Speed Reading - Anyone....Anyone?

[deleted] · 2016-09-06T22:06:37+00:00

[permanently deleted]

KylarSovari · 2016-09-07T05:31:32+00:00

Think about this differently. Your goal in reading the sidebar—and in reading anything—should be understanding. Speed reading relies on consuming words as quickly as possible, when you should be consuming ideas. That means less time spent reading and more time spent thinking.

Strive instead to quickly arrive at the purpose of a passage, its implications, and what it means in the context of your previous learnings. If you can consistently capture the main ideas of a text, you will make someone who can point their eyeballs at individual characters really, really quickly—look really really dumb.

RedSkeller · 2016-09-06T22:40:00+00:00

It's a scam up there with the promise of world peace or the diet that makes anyone skinny. You can skim things and learn to sift through information but you won't have full comprehension.

elplumarojo · 2016-09-07T03:24:31+00:00

I've always been a fast reader, but the idea of flipping through a book in seconds with perfect recollection like Data on Star Trek always appealed to me. But, I was more interested in comprehension and recall, wanted to know what I was reading meant, and remember what I'd read. I tried a few courses and techniques, but didn't stick with them for various reasons:

1, It clashed with my current reading style, and since I was already a fast reader, re-learning everything with an alien system didn't seem worth it.

2, Some insist on consciously maintaining a breakneck pace and not going back over what you've read, which can mean you finish the book not knowing what you've just read, and it can suck the fun out of pleasure/recreational reading.

3, Some were a little too out there, like the technique where you induce an alpha brain wave state, and just gaze unfocused on each page for 10 seconds. Proponents of such methods often make claims that you can do this with an English-Foreign language dictionary, get a full night's sleep, and wake up able to speak the language enough to say basic touristy questions and statements. Yeah, that's bullshit.

Admittedly that last one helped, since I already tended to read whole sentences or paragraphs at once, rather than word-by-word.

Haven't heard of the Kwik system till just now, but if it's working for you, that's awesome, and I'll look into it myself, since I still can't read like Data.

I've got a few tips and advice I can share, if you want.

trpthroway123 · 2016-09-07T14:16:10+00:00

Speed reading has made my normal reading much faster. I'm somewhere around 300-350wpm for normal content, like Reddit posts and news articles, but that drops a lot if the content is technical, important, or difficult to understand in general (I read a lot of contracts and laws/regulations, it drops to around 200wpm)

Full blown speed reading, I'm somewhere around 600wpm, but comprehension suffers greatly. It's great for skimming through to find the content that matters, but it's much closer to "looking at" words, rather than "reading" words at that point.

Title	Speed Reading - Anyone....Anyone?
Author	maxofreddit
Upvotes	6
Comments	13
Date	September 6, 2016 9:52 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/51hpfl/speed_reading_anyoneanyone/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/speed-reading-anyoneanyone.110929 https://theredarchive.com/post/110929

Comments