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Speed Reading - Going Fast!!

Reading time: 3 min Written by Marco Tschannett

Hi guys, it’s been a time since the last post I’ve done.

Today I want to write about something different. I want to talk about speed reading.

Heck what is this?

Speed reading is a technique to read faster with also understanding everything (this is as important as the reading fast)

Speed reading is any of several techniques used to improve one’s ability to read quickly. Speed reading methods include chunking and minimizing subvocalization. The many available speed reading training programs include books, videos, software, and seminars. There is scientific controversy surrounding the domain of speed reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading

So we know what it is and I know that I am a slow reader (A test told me that I read around 170ish words per minute).

Woosh - Going faster!

So I came accross a video on youtube, where someone made a video where he talked about reading faster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64eE7xOyHoY

At this point, I’m sorry for two things:

  • It’s a german video so if you don’t understand it, you either have to search a video for yourself or let it be ^^.
  • And the quality is really, really bad (I mean c’mon 240p …)

But this guy, called Peter Kovacs, shows really good how it can be done :)

The mentioned technique is called metronome technique

What you need?

  • Metronome
  • Pencil

The metronome is needed to set a pace. The pencil is used to make it easier to coordinate the eyes.

The eye has a hard time to coordinate it’s movement. It’s easier to follow a moving thing.

To test this, stand in front of a mirror and try to look in a circular movement (only with your eyes, don’t move your head). Your eyes movement looks a bit notchy.

If you do the same, but using a pencil as a guide, you will see it’s a much smoother movement than without that.

How should this work?

This should work like every training you do. You make a stimulation to your muscle that is bigger than it is used to, and it tries to react to it and getting stronger.

  1. Find your base pace.
    1. Try to figure out what pace you have while reading one line. (From one click to the next you should be able to read one line in a book, text, article)
  2. Take that pencil and move it
    1. Move the pencil over from the left to the right (or right to left if that’s your direction, or even up and down)
    2. This should be a steady movement
    3. When the line is finished, start at the next line

At the beginning, you won’t understand much, but your brain will start to get faster at reading.

I think that I’m going to try this for a few weeks and look if it makes me faster at reading.

If I look through my phone, I have enough texts, articles and books to read (I mean have you ever looked into your pocket? I swear I have a way to many texts in there^^)

This takes me to my last thought for this text, it would be cool to have a site or app that helps with all of this (which has a metronome as well as the pencil baked in). Do you know something like this?

Let me know.

Thanks for reading :) and feel free to start a discussion below :).

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