I have been learning speed reading techniques in the past week. The good news, my speed is up by 200% (to around 350 wpm). The bad news, my comprehension is down by 50% (from 94% to 52%). Not quite what I expected, as the effect evens out to almost zero. I don’t want my comprehension to suffer from it…
Yet I still feel I’m making progress. Learning how to speed read is not a simple trick, it requires training. The eye muscles have to get used to the new way of reading. It’s pretty similar to starting to run actually. If you’re untrained and start to train, you’re not ready for the marathon in a week. I definitely feel my muscles, 30 minutes of training is hard on the eyes, they are tired after that. I wonder if I need to do a cooling down for these muscles as well…can these muscles get sore as well?
I’m keeping up with the practice, and learning the new techniques from the book. I also have to master the different skill of understanding several words at one glance too. Here are some links on the subject and some tools for those who want to take a shot at it.
- Spreeder
For faster single word recognition - Reading soft
Test your current speed and comprehension - Speed reading 13yr old (video)
Besides that it’s amazing, it also shows some of the techniques - Wikihow
Well…a how to, as can be expected from wikihow - Abasoft speed reading
There’s some software there, but visit them for a lot of information, tools and links - Double your reading rate
A post on the subject by Scott H Young - Overclock your reading speed
A recent post on the subject by Kim Roach on Zen Habits
