How-To: Speed Reading
At Lifehack.org How-to Wiki, we have some new content on speed reading. It currently covers the general information, some quick pointers on its techniques, and also myths about speed reading:
3) Speed reading is just skimming the material, you won’t understand it better.
This is dangerous because it is a half-truth. Speed reading is a process for reading everything, whereas skimming is a portion of reading at the upper limits of your reading rate. The techniques of speed reading are an attempt to slowly push your reading rate upwards so you can understand at a rate you used to be only able to skim.
The other benefit of speed reading is that you learn what to skim and what to slow down to a crawl. You can’t make a hairpin turn at two hundred miles per hour, but cruising an empty highway at fifty isn’t going to cut down on travel time. Similarly speed reading involves becoming comfortable moving up to your high rate, low comprehension zones of skimming and shifting down to your low rate, high comprehension zones.
Have you experienced speed reading? Do you have more tips? Contribute them to the wiki!
Reading - Speed Reading - [Lifehack.org How-to]
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Comments
Matt says on May 28th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I’m guessing the title was supposed to be either “How to: Speed Reading” or “How to Speed Read”. Either way, having the title “How to speed reading” makes an article about reading sound much less credible.
Leon says on May 28th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Okay, no problem. Added a colon.
Joshua B says on May 28th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
I’m relying more and more on http://www.spreeder.com/ to read web based stuff (In fact, I just read the wiki in it). It’s a great time saver. Now all I need is an easy “real life” alternative for all those books I want to read.
Personal Development says on May 29th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Readers are leaders.
-Carlo
The Intrepid Dodger says on November 16th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Speed-reading, I agree, can make one’s day a lot more productive. I have to point out, however, that it’s really attention-intensive reading done at a speed which just allows for comprehension.
This won’t ever work for other materials demanding more attention than the bare-bones level. And I don’t just mean academic literature either - what if you quickly scanned a letter from a friend/boss and misinterpreted the meaning?
There is much more to be gained by cultivating a daily reading habit than by trying to artificially boost your speed in this manner. Because reading’s like running - you can’t cheat.