So the piles of Inc. The Atlantic, Fast Company, Success and World Magazine just kept growing. I even shlepped a stack of them from Chicago to Duluth, MN when I moved.

I needed a better way to consume magazine information in a timely fashion.

So the information connoisseur in me created a system for sifting through magazines and other materials for what I considered the gems, in a timely fashion.

It’s worked so well my stack dwindled from 50+ magazines, to the five I have currently.

If you’re looking to tame magazine stacks as well, feel free to take my methodology and make it your own.

1. Start by savoring your magazine.

Upon receiving a magazine, take a few minutes or hours to enjoy it. Cracking open the latest issues of Inc. is a gift all its own. At this stage there’s no timeline or expectation that you are going to be done with the magazine any time soon.

2. Toss it into a rack or basket, to be devoured at more depth when you’re in the mood, once you’ve read your favorite stuff.

Allow your magazine to simmer for a few days or weeks. Read chunks as the mood strikes you.

3. A few weeks later when you have time to relax, grab a magazine, and then work from back to front, tearing out and/or reading every article you feel you want to read and apply to your life.

I can’t explain why precisely moving from back to front helps more efficiently extract information worth keeping from the magazine, perhaps it’s the simple action of seeing the material in a different order. Just for clarification, I still read the individual articles themselves from beginning to end. I just try to tackle the content of the magazine based on what’s furthest to the back, and then work my way forward.

4. Out of the articles you found worth reading, set aside articles that contain a useful next step or steps you want to apply in your life, or contain information you want to keep as a reference.

In addition to everything you don’t want to read, trash everything in the magazine you found interesting but you can’t see yourself realistically ever needing to refer to for any reason.

5. Take the stack of articles you’ve torn out or marked, and find a way to save them digitally.

My quick method of archiving materials effectively:

• Often your printed magazine comes with a digital version for your iPad or Kindle or phone or computer, or archived issues are free on the website. Take advantage of just being able to save the digital copies.

It’s a lot less hassle than having to convert printed magazine articles into digital documents.

This also allows you to toss the magazine while in the back of your mind knowing it is accessible, should you ever really need it. For information junkies like myself, this gives me the mental freedom to feel like I can toss it without worry.

Whether available electronically or you have to manually digitize the article or key points, do what you have to do to eliminate the paper versions.

Not only does it avoid cluttering up your house, but you can use search functionality to find what you want versus having to rely on folders. Most apps for magazines also include an easy way to save a piece of a page digitally, rather than an entire page from a digital magazine.

• If there is no digital version, then scan it, or take a digital picture of it from within Evernote, or type it in.

Whether you type it, scan it, write it or save it from a digital version, stick it into Evernote or OneNote. Having used both tools for years, I personally recommend Evernote for reasons I’ll get into in a future blog post.

• If you want more information on how to catalog your notes with folders or tags, here’s a great primer on that for Evernote, which I strongly recommend using.
• Then toss the physical magazine, and move on to the next one. Only do what feels fun in one sitting. For me that’s no more than two or three magazines. Don’t try to do 10 magazines in a sitting. If you’re like me, you begin either saving everything because you want to get rid of the magazine but you’re not in the mood to read so many articles at the time, or you trash stuff you would have liked to read or save, in a misguided effort to rush to get rid of the magazine.

No matter how big the pile if you just employ this method for a couple magazines a week, you’ll steadily trim the pile down, while deriving the full benefits from the magazines.

Naturally a set of articles you’ve read and cataloged to refer to later is more useful to you than one sitting in a growing stack.

What methods have you found useful when it comes to escaping from growing piles of magazines?

I’d love to hear your advice below.