Why Speed Reading?
Information, today, is pure POWER in our hands.
With so much of data out there, both online and offline we have reached a point in our lives what we can term as “information overload“.
Speed reading technique helps one to read with discipline a lot faster with good retention.
For whom?
This is very helpful for both children and adults.
It’s thus a great resource and technique for school goers, college students or working professionals too.
There was a time when I had to keep up with my studies in my management school, had to establish understanding simultaneously of the company product policies and guidelines where I was also doing my internship, plus I was habituated to reading a novel just to keep my head from spinning and to soothe my brain, with a good book at the end of the day.
What can I say, I just wanted it all!
Simply put, the idea in my head was not just to clear the exams and get the job for the day done, but to understand and implement what I had learned in my class and put it to practical use at work too. Make a difference and an impact at the same time.
This needed a good understanding of what I was reading & also good retention. This was something that most of us would face or would have faced at times.
What happened?
I cracked and I just couldn’t, it was……… It was well, pure “information overload” for me.
That’s when I came across this technique of “Speed ‘Quality’ Reading” and it helped me a lot.
So, I thought I would share some simple techniques that you may find useful even in your routine.
What does speed reading do?
Many a things; “TIME is Money”
- To start with, you can learn to read specific & important part of information more quickly.
- You may also get a better understanding of it with a disciplined practice.
- It helps one to even learn foreign languages quickly
- Today for anything and everything we just Google it online for work, fun & for learning, this technique will help us get the information quicker and only that which is practically useful.
There are lots of methods:
I am giving below few simple steps that worked for me and might even work for you.You can follow and scan through the simple steps given below and I hope it adds value to you & assists you in making your lives richer, more interactive and resourceful.
7 Simple steps that could help you in “Speed Quality reading”:
Use this technique in quiet places to start with. Eventually with practice you will be able to quality speed read even amidst noise around
- Skim through your book / content / text (Skimming is visually searching the sentences of a page for clues to meaning) – You can also look for Headlines, Titles, Sub titles, text with bold, italics, underlines etc in the page first and put them together. It helps you to get a gist of the text or content immediately.
- Use the Meta guiding technique. Use your index finger or mouse pointer or a pen, in order for the eye to move faster along the length of a passage of text. This reading dynamics system centers on moving one’s hand across the page in order to maintain eye focus on the words. It helps to read without getting distracted.
- Do not Read out aloud or sub-vocalize the words, instead associate with visuals. US Air force research shows you can recognize words in less than 5/100th of second while sounding it will consume more than twice that time.
- Slowly, increase speed in which you move your hands / finger pen etc and adapt to the speed
- Do not repeat and slowly learn to skip words like “as, and, it, then, if” etc
- If you are reading online or on a computer, try highlighting the text and reading it as reading white text on a dark background is easier than the reverse.
- Start with books / magazines where there are variations in fonts and types and then you can enter into textbook & other material reading slowly.
These are some really simple techniques that have helped me, hope you find it useful too.
(Do not try this if you are reading a legal document :))
Do give me your comments, suggestions & views from your own experiences too. Would love to hear from you.
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Enjoy!
Happy reading.
Ananth V
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