How Speed Reading increases productivity

On average, we can read about 250 words per minute. With speed reading, you can read as many as 1,000 words per minute. That's four times faster. A smart way to increase your productivity.

HOW DOES SPEED READING WORK?

Speed reading is a way to process a text at a high rate and store the information in your brain immediately. This technique allows you to store sentences or phrases at once, rather than individual words.

Reading faster starts with training your eye muscles. You cause your eyes to move over a text faster and, more importantly, more efficiently. With a few simple techniques, speed reading is a skill that everyone can learn.

Here are a few tips.

Tip 1: Stop vocalizing

As a child, you learned to read aloud. This is called vocalizing. At a later stage, you don't do this out loud anymore, but instead, you repeat the words in your head. And this slows down reading process because you can't read faster than talking.

Subvocalization (repeating the words in your head), is a common pitfall and often the biggest obstacle to increasing your reading speed.

Now why does this slow you down? We talk slower than we can read. When you repeat the words inwardly, or in your head, your reading speed slows down considerably. And that's not necessary at all. You can understand a text perfectly well without saying every word in your head. 

Tip 2: Get rid of the jammers

Provide an environment with as few interruptions and distractions as possible so that you can fully focus on the text you want to read. Avoid the possibility of being distracted by outside influences. Turn off all your notifications, both on your cell phone and on your computer. The less stimuli in your environment, the better your brain will absorb the text.

Tip 3: Use a pointer 

When you read, your eyes start looking for information. They move back and forth very quickly so they don't miss anything. But that takes time. Your eyes have to refocus each time. To better guide the natural flow of your eyes and process the words faster, you can use a pointer. This can be a thin pencil, your finger or a pen. With this you follow the words you are reading. From left to right. You support your eyes, so to speak. Result: less distraction, less fatigue and more efficiency.

Tip 4: Don't read again

If you look at the eyes of someone reading, you will notice that they often jump back to previously read text. So we tend to go back to words we have already read. Try not to do that and just read on. Reading back takes time and takes you out of your concentration.

The next step in learning to speed-read is practice.As with any new skill, practice makes perfect.

Get started in the speed reading course