ACCELEREAD LESSON 6
Lesson 6 of Acceleread (iOS app; see previous posts for more) is also 7 minutes long. The instructions say that the reader should now be keeping up the WPM speed of the guide in terms of comprehension. I have been able all along, so that's good.
Diamond Highlighter: I'm getting better, able to read far words in periphery, but not quite able to follow the story. Perhaps I should practice on my own with familiar text?
Hopscotch: This time, words appear in the middle of the line as well as leaping from the perpheries; they quickly disappear so fast focus is what needs to be trained.
Sight Stretcher: It's just numbers. I wish it used words as well, but the other tools do effectively the same thing anyway so I suppose it would be unnecessary.
Hopscotch: The second time around the chunks are much bigger, so quick central focus, as trained in other tools, is an applied skill now.
Word flash: Now we have wide chunks of 7 words or more at times! It's hard to focus on all the words with peripheral vision alone. I tried just to follow the story without concentrating on technique — this was no problem. My eye movements were very minimal! and mostly centralized. The speed was such that I didn't have time to scan word by word anyway.
I am continuing to duplicate my efforts on the iPhone version lesson by lesson and day by day after having completed the iPad version — the app is not sync'd in the cloud, so it's as if they could be two individuals' separate progressions. I appreciate the duplication, and see daily improvement. Whether one has an iPhone or iPad, on a singular device one may repeat a lesson as many times as desired. I'm just trying out both options for the heck of it, for the sake of curiosity and faster improvement.
During the final iPhone Word Flash for Lesson 6, I decided to cover one eye for about 30 seconds, and then the other eye for another 30 seconds, and in the remaining 30 seconds of the exercise used both. My peripheral vision range seemed increased! As with training eye muscles for visual acuity (something I do to maintain 20/20 vision despite all the nearsight-inducing reading I do), monocular training for speed reading for a period seems to result in much improved binocular vision.
ACCELEREAD LESSON 7
Lesson 7 is 9 min long, and the opening summary indicates that this lesson will train the reader to incorporate the more advanced technique of slowing down when necessary — reading at variable speeds.
Word Flash: The text started at about 600 WPM and slowed to 400 WPM when it came to some quotations in dialect; then back up to 600, and back down to 400 for a more complicated scene.
Sight Stretcher: We have now reached the eighth circle; and instead of contracting to the 1-circle each cycle, it would stop at 3 and 5 before expanding again on a couple of the final cycles.
Diamond Highlighter: In the same pattern as Word Flash, it appeared to start slower at about 350 WPM for harder passages and speed up at the end to 550 WPM for an easier passage.
Columns Highlighter: Plenty of variation here as well, seemingly in the same pattern as the above: 370, 470, 410, 512 WPM were what I glanced down to observe.
Word Flash: The final Word Flash did the same as the above, varrying between 576, 449, 589, 602. All the text exercises have always started at a slightly slower WPM rate and increased through the exercise. This is the first time that slowing has also occurred.
I look forward to Lesson 8!
Friday, January 24, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
7. Acceleread Lesson 5 & The Three Musketeers
Lesson 5 of Acceleread is only 7 minutes, and includes a mix of the five exercise tools described previously. The speed is increasing bit by bit every day and within each exercise. Hopscotch is included two times, the first time with the little graphic icons, the second time with words from a book. The words leap back and forth just like the graphic icons. At just 230 WPM, it's very hard to keep up! The purpose is to cause the eyes to focus rapidly on words and entrain the brain to comprehend their meaning within the fraction of a second available before jumping across the screen to the next word. I admit I did not follow the story very well; just seeing the words so quickly was a challenge. A good challenge, I am sure!
While my greatest weakness still seems to be increasing the range of my perihperal vision, today's Diamond Highlighter exercise was easier today than yesterday; I could nearly read both the farthest words in the widest chunks -- reading them plus all the middle will be the challenge!
Word Flash isn't going faster than 502 WPM, which I could easily keep up with comprehension-wise -- if I allowed myself to run my eye across the 5-6-word lines. But I try to do as the exercise instructs: gaze softly at the center and focus the far words in peripheral vision exclusively. Comprehension suffers for technique for now.
READING "GETTING STARTED WITH ACCELEREAD"
As I mentioned in the last post, this is an excellent handbook within the app Acceleread that explains in detail the app's function and speed reading in general. Notable quote: "Speed reading is not sorcery; it's a skill." I am highly encouraged by its language, for it really seems like the silver bullet training tool.
I'm reading it at various speeds between 700 and 800 wpm with five columns and 5-word chunks in Columns Highlighter with complete comprehension. I still feel like I'm subvocalizing -- I can hear the voice reciting in my head still. But isn't this much faster than a person can talk? If my brain has adapted by time-compressing the same subvocalized phrases -- or, to be specific and not to confuse it, internally vocalized phrases -- that is an interesting consequence.
Some notes from the handbook:
3 Components to Effective Reading:
- Speed
- Comprehension
- Recall
Focus on one aspect at a time, and build skill accordingly. Speed itself is largely a "mechanical" skill physical to the eye. To improve speed, Acceleread will help the reader reduce subvocalization, shorten fixation time, expand vision span, and reduce regression.
Comprehension is the primary goal of reading, not mere speed. While initially trading off comprehension for technique in speed, trust that comprehension will come. Eventually both will be optimitized through sheer practice.
Recall is ultimately the most important of all. Having a specific intension on what the goal of the reading is can be very helpful to prepare the brain for absorbing and retaining what is sought after.
On bad habits:
Regression is not always bad and sometimes deliberate by the reader, but usually automatic because concentration was initially poor, and getting out of the habit keeps it from controlling the reader. Complex ideas sometimes require it.
Subvocalization, like regression, is not necessarily bad. It is intrinsically slow, which is the problem; it shifts processing power in the brain to the auditory system. But it can be used as a skill deliberately, like regression. Otherwise it can be trained away to aid rapid reading.
For fixations, reduce time hesitating on a chunk, and increase chunk size to reduce number of fixations per line.
Other topics:
Pushing limits is necessary to move beyond one's comfort zone, just like building physical strength. In the app Training Center, set the speed at 2 to 3 times your current reading speed. Further commentary continues with how to train with Accelread, the benefits of taking breaks, and flexible reading (different speeds for different matieral). One needs an ideal mindset in order to concentrate. I can vouch for that. Attempting to speed read in environments where I am distracted by others is extremely irritating, much more than normal reading, like when forced to slow down in sudden traffic after driving at cruise (driving a manual in rush hour comes to mind).
The transition to reading on paper will be interesting -- evidently one reads on average 25% slower on a screen. The passage further recommends the use of a hand to help guide the reading in the way that the app does for you. It also exhorts the reader to become an "active reader," thinking ahead about what you want to get from any particular passage before you read it. Thus, rather than default to slow mode, the active reader chooses his speed and flexibly adapts to conditions as they change, all the while keeping in mind what he wants to get from the text.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS ON ACCELEREAD
To practice with Acceleread, I am going to take on the adventures of The Three Musketeers by Dumas, which comes with the app. It's 700 pages printed. I'll be using Columns Highlighter primarily, starting with 5 columns, 5 words each, 700 WPM.
As mentioned above, I find myself fully "hearing" the sound in my head despite the fact that the WPM rate is well beyond my ability to verbalize. I still see the images and get the jokes quite well, pausing occasionally only to laugh, or to hesitate on a French name.
Something I've noted in particular with this sort of extended practice is a different sense of time. If I've read at a 3x faster than old-normal accelerated rate for an hour, it feels more like three hours have gone by. The full experience in all its necessary recall exists in memory, but it's as if I've lived more time in the enjoyment of the story than was actually available. You'll have to try it to know what I mean. This would seem to make sense, as accomplishing an amount of information absorption that was previously only possible in a much longer period gives the illusion of more time having gone by.
This keeps getting more fun every day!
Tous pour un, et un pour tous!
While my greatest weakness still seems to be increasing the range of my perihperal vision, today's Diamond Highlighter exercise was easier today than yesterday; I could nearly read both the farthest words in the widest chunks -- reading them plus all the middle will be the challenge!
Word Flash isn't going faster than 502 WPM, which I could easily keep up with comprehension-wise -- if I allowed myself to run my eye across the 5-6-word lines. But I try to do as the exercise instructs: gaze softly at the center and focus the far words in peripheral vision exclusively. Comprehension suffers for technique for now.
READING "GETTING STARTED WITH ACCELEREAD"
As I mentioned in the last post, this is an excellent handbook within the app Acceleread that explains in detail the app's function and speed reading in general. Notable quote: "Speed reading is not sorcery; it's a skill." I am highly encouraged by its language, for it really seems like the silver bullet training tool.
I'm reading it at various speeds between 700 and 800 wpm with five columns and 5-word chunks in Columns Highlighter with complete comprehension. I still feel like I'm subvocalizing -- I can hear the voice reciting in my head still. But isn't this much faster than a person can talk? If my brain has adapted by time-compressing the same subvocalized phrases -- or, to be specific and not to confuse it, internally vocalized phrases -- that is an interesting consequence.
Some notes from the handbook:
3 Components to Effective Reading:
- Speed
- Comprehension
- Recall
Focus on one aspect at a time, and build skill accordingly. Speed itself is largely a "mechanical" skill physical to the eye. To improve speed, Acceleread will help the reader reduce subvocalization, shorten fixation time, expand vision span, and reduce regression.
Comprehension is the primary goal of reading, not mere speed. While initially trading off comprehension for technique in speed, trust that comprehension will come. Eventually both will be optimitized through sheer practice.
Recall is ultimately the most important of all. Having a specific intension on what the goal of the reading is can be very helpful to prepare the brain for absorbing and retaining what is sought after.
On bad habits:
Regression is not always bad and sometimes deliberate by the reader, but usually automatic because concentration was initially poor, and getting out of the habit keeps it from controlling the reader. Complex ideas sometimes require it.
Subvocalization, like regression, is not necessarily bad. It is intrinsically slow, which is the problem; it shifts processing power in the brain to the auditory system. But it can be used as a skill deliberately, like regression. Otherwise it can be trained away to aid rapid reading.
For fixations, reduce time hesitating on a chunk, and increase chunk size to reduce number of fixations per line.
Other topics:
Pushing limits is necessary to move beyond one's comfort zone, just like building physical strength. In the app Training Center, set the speed at 2 to 3 times your current reading speed. Further commentary continues with how to train with Accelread, the benefits of taking breaks, and flexible reading (different speeds for different matieral). One needs an ideal mindset in order to concentrate. I can vouch for that. Attempting to speed read in environments where I am distracted by others is extremely irritating, much more than normal reading, like when forced to slow down in sudden traffic after driving at cruise (driving a manual in rush hour comes to mind).
The transition to reading on paper will be interesting -- evidently one reads on average 25% slower on a screen. The passage further recommends the use of a hand to help guide the reading in the way that the app does for you. It also exhorts the reader to become an "active reader," thinking ahead about what you want to get from any particular passage before you read it. Thus, rather than default to slow mode, the active reader chooses his speed and flexibly adapts to conditions as they change, all the while keeping in mind what he wants to get from the text.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS ON ACCELEREAD
To practice with Acceleread, I am going to take on the adventures of The Three Musketeers by Dumas, which comes with the app. It's 700 pages printed. I'll be using Columns Highlighter primarily, starting with 5 columns, 5 words each, 700 WPM.
As mentioned above, I find myself fully "hearing" the sound in my head despite the fact that the WPM rate is well beyond my ability to verbalize. I still see the images and get the jokes quite well, pausing occasionally only to laugh, or to hesitate on a French name.
Something I've noted in particular with this sort of extended practice is a different sense of time. If I've read at a 3x faster than old-normal accelerated rate for an hour, it feels more like three hours have gone by. The full experience in all its necessary recall exists in memory, but it's as if I've lived more time in the enjoyment of the story than was actually available. You'll have to try it to know what I mean. This would seem to make sense, as accomplishing an amount of information absorption that was previously only possible in a much longer period gives the illusion of more time having gone by.
This keeps getting more fun every day!
Tous pour un, et un pour tous!
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
6. Speed Reading on Facebook
After a good deal of searching, I was disappointed that there don't appear to be any dedicated, active speed reading groups on Facebook.
So, I made one:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/392833534185499/
I encourage anyone interested in learning how to speed read or willing to share their expertise to join and post there freely. The more people we connect, the faster the whole world becomes better readers!
So, I made one:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/392833534185499/
I encourage anyone interested in learning how to speed read or willing to share their expertise to join and post there freely. The more people we connect, the faster the whole world becomes better readers!
5. Acceleread Lesson 4
The previous four posts summarized my activity up to the present. This post and future ones will be current.
ACCELEREAD LESSON 4
In the fourth day of training with Acceleread, as always there are 5 parts, but this time the total time is only 8 minutes.
Part 1 is Word Flash. This time the word chunks have become quite long. I can't imagine how my peripheral vision will span across the page in such a way, but I believe it is possible. There will be some degree of mental interpolation that may take over. Most things linguistically can be determined from context, especially when the material is of a familiar kind.
Part 2 introduces Hopscotch in the Guided Training for the first time. This part is only 1 minute. Cartoon symbolic images of every sort (fruit, appliances, etc.) bounce back and forth on the periphery of the screen, left and right, top and bottom. Interesting exercise.
Part 3 brings the last tool into primary use, Sight Stretcher, meant to train peripheral vision reading. Numbers outside a circle expand periodically.
Part 4 is again Word Flash, followed by Diamond Highlighter for Part 5.
You can repeat lessons by clicking on the little map icon in the upper right of the iPad version, and upper left of the iPhone version in the Guided Course section.
GETTING STARTED WITH ACCELEREAD
There is a manual of sorts which comes with the app in the Library. It expounds in more detail on what it introduced on startup. It's a very interesting read! I wish I had found it sooner.
4. Acceleread - The Best App
The previous post related my experimentation with Spreeder.com and how valuable a tool it is and probably will be for the rest of my speed reading life. This post will skim right to the best training tool of all: Acceleread.
OTHER FINDS
There is a number of other interesting pages, videos, and ideas I plan to relate, but none of them were the silver bullet. The silver bullets so far has been Tim Ferris' techniques, Spreeder, and now the most effective one yet.
ACCELEREAD
As with the greatest things, it's hard now to recall how I stumbled upon Acceleread even though it was just a few days ago. I believe I typed "speed reading" in the App Store on my iPhone, as a way of trying to make up for the disappointment of ReadQuick.
Acceleread solves the problem I had while playing with Spreeder. With Spreeder, I had practically all I needed to train the most important techniques and improve comprehension, but no idea how to graduate the level of intensity in a way that would be most effective for my learning. Messing around with Spreeder is fun, but the whole point of this endeavor has been to save time. Feeling like the would-be athlete in an awesome fitness center with no idea how to weight train is a little discouraging, especially when there is the potential for training improperly.
Acceleread has a free 10-lesson (10-day) Guided Course for beginners; and once that course is completed, an Intermediate and then Advanced course will unlock in turn. The interface is superbly clean and easy to use. When you begin, you take a speed test (and you can retest as many times as you want to bear witness to your advancing progress), and based on your present level the app plans the Guided Course for you. This is exactly what I wanted! How extremely lucky. The very fact that this app is not the first thing found on Google when looking for speed reading is the very reason I wanted to start a centralized source of information and shared communication about the topic.
My initial test clocked me at 325 WPM, which is respectable given how slow I was before I had started to train. It was time to dive into the Guided Course!
ACCELEREAD TRAINING SO FAR: LESSONS 1-3
Right away I began the first two lessons on my iPhone. Very effective! 10 minutes of 5 parts, 2 min each, interchanging between two exercises: Word Flash, which is a calibrated version of Spreeder, and Column Highlighter, which helps to teach your eyes to move rapidly across the line with minimal fixation intervals. The sample reading material is great, all open-source classic books of varying difficulty. There's so much in the Library that I find it hard to believe I'll see the same passage twice (which, if I did, would in effect make the training a memory-jogger rather than a true and fresh speed reading challenge, as I commented on the epistemological conundrum in the last post).
The lessons seem to be designed for one a day, which I base only on the message concluding each lesson saying to come back "tomorrow for your next lesson." I emailed the company to ask if this was the intended design, if the day's pause is needed to allow the brain to catch up with its new processing ability. I haven't got a response yet. While I am eager to bore ahead, I'll take the "tomorrow" comment as implicit instruction.
I tried the app on my iPad, and it's even better than the iPhone version! Settings and records don't transfer between iPhone and iPad, so I had to start fresh (which means I get to do the same lesson twice if I repeat it on the iPhone, which I have been doing). The iPad version has much more detail in graphics and statistics, and is an overall better experience. It can all still be done on the iPhone, but I'm glad I have an iPad too.
Yesterday I completed Lesson 3 (first on the iPad, then on the iPhone later in the day for reinforcement). This lesson introduces the Diamond Highlighter tool, which scrolls the passage with varying chunk sizes, from one to five, back and forth to help expand your peripheral vision. You're not allowed to look beyond the centerline. Like Tim Ferris and other speed readers, they emphasize concentrating on technique over comprehension, advising that comprehension will come with time. I am glad to know that this course will guide me to that goal of comprehension and that I'm not on my own!
OTHER ACCELEREAD TOOLS & LIBRARY
Impatient about having to wait to continue practicing, yesterday I started to take advantage of the Training Center tools. Only two of the five are free with initial download. The other three are unlocked with $9.99 in-app purchase. Already very pleased with the product, I happily paid for the full app and love it. Having access to the Column Highlighter alone is worth it! as I will get to.
I had already found the Column Highlighter to be an extremely helpful tool. I noticed after using it that my eyes would flick rapidly across lines of normal text in a book or on the computer without any effort at all, and that I was retaining the information as well or better than before — this is the athlete who prefers to run rather than walk! So I decided to play with Column Highlighter to see how much more improvement I could achieve.
Any tool in the Training Center allows you to pick from the in-app Library of several classics, including Pride and Prejudice, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein, Great Expectations, and many others. I decided that The Time Machine by H.G. Wells was the best to start with. I started at 400 WPM or so, and variously dialed up the speed to near 700 WPM at one point, still with great comprehension.
And then I finished The Time Machine in a day. Not just in a day, but in very small pockets of available free time! I was amazed. The retention feels strong, and my comprehension was clear, as fast as I could make push it and still follow. The printed book is only about 100 pages, but I could expect to take a week of casual free moments to complete such a thing. In just an hour or so of total time! I look forward to selecting other books from the Library and using their classic material to hone these techniques, while finally reading books I should have read over a decade ago. What fantastic enrichment!
And then before bed I read the 20 printed page essay As A Man Thinketh by James Allen, a New Thought work that everyone should read.
This catches us up with the present. The following posts will chronicle my further progress with Acceleread beginner Guided Course, as well as other events that occur along the way.
3. Spreeder & Presidential Speed Readers
The previous post covered my initial familiarization and experimentation with speed reading and first successes. This post will be about the next great things I came across: Teddy Roosevelt, and Spreeder.com
ART OF MANLINESS
A venerable website that I have run into by chance more than a couple times is ArtOfManliness.com. The target audience is men who wish to improve themselves in variously virtuous ways. The article on speed reading ( http://touch.artofmanliness.com/artofmanliness/#!/entry/how-to-speed-read-like-theodore-roosevelt,502ecf26444f6789471f2dcb ) was especially helpful for me.
The prominently displayed photo there of Teddy Roosevelt wearing almost reflective glasses boring his eyes with laser focus into that soon-to-be-conquered book while petting his trusty hound is breathtaking to say the least. Apparently Teddy Roosevelt would consume an entire book daily before breakfast! What a feat. He flipped through three pages a minute. That was three times faster than my best speed, I realized, so I had my work cut out for me.
Roosevelt accomplished this feat because he knew how to speed read. Associates said he would would flip through two or three pages in a minute. Despite reading so quickly, Roosevelt could relate back in minute detail all of a book’s important points and even recite quotes from the text.
Being able to plow through so many books so quickly benefited TR’s leadership and influence. He easily connected with others as he could hold a conversation with anyone on any subject imaginable. Scientists were blown away with Roosevelt’s knowledge of complex theories, socialites were smitten with his witty insights about the latest piece by Oscar Wilde, and cowboys out West respected the “Eastern Dude’s” understanding of desert wildlife. TR’s life as a bionic book worm also provided plenty of grist for the 2,000 published works he turned out himself.
In this post we provide some suggestions and tips so you can start speeding reading just like Theodore Roosevelt. Are you ready to start devouring books with your brain? Let’s get started!
How to Speed Read
Stop subvocalizing by counting.When we learned to read, we usually read aloud and pronounced every single word that we saw in a line. This slows reading down considerably because you can only read as fast as you can talk. While you may long ago have graduated from Hooked on Phonics and transitioned to reading silently, you probably still subvocalize. Subvocalization is when you pronounce words with the voice in your head or larynx. You might even open your mouth silently as you read, sort of like a guppy (I do this sometimes and my wife makes fun of me for it).
Quitting the subvocalization habit can be hard. First try simply reading faster than your mouth can move or the voice in your head can speak. If that doesn’t work, try this technique: Repeatedly say “A-E-I-O-U” or count “1, 2, 3, 4″ as you read the text. This will help train you to stop reading with your larynx and guppy lips and start reading with your eyes. This little trick can increase your speed in a matter of minutes.
Stop backtracking by using your finger. Backtracking slows many readers down. After reading a word, a person will read two or three more words, but then dart their eyes back to the first word. You probably do this without even realizing it. Watch someone read. You’ll see their eyes darting back and forth. Chances are they’re re-reading the same line over again.
To help you stop backtracking, use your index finger as a pace car. Underline the text with your finger at a pace faster than you normally read. Only look at the text in front of your finger; once you pass it with your finger, you can’t go back.
Use your peripheral vision. Your brain can comprehend several words at a time. You don’t have to read every single word by itself. The key with speed reading is to start reading multiple words at a time instead of just one at a time. To read chunks of text at a time, you need to start developing your peripheral vision. Here’s how:
Take a book and draw two parallel lines about three inches apart from each other down the middle of the text. Concentrate on the area between the lines and try not to move your eyes outside of them. See if you can catch the words beyond the lines in your peripheral vision. Being able to indirectly read words in this way will greatly increase your reading speed.
Another thing you can do to get in the habit of reading text in big chunks is to practice speed reading with newspapers. Newspaper columns typically measure 1.83 inches. You can only fit five to six words in that small space, thus providing you the perfect platform to master reading text by the chunk. Instead of reading word by word, try reading line by line. It takes some practice, but you’ll find yourself breezing through the local story about the cat that got stuck on the roof in a matter of seconds.
Train your eyes with free web apps. Several free web applications exist that help users stop backtracking and train their eyes and mind to read more than one word a time. Spreeder is my favorite. Simply copy and paste the text you want to speed read into Spreeder. Spreeder will then flash chunks of your text on the screen until it goes through the entire text. You can decide how many words Spreeder will show at a time and how fast you want the words to appear. I actually used Spreeder during law school to help me quickly read through cases. Not only was I able to get through assigned reading faster, I trained myself to stop backtracking and subvocalizing as well.
Try the z method. The idea that reading must be done linearly is a myth. Your mind is pretty dang amazing, and it can actually process and understand stuff even if you read it backwards. Take advantage of this by employing the z method. Basically the way this works is you start off on the first line and read it normally- left to right. Of course you’re not subvocalizing, and you’re not making any unneeded stops. When you get to the end of the first line, sweep your eyes from right to left diagonally across the second line until you get to the beginning of line three. Repeat this z pattern down the page.
You’d think you’d miss information by simply scanning across every other line backwards and diagonally. But try it for yourself. With practice, your brain will be able to pick up information backwards and in the periphery. Pretty dang amazing.
Know when to skim and scan. In addition to reading quickly, Roosevelt looked for places where he could skim and scan. In a letter to his son Kermit about the best way to read Dickens, Roosevelt said: “The wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the rest.” We can follow that advice for most things we read.
Not every word is important when conveying an idea. For example, articles like “a,” “an,” and “the” can be eliminated from most text, and you can still understand what is written. With practice you can train yourself to look over these unnecessary words and focus on the meaty stuff.
Another thing you can do to help focus on keywords is to skim through the book’s table of contents and section headings so you have a general idea of what the section is about. This will prime your brain to be on the look out for words related to the topic when you actually start reading.
Of course, the pleasure of some books is the masterful whole, the entirety of language and the author’s carefully selected words and purposefully constructed sentences. The joy of such literature comes in soaking up the text precisely as intended. In such cases, it’s best to slow down and take it in.
ART OF MANLINESS
A venerable website that I have run into by chance more than a couple times is ArtOfManliness.com. The target audience is men who wish to improve themselves in variously virtuous ways. The article on speed reading ( http://touch.artofmanliness.com/artofmanliness/#!/entry/how-to-speed-read-like-theodore-roosevelt,502ecf26444f6789471f2dcb ) was especially helpful for me.
The prominently displayed photo there of Teddy Roosevelt wearing almost reflective glasses boring his eyes with laser focus into that soon-to-be-conquered book while petting his trusty hound is breathtaking to say the least. Apparently Teddy Roosevelt would consume an entire book daily before breakfast! What a feat. He flipped through three pages a minute. That was three times faster than my best speed, I realized, so I had my work cut out for me.
In scanning for more information on JFK's speed reading, I found that he was taught by an Evelyn Wood, who also trained his staff. Apparently other presidents including Jimmy Carter employed these very methods as well. To this date I have not yet found what appears reliably to be Evelyn Wood's exact course, whether in free or paid material.
The whole article is worth reading, and relates in another voice some of what I wrote in the previous post. But the most grateful bit of the article was my introduction to www.Spreeder.com.
Spreeder allows you to copy and paste text into the window on the main page, and set the WPM to any desired up to any desired (even beyond a computer screen's frame rate, I suspect, to say nothing of beyond human cognition), and practice reading in chunks of one, two, three, 10, 20 words at a time, whatever one wants. Font size, type, color, alignment are all to the preference of the reader. It even has advanced settings, which I recommend employing, such as slowing down a bit for longer chunks and at punctuation.
The only problem was knowing exactly how to practice with this app to improve my unaided speed reading (such as with an actual book), and how to use this miraculous tool proactively to train myself. I felt like I was an aspiring athlete thrown into a fully equipped gym with a free membership and no idea how to use any of the machines.
SPREEDER EXPERIMENTS
Being fond of American Revolutionary history, I have wanted to read all of Thomas Jefferson's personal letters, if only to appropriate some of the style of his immaculate pen. (You may find his letters here: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/ ). So, I began copying and pasting his letters into Spreeder, and decided to read at least one a day.
After a day or so I settled in a regular pattern which I continue to the present. Not knowing what WPM I should use or size of word chunks, I decided to reread each letter a few times, steadily increasing speeds and chunk sizes. An interesting epistemological conundrum occurred to me: how do I know if I'm really capable of a certain speed with any given material? That is to say, I can read a passage at 500 WPM and comprehend and retain, but could I have done so quite as easily at 600 WPM? Since I've already read that article I can never be sure. It's downright Heisenbergian.
Ignoring that unknowable, I follow this pattern of trials with my rereading on Spreeder:
1. 500 WPM, 1-word chunks
2. 600 WPM*, 2-word chunks
3. 700 WPM, 3-4-word chunks
4. 800 WPM, 3-4-word chunks
5. 900 WPM, 2-word chunks
6. 1,000 WPM, 1-word chunks
*the "sonic barrier"
My logic, such as it is at this stage, is to gain familiarity with the passage at the slowest necessary speed for comprehension (which would at times need to be as slow as 400 WPM), without the need for peripheral vision. Increasing word chunk sizes forces the stretching of peripheral vision, but the words flash by at a slower rate so it creates the illusion of actually slowing down. After crossing the sonic barrier, I would play with the high hundreds at different chunk sizes, winding down to the super-stream of 1,000 WPM and blasting it all into my conscious at twice the original speed.
Now here is a different experience! Traditional speed reading techniques with a physical book require proportional physical activity on the part of the reader: you have to hold the book down, move the pen your your hand rapidly, and move your eyes across the page. This does all that for you! allowing the reader to limit his training to information-absorption velocity and peripheral vision training.
It really is a trip. After the first time having a thousand-word data stream beamed into your brain in under two minutes, I was blown back in my seat! I felt like Neo from the Matrix: "Holy s---!" "I'm a machine," I laughed to myself.
Blinking is not advised! In seriousness, I do try to wink one eye at a time so I don't miss any words, especially at super-high speed. Occasionally I've cranked it up to 1,200 WPM to see if I get it at Kennedy-speed. If I had already read the article once (or several times), I usually got it all! Again the epistemological argument: am I just remembering quickly or really comprehending in-time?
Unfortunately, changing the Spreeder settings on an iPhone is kind of dodgy since the inferface was designed for a mouse, but in iPad it seems to work pretty well thanks to the larger screen real estate (but the slider doesn't seem to react to touch). Eager to find an iPhone specific app, I shelled out $10 for the ReadQuick app, which would seem to do the same thing as Spreeder.com. I was disappointed. It's basically just an idealized interface for the iPhone (and also iPad), exept you can't copy and paste; you have to go to URLs directly (meaning you also can't search like in a browser). Not worth it, in my opinion. It functions great for what it is, but Spreeder does the job better and freer.
SPREEDER EXPEPRIENCE COMMENTARY
Spreeder is truly a revolutionary training tool. Just knowing that the brain is absorbing passages beyond the sonic barrier boosts confidence tremendously.
As subvocalization is to be avoided, I'm still trying to ascertain exactly what the desired state of consciousness is for high-speed reading. That is, I'm not supposed to be "hearing" the words in my head, right? As I mentioned in the first post, I've always enjoyed imagining the words I read in the author's or character's voice, or in my own, colorfully spoken and interesting to "listen" to. When I see the words flashing by, I'm still able to hear my imagined voice for Thomas Jefferson (based on the voice of the character from the HBO miniseries John Adams), and nevertheless seem to comprehend everything with equally vivid mental pictures. I'm not sure if this is the right thing or not. Many speed reading guides strongly advise against this, encouraging the reader to hum or count 1-2-3-4 just to turn off the subvocalization reflex. A curious effect for me is that, if I discourage this subvocal mental sound entirely, I hear in the background a song that I didn't even realize was stuck in my head. It's really quite amazing. I listen to music often, so I can't say I'm suprised that I might perpetually have a track bopping around in my subconscious, but it was a little distracting at first. Playing instrumental classical music helps to temper that overactive part of my mind, but generally I've just gotten used to it and can ignore it well enough to concentrate on the material.
Rather than hear words in the head, the instantaneous generation of images is recommended. I don't find this intuitive yet, but I'll keep at it. Otherwise, although I might be reading a passage with Spreeder at a WPM well past the sonic barrier, I still hear the chosen voice at the compressed speed.
The next post will conclude the past week's backstory and bring us into the present, with the best app and speed reading training tool I've yet found!
The whole article is worth reading, and relates in another voice some of what I wrote in the previous post. But the most grateful bit of the article was my introduction to www.Spreeder.com.
Spreeder allows you to copy and paste text into the window on the main page, and set the WPM to any desired up to any desired (even beyond a computer screen's frame rate, I suspect, to say nothing of beyond human cognition), and practice reading in chunks of one, two, three, 10, 20 words at a time, whatever one wants. Font size, type, color, alignment are all to the preference of the reader. It even has advanced settings, which I recommend employing, such as slowing down a bit for longer chunks and at punctuation.
The only problem was knowing exactly how to practice with this app to improve my unaided speed reading (such as with an actual book), and how to use this miraculous tool proactively to train myself. I felt like I was an aspiring athlete thrown into a fully equipped gym with a free membership and no idea how to use any of the machines.
SPREEDER EXPERIMENTS
Being fond of American Revolutionary history, I have wanted to read all of Thomas Jefferson's personal letters, if only to appropriate some of the style of his immaculate pen. (You may find his letters here: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/ ). So, I began copying and pasting his letters into Spreeder, and decided to read at least one a day.
After a day or so I settled in a regular pattern which I continue to the present. Not knowing what WPM I should use or size of word chunks, I decided to reread each letter a few times, steadily increasing speeds and chunk sizes. An interesting epistemological conundrum occurred to me: how do I know if I'm really capable of a certain speed with any given material? That is to say, I can read a passage at 500 WPM and comprehend and retain, but could I have done so quite as easily at 600 WPM? Since I've already read that article I can never be sure. It's downright Heisenbergian.
Ignoring that unknowable, I follow this pattern of trials with my rereading on Spreeder:
1. 500 WPM, 1-word chunks
2. 600 WPM*, 2-word chunks
3. 700 WPM, 3-4-word chunks
4. 800 WPM, 3-4-word chunks
5. 900 WPM, 2-word chunks
6. 1,000 WPM, 1-word chunks
*the "sonic barrier"
My logic, such as it is at this stage, is to gain familiarity with the passage at the slowest necessary speed for comprehension (which would at times need to be as slow as 400 WPM), without the need for peripheral vision. Increasing word chunk sizes forces the stretching of peripheral vision, but the words flash by at a slower rate so it creates the illusion of actually slowing down. After crossing the sonic barrier, I would play with the high hundreds at different chunk sizes, winding down to the super-stream of 1,000 WPM and blasting it all into my conscious at twice the original speed.
Now here is a different experience! Traditional speed reading techniques with a physical book require proportional physical activity on the part of the reader: you have to hold the book down, move the pen your your hand rapidly, and move your eyes across the page. This does all that for you! allowing the reader to limit his training to information-absorption velocity and peripheral vision training.
It really is a trip. After the first time having a thousand-word data stream beamed into your brain in under two minutes, I was blown back in my seat! I felt like Neo from the Matrix: "Holy s---!" "I'm a machine," I laughed to myself.
Blinking is not advised! In seriousness, I do try to wink one eye at a time so I don't miss any words, especially at super-high speed. Occasionally I've cranked it up to 1,200 WPM to see if I get it at Kennedy-speed. If I had already read the article once (or several times), I usually got it all! Again the epistemological argument: am I just remembering quickly or really comprehending in-time?
Unfortunately, changing the Spreeder settings on an iPhone is kind of dodgy since the inferface was designed for a mouse, but in iPad it seems to work pretty well thanks to the larger screen real estate (but the slider doesn't seem to react to touch). Eager to find an iPhone specific app, I shelled out $10 for the ReadQuick app, which would seem to do the same thing as Spreeder.com. I was disappointed. It's basically just an idealized interface for the iPhone (and also iPad), exept you can't copy and paste; you have to go to URLs directly (meaning you also can't search like in a browser). Not worth it, in my opinion. It functions great for what it is, but Spreeder does the job better and freer.
SPREEDER EXPEPRIENCE COMMENTARY
Spreeder is truly a revolutionary training tool. Just knowing that the brain is absorbing passages beyond the sonic barrier boosts confidence tremendously.
As subvocalization is to be avoided, I'm still trying to ascertain exactly what the desired state of consciousness is for high-speed reading. That is, I'm not supposed to be "hearing" the words in my head, right? As I mentioned in the first post, I've always enjoyed imagining the words I read in the author's or character's voice, or in my own, colorfully spoken and interesting to "listen" to. When I see the words flashing by, I'm still able to hear my imagined voice for Thomas Jefferson (based on the voice of the character from the HBO miniseries John Adams), and nevertheless seem to comprehend everything with equally vivid mental pictures. I'm not sure if this is the right thing or not. Many speed reading guides strongly advise against this, encouraging the reader to hum or count 1-2-3-4 just to turn off the subvocalization reflex. A curious effect for me is that, if I discourage this subvocal mental sound entirely, I hear in the background a song that I didn't even realize was stuck in my head. It's really quite amazing. I listen to music often, so I can't say I'm suprised that I might perpetually have a track bopping around in my subconscious, but it was a little distracting at first. Playing instrumental classical music helps to temper that overactive part of my mind, but generally I've just gotten used to it and can ignore it well enough to concentrate on the material.
Rather than hear words in the head, the instantaneous generation of images is recommended. I don't find this intuitive yet, but I'll keep at it. Otherwise, although I might be reading a passage with Spreeder at a WPM well past the sonic barrier, I still hear the chosen voice at the compressed speed.
The next post will conclude the past week's backstory and bring us into the present, with the best app and speed reading training tool I've yet found!
(The below is copied from this link: http://touch.artofmanliness.com/artofmanliness/#!/entry/how-to-speed-read-like-theodore-roosevelt,502ecf26444f6789471f2dcb )
*****
How to Speed Read Like Theodore Roosevelt
When Theodore Roosevelt did things, he did them with gusto. That included reading. Roosevelt was a voracious reader. The man devoured books like a damn hungry lion feasting on a fresh kill. While in the White House, he would read a book every day before breakfast. If he didn’t have any official business in the evening, he would read two or three more books plus any magazines and newspapers that caught his fancy. By his own estimates, TR read tens of thousands of books during his lifetime, including hundreds in foreign languages.How to Speed Read Like Theodore Roosevelt
Roosevelt accomplished this feat because he knew how to speed read. Associates said he would would flip through two or three pages in a minute. Despite reading so quickly, Roosevelt could relate back in minute detail all of a book’s important points and even recite quotes from the text.
Being able to plow through so many books so quickly benefited TR’s leadership and influence. He easily connected with others as he could hold a conversation with anyone on any subject imaginable. Scientists were blown away with Roosevelt’s knowledge of complex theories, socialites were smitten with his witty insights about the latest piece by Oscar Wilde, and cowboys out West respected the “Eastern Dude’s” understanding of desert wildlife. TR’s life as a bionic book worm also provided plenty of grist for the 2,000 published works he turned out himself.
In this post we provide some suggestions and tips so you can start speeding reading just like Theodore Roosevelt. Are you ready to start devouring books with your brain? Let’s get started!
How to Speed Read
Stop subvocalizing by counting.When we learned to read, we usually read aloud and pronounced every single word that we saw in a line. This slows reading down considerably because you can only read as fast as you can talk. While you may long ago have graduated from Hooked on Phonics and transitioned to reading silently, you probably still subvocalize. Subvocalization is when you pronounce words with the voice in your head or larynx. You might even open your mouth silently as you read, sort of like a guppy (I do this sometimes and my wife makes fun of me for it).
Quitting the subvocalization habit can be hard. First try simply reading faster than your mouth can move or the voice in your head can speak. If that doesn’t work, try this technique: Repeatedly say “A-E-I-O-U” or count “1, 2, 3, 4″ as you read the text. This will help train you to stop reading with your larynx and guppy lips and start reading with your eyes. This little trick can increase your speed in a matter of minutes.
Stop backtracking by using your finger. Backtracking slows many readers down. After reading a word, a person will read two or three more words, but then dart their eyes back to the first word. You probably do this without even realizing it. Watch someone read. You’ll see their eyes darting back and forth. Chances are they’re re-reading the same line over again.
To help you stop backtracking, use your index finger as a pace car. Underline the text with your finger at a pace faster than you normally read. Only look at the text in front of your finger; once you pass it with your finger, you can’t go back.
Use your peripheral vision. Your brain can comprehend several words at a time. You don’t have to read every single word by itself. The key with speed reading is to start reading multiple words at a time instead of just one at a time. To read chunks of text at a time, you need to start developing your peripheral vision. Here’s how:
Take a book and draw two parallel lines about three inches apart from each other down the middle of the text. Concentrate on the area between the lines and try not to move your eyes outside of them. See if you can catch the words beyond the lines in your peripheral vision. Being able to indirectly read words in this way will greatly increase your reading speed.
Another thing you can do to get in the habit of reading text in big chunks is to practice speed reading with newspapers. Newspaper columns typically measure 1.83 inches. You can only fit five to six words in that small space, thus providing you the perfect platform to master reading text by the chunk. Instead of reading word by word, try reading line by line. It takes some practice, but you’ll find yourself breezing through the local story about the cat that got stuck on the roof in a matter of seconds.
Train your eyes with free web apps. Several free web applications exist that help users stop backtracking and train their eyes and mind to read more than one word a time. Spreeder is my favorite. Simply copy and paste the text you want to speed read into Spreeder. Spreeder will then flash chunks of your text on the screen until it goes through the entire text. You can decide how many words Spreeder will show at a time and how fast you want the words to appear. I actually used Spreeder during law school to help me quickly read through cases. Not only was I able to get through assigned reading faster, I trained myself to stop backtracking and subvocalizing as well.
Try the z method. The idea that reading must be done linearly is a myth. Your mind is pretty dang amazing, and it can actually process and understand stuff even if you read it backwards. Take advantage of this by employing the z method. Basically the way this works is you start off on the first line and read it normally- left to right. Of course you’re not subvocalizing, and you’re not making any unneeded stops. When you get to the end of the first line, sweep your eyes from right to left diagonally across the second line until you get to the beginning of line three. Repeat this z pattern down the page.
You’d think you’d miss information by simply scanning across every other line backwards and diagonally. But try it for yourself. With practice, your brain will be able to pick up information backwards and in the periphery. Pretty dang amazing.
Know when to skim and scan. In addition to reading quickly, Roosevelt looked for places where he could skim and scan. In a letter to his son Kermit about the best way to read Dickens, Roosevelt said: “The wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the rest.” We can follow that advice for most things we read.
Not every word is important when conveying an idea. For example, articles like “a,” “an,” and “the” can be eliminated from most text, and you can still understand what is written. With practice you can train yourself to look over these unnecessary words and focus on the meaty stuff.
Another thing you can do to help focus on keywords is to skim through the book’s table of contents and section headings so you have a general idea of what the section is about. This will prime your brain to be on the look out for words related to the topic when you actually start reading.
Of course, the pleasure of some books is the masterful whole, the entirety of language and the author’s carefully selected words and purposefully constructed sentences. The joy of such literature comes in soaking up the text precisely as intended. In such cases, it’s best to slow down and take it in.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
2. Beginning to Speed Read
The previous post talked about my initial motivation for speed reading and my hopes for helping to establish a firmer online community for those who can speed read and for those who wish to learn how. This post will cover the great information I initially discovered and how I applied it to finishing a book rapidly.
FIRST SEARCHES: TIM FERRIS & OTHER BASICS
Doing what any casually inquisitive person does these days, I Googled "speed reading," and one of the first pages that looked promising was this one by Tim Ferris:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-learning/
(In case the linked article ever disappears from the internet, I have recopied the body of the text below.)
Tim Ferris expounds on a number of very interesting topics, and I gather speed reading coincides with his life philosophy rather nicely.
The gist of his commentary is to explain in brief how to speed read. One thing I found mentioned on many sites as I began these searches is that speed reading, rather than subtracting comprehension, actually improves comprehension. This initially seems hard to believe on the face of it. However, I think if I were forced to read far below my comfortable speed, plodding along like a first grader, I would be very loath to pay much attention to what I was doing and become distracted; while I imagined that reading at high speeds along with necessary high concentration may in fact premit one to become more fixedly engaged to the material and allow the reader to remember more, even much more. I would later find the latter to be true.
Ferris' article explains how to test one's current speed, and then relates the primary bad habits that most readers have and the techniques one can learn to train those bad habits away. It's a very good article and I recommend it to anyone starting out.
For my part, I tested my reading speed as he recommended, and used the book that had initially got me on this whole project, Killing Kennedy, which afforded fairly easy reading on a topic that, although unfamiliar, was easy enough to grasp. I tested my reading a few times, and I came out with 214 WPM (words per minute). As I had always suspected, this is a little below average.
The bad habits that Ferris and nearly all speed reading guides mention: subvocalization, fixation, regression, and limited field of vision. I encourage you to read his article for more detail, but to summarize (along with some thoughts from other sources I'll link to later on):
Subvocalization is sounding out words subconsciously in one's head, often with the mouth and tongue moving slightly. At the very least, one hears the words rather clearly in one's head. While it seemed inconceivable to me at first that I could read a passage without hearing the sound of the words in my mind, I was won over by two thoughts: first, that if one subvocalizes all one's reading, one is limited in reading speed to talking speed (a video that I'll link to in a later post notes that notoriously fast-talking New Yorkers actually read faster on average than most), which is called informally the "sound barrier" of reading, and that the goal is to go "supersonic," a speed which evidently occurs around 600 WPM; second, that whenever a story is told verbally — like a person talking to you directly, on a radio show, or a chacter in a movie recounting an event — one hears the words aurally, and then is immediately presented in the mind's eye with an imagination of what that story is conveying; and if one is subvocalizing, the exact same thing is occuring, with the added step that the reader is looking at the page, then turning the words into sound imagined in the mind, and then from hearing that "internal audio" spoken within imagines the scenes and ideas depicted — but, what if you could just look at the words and see the images instantly? without the middle man of subvocalizing — an amazing thought!
Fixation is where the eye stops in its progression over a line. Eye movement fixes that are restricted to one or maybe two words at a time are inefficient. Movement must be steady and rapid, with fewer per line.
Regression is going back to re-read a word or a line. This subtracts from WPM time de facto.
Limited field of vision means that one's peripheral vision is insuffient to observe more than a word or two at a time. But with some training, one can extend peripheral vision to take in whole chunks of words at a time.
All these bad habits are really just the training wheels we received as children learning to read in the first grade: sounding out words phonetically to read outloud. The reality is, once we learn to read "silently," that same word-by-word sounding is going on in our heads, and we never advance our technique in any structured way. While other disciplines, like physical conditioning, skill at a sport, or ability to speak a foreign language, have an outward appearance where the the effects of technique are visible, one's reading, being inherently internal, is not an obvious thing for people to seek to master or improve, which further explains the dirth of information about the subject.
The quintessential solution is to have a tracker or pacer — a finger, a hand, or the end of a pen, which you use to "underline" the words as fast as you like to go, and guide your eyes to do the efficient thing. Using the techniques and training recommended by Ferris, I ended up with a considerably higher reading speed of near 400 WPM!
Thus I was already able to double my formally testudinal reading pace in just a few minutes of training! Already I was blazing through the pages of Killing Kennedy, at a rate of no less than one page per minute, where just the day before I would need two or three minutes to a page. In my extremely limited free time over the next two days (exactly how many minutes or hours altogether I cannot say), I consumed the entire biography proudly and was able to return it to the person who lent it to me. I was initially worried it would have taken me at least a couple weeks to knock it out.
INITIAL OBSERVATIONS
It definitely takes concentration to speed read! It wasn't coming naturally yet — the old 200 WPM pace is much more comfortable. Yet the same can be said of athletics: an able bodied individual who has barely run a day in his life will be a reluctant runner — moving quickly doesn't not come natural to him either; but an energetic Olympian will enjoy jogging from location to location because their muscles are conditioned for the activity and perform without effort; psychologically, running may be less effort when possible because it's less tedious. My own experience with athletic training and early stage speed reading informs this analogy, and it rings true.
(The below is copied from this link: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-learning/ )
*****
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes
Written by Tim Ferriss
How much more could you get done if you completed all of your required reading in 1/3 or 1/5 the time?
Increasing reading speed is a process of controlling fine motor movement—period.
This post is a condensed overview of principles I taught to undergraduates at Princeton University in 1998 at a seminar called the “PX Project”. The below was written several years ago, so it’s worded like Ivy-Leaguer pompous-ass prose, but the results are substantial. In fact, while on an airplane in China two weeks ago, I helped Glenn McElhose increase his reading speed 34% in less than 5 minutes.
I have never seen the method fail. Here’s how it works…
The PX Project
The PX Project, a single 3-hour cognitive experiment, produced an average increase in reading speed of 386%.
It was tested with speakers of five languages, and even dyslexics were conditioned to read technical material at more than 3,000 words-per-minute (wpm), or 10 pages per minute. One page every 6 seconds. By comparison, the average reading speed in the US is 200-300 wpm (1/2 to 1 page per minute), with the top 1% of the population reading over 400 wpm…
If you understand several basic principles of the human visual system, you can eliminate inefficiencies and increase speed while improving retention.
To perform the exercises in this post and see the results, you will need: a book of 200+ pages that can lay flat when open, a pen, and a timer (a stop watch with alarm or kitchen timer is ideal). You should complete the 20 minutes of exercises in one session.
First, several definitions and distinctions specific to the reading process:
A) Synopsis: You must minimize the number and duration of fixations per line to increase speed.
You do not read in a straight line, but rather in a sequence of saccadic movements (jumps). Each of these saccades ends with a fixation, or a temporary snapshot of the text within you focus area (approx. the size of a quarter at 8 inches from reading surface). Each fixation will last ¼ to ½ seconds in the untrained subject. To demonstrate this, close one eye, place a fingertip on top of that eyelid, and then slowly scan a straight horizontal line with your other eye-you will feel distinct and separate movements and periods of fixation.
B) Synopsis: You must eliminate regression and back-skipping to increase speed.
The untrained subject engages in regression (conscious rereading) and back-skipping (subconscious rereading via misplacement of fixation) for up to 30% of total reading time.
C) Synopsis: You must use conditioning drills to increase horizontal peripheral vision span and the number of words registered per fixation.
Untrained subjects use central focus but not horizontal peripheral vision span during reading, foregoing up to 50% of their words per fixation (the number of words that can be perceived and “read” in each fixation).
The Protocol
You will 1) learn technique, 2) learn to apply techniques with speed through conditioning, then 3) learn to test yourself with reading for comprehension.
These are separate, and your adaptation to the sequencing depends on keeping them separate. Do not worry about comprehension if you are learning to apply a motor skill with speed, for example. The adaptive sequence is: technique ‘ technique with speed ‘ comprehensive reading testing.
As a general rule, you will need to practice technique at 3x the speed of your ultimate target reading speed. Thus, if you currently read at 300 wpm and your target reading speed is 900 wpm, you will need to practice technique at 1,800 words-per-minute, or 6 pages per minute (10 seconds per page).
We will cover two main techniques in this introduction:
1) Trackers and Pacers (to address A and B above)
2) Perceptual Expansion (to address C)
First – Determining Baseline
To determine your current reading speed, take your practice book (which should lay flat when open on a table) and count the number of words in 5 lines. Divide this number of words by 5, and you have your average number of words-per-line.
Example: 62 words/5 lines = 12.4, which you round to 12 words-per-line
Next, count the number of text lines on 5 pages and divide by 5 to arrive at the average number of lines per page. Multiply this by average number of words-per-line, and you have your average number of words per page.
Example: 154 lines/5 pages = 30.8, rounded to 31 lines per page x 12 words-per-line = 372 words per page
Mark your first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly-do not read faster than normal, and read for comprehension. After exactly one minute, multiply the number of lines by your average words-per-line to determine your current words-per-minute (wpm) rate.
Second – Trackers and Pacers
Regression, back-skipping, and the duration of fixations can be minimized by using a tracker and pacer. To illustrate the importance of a tracker-did you use a pen or finger when counting the number of words or lines in above baseline calculations? If you did, it was for the purpose of tracking-using a visual aid to guide fixation efficiency and accuracy. Nowhere is this more relevant than in conditioning reading speed by eliminating such inefficiencies.
For the purposes of this article, we will use a pen. Holding the pen in your dominant hand, you will underline each line (with the cap on), keeping your eye fixation above the tip of the pen. This will not only serve as a tracker, but it will also serve as a pacer for maintaining consistent speed and decreasing fixation duration. You may hold it as you would when writing, but it is recommended that you hold it under your hand, flat against the page.
1) Technique (2 minutes):
Practice using the pen as a tracker and pacer. Underline each line, focusing above the tip of the pen. DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH COMPREHENSION. Keep each line to a maximum of 1 second, and increase the speed with each subsequent page. Read, but under no circumstances should you take longer than 1 second per line.
2) Speed (3 minutes):
Repeat the technique, keeping each line to no more than ½ second (2 lines for a single “one-one-thousand”). Some will comprehend nothing, which is to be expected. Maintain speed and technique-you are conditioning your perceptual reflexes, and this is a speed exercise designed to facilitate adaptations in your system. Do not decrease speed. ½ second per line for 3 minutes; focus above the pen and concentrate on technique with speed. Focus on the exercise, and do not daydream.
Third – Perceptual Expansion
If you focus on the center of your computer screen (focus relating to the focal area of the fovea in within the eye), you can still perceive and register the sides of the screen. Training peripheral vision to register more effectively can increase reading speed over 300%. Untrained readers use up to ½ of their peripheral field on margins by moving from 1st word to last, spending 25-50% of their time “reading” margins with no content.
To illustrate, let us take the hypothetical one line: “Once upon a time, students enjoyed reading four hours a day.” If you were able to begin your reading at “time” and finish the line at “four”, you would eliminate 6 of 11 words, more than doubling your reading speed. This concept is easy to implement and combine with the tracking and pacing you’ve already practiced.
1) Technique (1 minute):
Use the pen to track and pace at a consistent speed of one line per second. Begin 1 word in from the first word of each line, and end 1 word in from the last word.
DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH COMPREHENSION. Keep each line to a maximum of 1 second, and increase the speed with each subsequent page. Read, but under no circumstances should you take longer than 1 second per line.
2) Technique (1 minute):
Use the pen to track and pace at a consistent speed of one line per second. Begin 2 words in from the first word of each line, and end 2 words in from the last word.
3) Speed (3 minutes):
Begin at least 3 words in from the first word of each line, and end 3 words in from the last word. Repeat the technique, keeping each line to no more than ½ second (2 lines for a single “one-one-thousand”).
Some will comprehend nothing, which is to be expected. Maintain speed and technique-you are conditioning your perceptual reflexes, and this is a speed exercise designed to facilitate adaptations in your system. Do not decrease speed. ½ second per line for 3 minutes; focus above the pen and concentrate on technique with speed. Focus on the exercise, and do not daydream.
Fourth – Calculate New WPM Reading Speed
Mark your first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly- Read at your fastest comprehension rate. Multiply the number of lines by your previously determined average words-per-line to get determine your new words-per-minute (wpm) rate.
Congratulations on completing your cursory overview of some of the techniques that can be used to accelerate human cognition (defined as the processing and use of information).
Final recommendations: If used for study, it is recommended that you not read 3 assignments in the time it would take you to read one, but rather, read the same assignment 3 times for exposure and recall improvement, depending on relevancy to testing.
Happy trails, page blazers.
FIRST SEARCHES: TIM FERRIS & OTHER BASICS
Doing what any casually inquisitive person does these days, I Googled "speed reading," and one of the first pages that looked promising was this one by Tim Ferris:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-learning/
(In case the linked article ever disappears from the internet, I have recopied the body of the text below.)
Tim Ferris expounds on a number of very interesting topics, and I gather speed reading coincides with his life philosophy rather nicely.
The gist of his commentary is to explain in brief how to speed read. One thing I found mentioned on many sites as I began these searches is that speed reading, rather than subtracting comprehension, actually improves comprehension. This initially seems hard to believe on the face of it. However, I think if I were forced to read far below my comfortable speed, plodding along like a first grader, I would be very loath to pay much attention to what I was doing and become distracted; while I imagined that reading at high speeds along with necessary high concentration may in fact premit one to become more fixedly engaged to the material and allow the reader to remember more, even much more. I would later find the latter to be true.
Ferris' article explains how to test one's current speed, and then relates the primary bad habits that most readers have and the techniques one can learn to train those bad habits away. It's a very good article and I recommend it to anyone starting out.
For my part, I tested my reading speed as he recommended, and used the book that had initially got me on this whole project, Killing Kennedy, which afforded fairly easy reading on a topic that, although unfamiliar, was easy enough to grasp. I tested my reading a few times, and I came out with 214 WPM (words per minute). As I had always suspected, this is a little below average.
The bad habits that Ferris and nearly all speed reading guides mention: subvocalization, fixation, regression, and limited field of vision. I encourage you to read his article for more detail, but to summarize (along with some thoughts from other sources I'll link to later on):
Subvocalization is sounding out words subconsciously in one's head, often with the mouth and tongue moving slightly. At the very least, one hears the words rather clearly in one's head. While it seemed inconceivable to me at first that I could read a passage without hearing the sound of the words in my mind, I was won over by two thoughts: first, that if one subvocalizes all one's reading, one is limited in reading speed to talking speed (a video that I'll link to in a later post notes that notoriously fast-talking New Yorkers actually read faster on average than most), which is called informally the "sound barrier" of reading, and that the goal is to go "supersonic," a speed which evidently occurs around 600 WPM; second, that whenever a story is told verbally — like a person talking to you directly, on a radio show, or a chacter in a movie recounting an event — one hears the words aurally, and then is immediately presented in the mind's eye with an imagination of what that story is conveying; and if one is subvocalizing, the exact same thing is occuring, with the added step that the reader is looking at the page, then turning the words into sound imagined in the mind, and then from hearing that "internal audio" spoken within imagines the scenes and ideas depicted — but, what if you could just look at the words and see the images instantly? without the middle man of subvocalizing — an amazing thought!
Fixation is where the eye stops in its progression over a line. Eye movement fixes that are restricted to one or maybe two words at a time are inefficient. Movement must be steady and rapid, with fewer per line.
Regression is going back to re-read a word or a line. This subtracts from WPM time de facto.
Limited field of vision means that one's peripheral vision is insuffient to observe more than a word or two at a time. But with some training, one can extend peripheral vision to take in whole chunks of words at a time.
All these bad habits are really just the training wheels we received as children learning to read in the first grade: sounding out words phonetically to read outloud. The reality is, once we learn to read "silently," that same word-by-word sounding is going on in our heads, and we never advance our technique in any structured way. While other disciplines, like physical conditioning, skill at a sport, or ability to speak a foreign language, have an outward appearance where the the effects of technique are visible, one's reading, being inherently internal, is not an obvious thing for people to seek to master or improve, which further explains the dirth of information about the subject.
The quintessential solution is to have a tracker or pacer — a finger, a hand, or the end of a pen, which you use to "underline" the words as fast as you like to go, and guide your eyes to do the efficient thing. Using the techniques and training recommended by Ferris, I ended up with a considerably higher reading speed of near 400 WPM!
Thus I was already able to double my formally testudinal reading pace in just a few minutes of training! Already I was blazing through the pages of Killing Kennedy, at a rate of no less than one page per minute, where just the day before I would need two or three minutes to a page. In my extremely limited free time over the next two days (exactly how many minutes or hours altogether I cannot say), I consumed the entire biography proudly and was able to return it to the person who lent it to me. I was initially worried it would have taken me at least a couple weeks to knock it out.
INITIAL OBSERVATIONS
It definitely takes concentration to speed read! It wasn't coming naturally yet — the old 200 WPM pace is much more comfortable. Yet the same can be said of athletics: an able bodied individual who has barely run a day in his life will be a reluctant runner — moving quickly doesn't not come natural to him either; but an energetic Olympian will enjoy jogging from location to location because their muscles are conditioned for the activity and perform without effort; psychologically, running may be less effort when possible because it's less tedious. My own experience with athletic training and early stage speed reading informs this analogy, and it rings true.
I imagine that, comparable to running versus walking, there will be times when reading "subsonic" will be preferable -- such as when the reader encounters a poem or an especially vivid quotation, material that implores the reader to savor the sound (real or imagined) of the spoken word. To extend the analogy, somewhat playfully I admit, to aircraft capable of supersonic cruise speeds, although these jets have been manufactured to fly beyond the sound barrier, sometimes agile maneuvers require slower speeds, and like any reusable vehicle they must eventually slow down and stop. The art and skill of speed reading will be to balance techniques and speeds appropriate to the material.
When it comes to the actual experience of speed reading, the most important question of comprehension is worth addressing chiefly: I am happy to report that I understood everything and recall the whole book comparably with what a slow speed result must have been. Although tempted, I would compel myself not to regress. Once in a while I would really need to, having failed to imprint the text in my brain for an instant. But as I applied the practice of non-regression faithfully, I found that my cognition, starved of the habit, would automatically grasp information the first time round. Truly a remarkable change.
Again I am reminded of the early stages of athletic training since the high intensity of concentration necessitated frequent breaks. The rather limited pockets of free time available to me in which to read generally made this easy, but when afforded the opportunity for longer periods of focus I would need to rest my eyes more than usual (as the eye muscles are utilized rather vigorously), as well as rest my mind — I believe that taking a moment to rest and stare off into the distance allows for moments of reflexion, permitting the information stored in short term memory to be processed and stored more readily in the brain. The blitz across the page is quite exhilarating, and being able to look away as the images are recalled and recorded is very helpful.
The next post will relate an incredibly helpful tool for speed reading training and how I came to find it.
(The below is copied from this link: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-learning/ )
*****
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes
Written by Tim Ferriss
How much more could you get done if you completed all of your required reading in 1/3 or 1/5 the time?
Increasing reading speed is a process of controlling fine motor movement—period.
This post is a condensed overview of principles I taught to undergraduates at Princeton University in 1998 at a seminar called the “PX Project”. The below was written several years ago, so it’s worded like Ivy-Leaguer pompous-ass prose, but the results are substantial. In fact, while on an airplane in China two weeks ago, I helped Glenn McElhose increase his reading speed 34% in less than 5 minutes.
I have never seen the method fail. Here’s how it works…
The PX Project
The PX Project, a single 3-hour cognitive experiment, produced an average increase in reading speed of 386%.
It was tested with speakers of five languages, and even dyslexics were conditioned to read technical material at more than 3,000 words-per-minute (wpm), or 10 pages per minute. One page every 6 seconds. By comparison, the average reading speed in the US is 200-300 wpm (1/2 to 1 page per minute), with the top 1% of the population reading over 400 wpm…
If you understand several basic principles of the human visual system, you can eliminate inefficiencies and increase speed while improving retention.
To perform the exercises in this post and see the results, you will need: a book of 200+ pages that can lay flat when open, a pen, and a timer (a stop watch with alarm or kitchen timer is ideal). You should complete the 20 minutes of exercises in one session.
First, several definitions and distinctions specific to the reading process:
A) Synopsis: You must minimize the number and duration of fixations per line to increase speed.
You do not read in a straight line, but rather in a sequence of saccadic movements (jumps). Each of these saccades ends with a fixation, or a temporary snapshot of the text within you focus area (approx. the size of a quarter at 8 inches from reading surface). Each fixation will last ¼ to ½ seconds in the untrained subject. To demonstrate this, close one eye, place a fingertip on top of that eyelid, and then slowly scan a straight horizontal line with your other eye-you will feel distinct and separate movements and periods of fixation.
B) Synopsis: You must eliminate regression and back-skipping to increase speed.
The untrained subject engages in regression (conscious rereading) and back-skipping (subconscious rereading via misplacement of fixation) for up to 30% of total reading time.
C) Synopsis: You must use conditioning drills to increase horizontal peripheral vision span and the number of words registered per fixation.
Untrained subjects use central focus but not horizontal peripheral vision span during reading, foregoing up to 50% of their words per fixation (the number of words that can be perceived and “read” in each fixation).
The Protocol
You will 1) learn technique, 2) learn to apply techniques with speed through conditioning, then 3) learn to test yourself with reading for comprehension.
These are separate, and your adaptation to the sequencing depends on keeping them separate. Do not worry about comprehension if you are learning to apply a motor skill with speed, for example. The adaptive sequence is: technique ‘ technique with speed ‘ comprehensive reading testing.
As a general rule, you will need to practice technique at 3x the speed of your ultimate target reading speed. Thus, if you currently read at 300 wpm and your target reading speed is 900 wpm, you will need to practice technique at 1,800 words-per-minute, or 6 pages per minute (10 seconds per page).
We will cover two main techniques in this introduction:
1) Trackers and Pacers (to address A and B above)
2) Perceptual Expansion (to address C)
First – Determining Baseline
To determine your current reading speed, take your practice book (which should lay flat when open on a table) and count the number of words in 5 lines. Divide this number of words by 5, and you have your average number of words-per-line.
Example: 62 words/5 lines = 12.4, which you round to 12 words-per-line
Next, count the number of text lines on 5 pages and divide by 5 to arrive at the average number of lines per page. Multiply this by average number of words-per-line, and you have your average number of words per page.
Example: 154 lines/5 pages = 30.8, rounded to 31 lines per page x 12 words-per-line = 372 words per page
Mark your first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly-do not read faster than normal, and read for comprehension. After exactly one minute, multiply the number of lines by your average words-per-line to determine your current words-per-minute (wpm) rate.
Second – Trackers and Pacers
Regression, back-skipping, and the duration of fixations can be minimized by using a tracker and pacer. To illustrate the importance of a tracker-did you use a pen or finger when counting the number of words or lines in above baseline calculations? If you did, it was for the purpose of tracking-using a visual aid to guide fixation efficiency and accuracy. Nowhere is this more relevant than in conditioning reading speed by eliminating such inefficiencies.
For the purposes of this article, we will use a pen. Holding the pen in your dominant hand, you will underline each line (with the cap on), keeping your eye fixation above the tip of the pen. This will not only serve as a tracker, but it will also serve as a pacer for maintaining consistent speed and decreasing fixation duration. You may hold it as you would when writing, but it is recommended that you hold it under your hand, flat against the page.
1) Technique (2 minutes):
Practice using the pen as a tracker and pacer. Underline each line, focusing above the tip of the pen. DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH COMPREHENSION. Keep each line to a maximum of 1 second, and increase the speed with each subsequent page. Read, but under no circumstances should you take longer than 1 second per line.
2) Speed (3 minutes):
Repeat the technique, keeping each line to no more than ½ second (2 lines for a single “one-one-thousand”). Some will comprehend nothing, which is to be expected. Maintain speed and technique-you are conditioning your perceptual reflexes, and this is a speed exercise designed to facilitate adaptations in your system. Do not decrease speed. ½ second per line for 3 minutes; focus above the pen and concentrate on technique with speed. Focus on the exercise, and do not daydream.
Third – Perceptual Expansion
If you focus on the center of your computer screen (focus relating to the focal area of the fovea in within the eye), you can still perceive and register the sides of the screen. Training peripheral vision to register more effectively can increase reading speed over 300%. Untrained readers use up to ½ of their peripheral field on margins by moving from 1st word to last, spending 25-50% of their time “reading” margins with no content.
To illustrate, let us take the hypothetical one line: “Once upon a time, students enjoyed reading four hours a day.” If you were able to begin your reading at “time” and finish the line at “four”, you would eliminate 6 of 11 words, more than doubling your reading speed. This concept is easy to implement and combine with the tracking and pacing you’ve already practiced.
1) Technique (1 minute):
Use the pen to track and pace at a consistent speed of one line per second. Begin 1 word in from the first word of each line, and end 1 word in from the last word.
DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH COMPREHENSION. Keep each line to a maximum of 1 second, and increase the speed with each subsequent page. Read, but under no circumstances should you take longer than 1 second per line.
2) Technique (1 minute):
Use the pen to track and pace at a consistent speed of one line per second. Begin 2 words in from the first word of each line, and end 2 words in from the last word.
3) Speed (3 minutes):
Begin at least 3 words in from the first word of each line, and end 3 words in from the last word. Repeat the technique, keeping each line to no more than ½ second (2 lines for a single “one-one-thousand”).
Some will comprehend nothing, which is to be expected. Maintain speed and technique-you are conditioning your perceptual reflexes, and this is a speed exercise designed to facilitate adaptations in your system. Do not decrease speed. ½ second per line for 3 minutes; focus above the pen and concentrate on technique with speed. Focus on the exercise, and do not daydream.
Fourth – Calculate New WPM Reading Speed
Mark your first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly- Read at your fastest comprehension rate. Multiply the number of lines by your previously determined average words-per-line to get determine your new words-per-minute (wpm) rate.
Congratulations on completing your cursory overview of some of the techniques that can be used to accelerate human cognition (defined as the processing and use of information).
Final recommendations: If used for study, it is recommended that you not read 3 assignments in the time it would take you to read one, but rather, read the same assignment 3 times for exposure and recall improvement, depending on relevancy to testing.
Happy trails, page blazers.
1. Intro: Why Speed Reading
Speed Reading! Can it be done? How long will it take? Is to for everyone? Is it for real?
Even if reading quickly, can comprehension be maintained?
The purpose of this blog is to help answer these personal questions of mine (and maybe yours too) as I begin to learn this seemingly elusive skill. As there is very little in the way of an online network just for speed readers, my goal for this blog is to help form a bedrock upon which a potentially growing community of page-flippers may construct their foundation.
FIRST INSPIRATION
Last week I was lent the bestseller book Killing Kennedy which, although I was grateful for the loan, stacked itself on top of an already dispiritingly high reading list of material that I need and want to consume. As I made my way through the first few chapters, I learned that JFK was a speed reader, with the ability to pore through 1,200 words per minute! I was so impressed by this that I decided to take advantage of the internet's compendium of information to see if I might find more on the subject.
MY MOTIVATION
I have always been a fairly slow reader. Or at least, slower than average, from what I could tell. While I did well in school, I would observe my classmates seeming to read faster than I. While I don't recall any instance of this in particular, I do remember once when I was a grade school student asking my mother about the topic (the pre-internet of its day), having heard of the idea from TV or some source, and her response was that speed reading is merely skimming. Upon informing her that I wished my own speed to increase, her answer was that I should read more.
But I found reading to be a drudgery. I never read for pleasure. Although captivated by abstract concepts such as the sciences and foreign languages my whole life, which I would readily read about in books or on the internet, it was seldom if ever I picked up a piece of literature that wasn't handed to me in school. My particular interest in ancient Rome has led me to be better read in the Latin classics (in the original) than English classics!
While I have profited immensely from the various studies I have pursued over the years, I always regretted my inability to read faster. While I am confident to retain information I read rather well at my slow pace, I always wondered if there were a faster way. Since I enjoy public speaking and theater, I like to hear the voices of the author or the characters as I imagine them as vividly as possible, which I have thought may contribute to my retention (but this may not be the case). It's worth mentioning that I am an avid reader of news articles daily, and as I've adapted to certain newspapers' style I can run through the articles at what I used to consider a fast pace.
TENTATIVE STEPS
While it has only been a week since I began this new journey, I was immediately impelled from the start by the internet's culture of instant gratification to find the darned answer! I was convinced that there must be a comprehensive solution. If JFK could read as fast as he did, and make a point to have his staff trained in the techniques as well, it couldn't be as elusive as I once had conceived.
One of the early problems I noted was that there is hardly any discernible online community that cultivates this skill, and as I have already come to see the benefits of the techniques involved, it greatly surprised me that others have not gone out of their way to share their abilities and teach others in open forum much as people do for any variety of subjects like physical fitness, language study, painting skills, etc. While there are a number of companies selling courses and programs to teach speed reading, I have yet to find their graduates — so if they were successful, let them find this blog too and share ideas with each other and would-be students.
In the next blog entry I will relate my initial findings and progress, and how I managed to finish Killing Kennedy faster than I had ever imagined possible.
Even if reading quickly, can comprehension be maintained?
The purpose of this blog is to help answer these personal questions of mine (and maybe yours too) as I begin to learn this seemingly elusive skill. As there is very little in the way of an online network just for speed readers, my goal for this blog is to help form a bedrock upon which a potentially growing community of page-flippers may construct their foundation.
FIRST INSPIRATION
Last week I was lent the bestseller book Killing Kennedy which, although I was grateful for the loan, stacked itself on top of an already dispiritingly high reading list of material that I need and want to consume. As I made my way through the first few chapters, I learned that JFK was a speed reader, with the ability to pore through 1,200 words per minute! I was so impressed by this that I decided to take advantage of the internet's compendium of information to see if I might find more on the subject.
MY MOTIVATION
I have always been a fairly slow reader. Or at least, slower than average, from what I could tell. While I did well in school, I would observe my classmates seeming to read faster than I. While I don't recall any instance of this in particular, I do remember once when I was a grade school student asking my mother about the topic (the pre-internet of its day), having heard of the idea from TV or some source, and her response was that speed reading is merely skimming. Upon informing her that I wished my own speed to increase, her answer was that I should read more.
But I found reading to be a drudgery. I never read for pleasure. Although captivated by abstract concepts such as the sciences and foreign languages my whole life, which I would readily read about in books or on the internet, it was seldom if ever I picked up a piece of literature that wasn't handed to me in school. My particular interest in ancient Rome has led me to be better read in the Latin classics (in the original) than English classics!
While I have profited immensely from the various studies I have pursued over the years, I always regretted my inability to read faster. While I am confident to retain information I read rather well at my slow pace, I always wondered if there were a faster way. Since I enjoy public speaking and theater, I like to hear the voices of the author or the characters as I imagine them as vividly as possible, which I have thought may contribute to my retention (but this may not be the case). It's worth mentioning that I am an avid reader of news articles daily, and as I've adapted to certain newspapers' style I can run through the articles at what I used to consider a fast pace.
TENTATIVE STEPS
While it has only been a week since I began this new journey, I was immediately impelled from the start by the internet's culture of instant gratification to find the darned answer! I was convinced that there must be a comprehensive solution. If JFK could read as fast as he did, and make a point to have his staff trained in the techniques as well, it couldn't be as elusive as I once had conceived.
One of the early problems I noted was that there is hardly any discernible online community that cultivates this skill, and as I have already come to see the benefits of the techniques involved, it greatly surprised me that others have not gone out of their way to share their abilities and teach others in open forum much as people do for any variety of subjects like physical fitness, language study, painting skills, etc. While there are a number of companies selling courses and programs to teach speed reading, I have yet to find their graduates — so if they were successful, let them find this blog too and share ideas with each other and would-be students.
In the next blog entry I will relate my initial findings and progress, and how I managed to finish Killing Kennedy faster than I had ever imagined possible.
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