Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Speed Reading

If you haven't already guessed, Alex and I don't fall desperately in love with every book we read on this blog.  In fact, for me personally, I'd say that I fall in love with about 10%, hate about 10% and the other 80% fall on a scale somewhere between "pretty good but probably won't read again" to "Well, it's not as bad as Twilight."


For those books that fall on the lower half of that scale, and for the books I just down right end up hating (I'm looking at you, Wuthering Heights), I speed read.

Really, Speed reading is about the easiest skill you can learn.  What slows you down when you read is that your eyes keep popping backwards, forwards and even to the lines above and below the line that you're trying to read.  Speed reading just stops your eyes from moving around and forces them to focus only on the words you want to read.

When you're first learning to do this, the best way is to take indez cards and cover up the lines above, below and around where you're trying to read, only letting a few words be visible.  As you get faster and more comfortable with this, eventually, you won't even need the index cards.  All you'll need is your finger.  Your eyes will continually focus on your moving finger, forcing your eyes onto the words they should be focusing on.  You'll read things quicker and absorb them faster then you would otherwise.

So next time you're trying to plow your way through something a little dull, see if speed reading it works for you.

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