the verb pass only picks the actionable bits, you don’t need to parse every statistic, case study, or offhand anecdote right now. You don’t need 4 different colored highlighters, that rainbow of marks just adds extra work you’ll never reference later; a single yellow highlighter or the built-in PDF highlight tool works perfectly, no extra supplies required. You also skip making a separate digital note file for this pass, everything you need goes either on the article itself or the single notebook page in front of you. You’ve spent weeks in the past going back to articles with whole-paragraph highlights that you never reread, because you couldn’t pick out the actual instruction buried in all the extra context you marked for no reason, so this setup cuts out that extra clutter before you even start.
Move through the text only marking action words
You start at the top of the first page, scrolling or flipping one page at a time, no skimming ahead to see how much is left. For every line, you only highlight the main verb tied to an explicit action someone can take. You don’t highlight nouns, adjectives, data points, or personal stories, even if they feel interesting or clever – if there’s no action attached, you leave it unmarked. If a verb is tied to an action that’s relevant to your current work, you add a single 1-word note in the margin next to it, no full sentences, no extra context, no scribbled side thoughts that will make no sense to you when you come back next month. This keeps your marks limited to verb-only marks and one margin verb per relevant line, so you don’t end up with walls of neon that blur together later. You don’t stop to look up a term you don’t recognize or cross-reference another project mid-pass, you just mark the verb and keep moving. If you find yourself tempted to highlight a full sentence or paragraph, pause for 2 seconds, pick the core verb out of that block, highlight only that word, and keep going. You skip the urge to color-code different types of actions with different highlighters, that highlighter rainbows that feel like work but don’t add any value when you come back to the notes later. As you mark each relevant verb, you can log it in this simple table as you go, no extra formatting or detail required:
| Page number | Highlighted verb | Margin note (1 word max) |
|---|---|---|
| Illustrative example: 4 | Audit | Budget |
| Illustrative example: 7 | Test | Copy |
| Illustrative example: 11 | Schedule | Check-in |
You only add a line to the table for verbs that tie directly to work you’re already doing, you don’t log every single verb you mark if it doesn’t apply to your current priorities.
End the pass as soon as every actionable line has a mark
You are done with the pass as soon as you reach the last page of the article, no exceptions, even if you feel like you missed some important bits. That’s the only visible marker you need to stop – no going back to re-scan pages you already flipped past, no adding extra notes to lines you already marked, no adjusting highlights that you think are too faint or out of place. You don’t extend the timer even if you have 2 pages left when the alert goes off, you speed up for those last pages and only mark the very most obvious actionable verbs if you’re running short on time. This is how you get through a 12-page article in one verb pass in under 10 minutes, no extra time spent lingering on bits that don’t matter for your current work. If you marked fewer than 3 verbs total, that’s fine – it means the article had very little actionable content for you, and you didn’t waste hours highlighting every interesting line just to feel like you did work. You close the highlighter tool or put the physical highlighter down on your desk as soon as you hit the last page, no extra adjustments allowed, and you push the article slightly to the side so you can move to the next step.
Jot one aligned verb on your to-do list before closing the tab
Once you’re done with the pass, you look over all the verbs you marked (or the table you filled out) and pick the single most relevant one that ties directly to work you have scheduled this week. Write that verb plus a 3-word context note on the first open line of your to-do list or your calendar for tomorrow, no extra details needed. For example, if you highlighted “audit” on page 4 tied to your Q3 budget, you write “Audit Q3 budget” on your to-do list, no extra links, no long descriptions, no deadlines added unless you already know exactly when you’ll do it. If none of the verbs you marked are relevant to work you’re doing right now, you write “File [article name] for later” on your to-do list, and you move the PDF to your reference folder right after, no hoarding it in your open tabs for months where you’ll never look at it again. You don’t copy all the marked verbs over to your notes, you only take the one most relevant action, so you don’t clutter your to-do list with 10 extra tasks you’ll never get to. You can find more examples of how to tie these marked verbs to existing tasks over at Find Core Insight if you get stuck picking the right one. You don’t need to save the highlighted version of the article unless you know you’ll reference it again later, you can delete it or archive it right after you jot down that one line if it has no other use for you.
Run this same pass on the first long article you open next Monday
Next Monday, when you sit down at your desk and pull up the first long article you actually read for work that day, you run this exact same pass before you do any other highlighting or note-taking. You don’t overcomplicate it, you just grab your highlighter, set your 10 minute timer, and mark only verbs as you flip through the pages. You don’t try to add extra steps or adjust the process to fit a different type of article, the same steps work for industry reports, case studies, blog posts, and even book chapters you’re reading for professional development. If you find yourself slipping back to highlighting full paragraphs or using multiple highlighter colors, you pause for 10 seconds, reset your timer, and start the pass over from the first page, only marking verbs this time. You don’t need to track how many articles you run this pass on, you just use it for every long text you read that has actionable steps you might want to use later, no extra work required. You’ll notice within 2 passes that you spend far less time highlighting and far more time actually using the information you read, no extra planning or preparation needed.