Speed reading techniques I recommend and follow

Posted: October 9th, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Here’s a post I have been meaning to do for a long long time. I believe in efficiency when it comes to doing any task. The faster will do it better. Our current trends force us to have over 56 different things (according to a study I read) at any given time. That is a LOT of distraction and being able to sift through information quickly and filing away the stuff that you need is an important skill to develop. This would thus require you to know the following concepts.

a) Getting Things Done – It’s the concept actually and not the specifically the book by David Allen (which is a great read for geeks, but a little over the top for everyone else).

b) Speed Reading – Think about those excel reports, the ms doc files cluttering your email, you have over 500 of them and want to reply by the end of the day so you can share coffee with the wife. Sounds interesting?

c) Productivity Hacks – I don’t know who coined this term, but it spawned a website (and mighty popular one) by the term Lifehacker for most people to read and keep updated on the ways to do everything better.

Points a and c are largely written on the web and I won’t really touch upon them in this post. This post is about my techniques (over talking and reading over a dozen articles on the subject) on how to speed up your comprehension much faster and help you in general. With these techniques I have been able to speed up the time I have spent reading and hopefully you’ll get a tip or two.

I’m not going to touch on “why” you need to speed read, it’s a faster more efficient way, but not one you would want to use on a romantic novel or Lord of the Rings book. There you’ll want to soak up all the details slowly and into your system on a lazy Sunday evening.

This is for the business oriented people with a lot of reading to do because well the well informed are the largest of the new intelligentia. Time to catch up on the boat.

I use Google Reader usually to read all my feeds and the immediate tips follow usage there. I have only List view on Google Reader all the time. That shows only titles. Already increasing my speed by double.

While a lot of the web is now shifting to a blog like look – using titles, bolded text etc, a lot of them are still archaic. In that case, I’d recommend looking at the tips where I write NB (not blog) and the tip B says It’s Blog friendly..

I) Scanning Titles and overall text first – B + NB
The first thing you need to do is see if a particular post or news item is worthy of a read. If not, then we scrape it. That means closing the window, archiving the post, marking it as read – whatever you prefer. I improved my speed so much by just sticking to titles of the text. Alternatively, those of you who post titles such as “mysticism” and “rebuke” should really stop doing that because most of the time unless you write something that directly aligns with your readers interest (or mine) then I’m not going to end up reading it. You can read about great titles by Brian Clark from Copyblogger. #insert link.

II) Reading the subtitles in the text – B+NB
I used to think this was cheating. Where you must read every single word and letter. Turns out I was wrong. It’s great to skim the text, see where the titles lead and then figure out the part that doesn’t make immediate sense to you or something you need more clarification on. For example:- let me deconstruct the ZenHabits about the Habit Cheatsheet. On reading the titles alone you can get a good idea of what the topic is about.

III) Spanning Text- NB (plus B sometimes)
A quick tip (requires practice) is to take 3 or 4 words together and find out the keyword in the sentence. This usually clues you in immediately on what the author wishes to say. An example is

In my experience, it takes about 30 days to change a habit

As soon as I see the text, the fastest thing my eye does is scan the sentence and pick up the most relevant words that tell me what the sentence is about. In this case, I see – my experience, 30 days, change, habit. That immediately tells me “ok according to the author, habit changes happens effectively in 30 days”. Another example.

While you’re writing, also write down a plan. This will ensure you’re really prepared.

You are getting the hang aren’t you? With practice, start recognising the words of the sentence, the inner fluff can be added by your own brain. This help removes a lot of the useless babble that a lot of #aggressivelyclueless people use (inside joke).

IV) Read more.
This is one of those self help tips, but I think you should really get into the habit of reading various texts and reading different texts. Don’t just stick to your John Grisham novel or your Seth Godin blog. You have to read diverse information because that makes your brain attack/think about information in a different angle. I have a friend Dash who reads almost everything under the sun and his ability to comprehend information is far faster than most people because his knowledge base is far larger.

V) Using a Pen or another instrument to track eyeballs.
This is a popular technique that is advocated by many, but I don’t really subscribe to it. I think on the screen you holding a pen and tracking is noob. Not to mention everyone would think you are a weirdo. I’m fine without using the Pen, you can read the Links section for more stuff on it.

Assorted links on speed reading

Here are some great links I have read on Speed Reading Techniques. Read through them and see what’s useful to you.

Basic Speed Reading Techniques – quick intro
Tim Ferris on how to read 300 percent faster.
University of Michigan report – on how to read.

It doesn’t hurt to occasionally choose the “all read option” in your google reader mailbox. If it’s really important or that popular, it’ll show back on your feed or be sent to you by a friend. This doesnxt’t work though if you are the first to write about something or are a thought leader, in which case, you keep tabs on what you do all the time.

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