Speed Reading: How To Make It A Habit
Speed-reading can help you in several ways on the frontline, whether you are in your professional life doing a 9 to 5, or a college student studying for finals. If you make speed-reading a habit, it can help you progress in your career and personal life tremendously. By reading, you are able to learn more and consistently keep your mind stimulated, enabling you to grow and giving you an opportunity for greater things in life.
The extra knowledge you harness by doubling your reading speed could make you the all-star in your workplace and lead you to promotions. You may easily get a large raise in pay with the new knowledge you have armed yourself with. In fact you could pursue a course and step up your game and still have enough time for everything else. Yes, basically speed-reading can make you savagely invincible!
With this in mind, you will feel more motivated of practicing speed-reading every single day.
Methods of Speed-Reading
Whether it is your philosophy textbook you need to learn or the morning newspaper you need to run through, reading can get boring at some point. Therefore, you should train yourself to speed read and get through your tasks faster. Faster reading can be the cause of decreased comprehension, however if you practice you can overcome some of this effect.
Learning to Speed Read
1. Stop talking to yourself, i.e. quit subvocalization. A way to avoid this is to chew gum or hold a finger against your lips if you have the tendency of moving your lips. Subvocalization may help you remember concepts but it is a major reason for increased delays.
2. Train your eyes to see the right things and reduce jerky movements. You can do this by using index card with Xs drawn.
3. Set a pace faster than your mind can comprehend and use a pointer that can guide you through the text.
Skimming Text
Though skimming is not the perfect method when you need to study, i.e. for thorough reading it can be a great way to scan through newspapers and similar things. It gives you a shallow understanding of the text.
1. Begin by reading the headings and subheadings of the newspaper.
2. Next read the beginning and ending of the text. Make sure you are not going to fast so you can actually know your content.
3. Circle the keywords. To get a better understanding, you should brush through the text again and pick out words that are repeating, pronouns and words that seem unfamiliar. You can highlight them for helping you understand your content better.
4. Look at the pictures and graphs. They can tell much more to you in microseconds than text.
5. If you lose track, read the first sentence of the paragraph, it will help you get the gist of the subject.
6. Use annotations. Mark keywords as you go along and make sure it is a word that will give you an idea of the whole context.
Time Yourself
The best way to get better and natural at speed-reading is to mark your progress every time you read and deliberately speed up your reading. Calculate yourself on the basis of words per minute by reading for say 10 minutes and counting the words (amount of pages multiplied by words on each page) and dividing it by 10 to get your answer of how many words you read per minute. Gradually speed up your reading and aim on a target.
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