How do you memorize more by reading 8 times faster?
There are people who read three, five and even ten times faster than you. Theodore Roosevelt used to read one book a day before breakfast during his presidency. Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes had a quick look at the pages of his materials on his way to the Supreme Court, after which he could answer in detail all the questions about what he had seen.
In fact, since books started to be printed, there have always been a few people – a very small, limited group – who could read incredibly fast, swallowing books at breathtaking speeds. You can do that, too. That’s how the speed reading book I recently read begins. For several years now I have been reading all the books on speed reading that are published in Russian. It allows me to improve this skill and improve my course. Today I will talk about useful and interesting exercises to increase speed of reading and memorizing information. Peter Kamp calls his method innovative. Let’s see what’s new and interesting about it. And let’s start at the beginning, with a definition.
What is reading and speed reading?
Disagreements about the maximum possible tempo are often linked to different understandings of the word “reading”. The author defines reading as viewing text and extracting enough information from it to achieve a goal. Accordingly, speed reading is the same, but with the highest possible speed.
Motivation
Often people say that the skill of speed reading they need very much, but seriously learn is not enough time and motivation. The book has a good example of how to move forward: “If you had only six months to live and could only read ten books in that time, which would you choose? Write their titles, as many as you can in three minutes, into the list in the progress report. Do not include the books you are supposed to read, but the ones you are really interested in. After no more than two minutes, make a list of the topics or subjects you would like to study more deeply if you had the time to do so. These are the kind of books Peter advises you to train and exercise.
How to run the reading acceleratorHow to run the reading accelerator
You may be surprised, but you have the most powerful reading acceleration tool available. This is your hand. By reading with your hand, you achieve several goals:
1) Reading at high speed;
2) increased attentiveness;
3) it is easier for your eyes to follow the text;
4) you always read only forward without regression;
5) if the speed is high enough, you stop saying words.
To use your hand to increase reading speed, first pull out your index finger. Then slide your fingertip along each line of readable text below a line of words. When your finger reaches the end of the line, lift it about a centimeter, quickly move to the next line, and start the process again. The main thing is to follow the rule – eyes follow the pointer, not the other way around. You set the speed with your hand, and your eyes can only keep up with the movements of your hand. If you think that the reading speed is slow, just increase the speed of your hand.
Three-fold increase in speed
The basic rule of practice reading speed is that if you want to read at a certain speed, you need to practice reading about three times faster. You can feel a threefold increase in reading speed with the following exercise. Materials: any simple book of your choice; a device for time control. Objective: To learn to see more than one word at a time. 1. Read new material within 3 minutes using your hand. Make a note where you left off. 2. Practice reading the same passage in 2 minutes. You should definitely get to the mark you made. You may not be able to read every word at this stage, but it doesn’t matter. Just move your finger on the text fast enough to pass the text before 2 minutes are up, and let your eyes follow your hand. 3. Practice reading the same passage of text in 1 minute. Remember that you must reach the end of the passage strictly in the time allocated. If this exercise was not difficult for you and you each time easily reached the mark made, it may seem to you that you did something wrong, because it can not be so easy! But it is really easy. However, if you didn’t manage to reach the mark, the reason is that you tried to read it, whereas now you have to learn to simply look through the text faster than you can read it. That is the training. You will always read at the beginning and end of the exercise, but almost never in the middle. In the middle you will almost always train, and it is extremely important to use your hand. If you have not seen all the words, it is not so important. Don’t worry if you have to skip individual words or even whole lines while reading. The most important thing is to reach the mark. Anyone can do it with ease, you just need to move your hand quickly enough. When you do a practice reading, especially at double or triple speed, you move forward faster than you can say all the words to yourself. In this way you practice sending only a visual signal to your brain. It’s as if you’re telling him that he can only see the words, but not hear them. And the brain has to deal with that. Then, when you finish the exercise, reading the text to understand it, you usually find that the reading speed has increased significantly. If you want to read 8 times faster, modify the exercise above accordingly. Read the excerpt for 8 minutes, then try to read it in 4 minutes, then in 1.
