Small speed-reading update.

All of a sudden, I got very busy. University starts extremely early here, two weeks before the summer term ends in Sweden, so I'm doubly busy. I haven't stopped with my speed-reading though, I'm just not able to do as much of it as I used to. The exercises have become different now, they focus on visual reading at over 1600 words per minute and progress is not as easy to measure anymore. On average, when making an effort I think I read at somewhere between 800 to 900 words per minute. Every time I feel like I am reading extremely slowly, I end up at over 700 words per minute anyway. I'm guessing this is good. I can't really practice read a whole lot right now though since I am reading philosophy and other more difficult texts that need to be read more slowly. I am hoping to get some time over for my speed-reading soon -_-

And some more!

I must say I have been quite good at doing my speed-reading exercises, except for the paragraph exercise where you are supposed to find the topic on as many paragraphs as possible in five minutes and note it down. I find that incredibly boring a stressful. I have been doing the other ones though, and yesterday I read the book "The Evilyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading Program”. I think these two books are excellent together. You can read the second one through quickly and pick up a lot of things that you also find in the first book, but the first book is more structured like a course that you follow by doing this and that every day. Today I am going to start trying out some of the hand movements from the second book. Wide reading it yesterday, I read perhaps half of it, or a third, by reading two lines at once. I'm not sure if this is quicker or not, but I intend to do some tests today. Like all techniques, this one also needs practicing, and I haven't done that much practicing with it yet, so it may still be slower.

New records? I have managed Swedish fiction at a good recall rate of 740 words a minute (833 as well, but then I wasn't satisfied with my recall) , and somehow English nonfiction at 884... O_o I think I am rather comfortable with 500 now.

Speed-reading update.

I have been trying to follow the book in the designated pace and although I can show some more impressive numbers already, I’m not sure I’ve become a better reader just yet. :) I'm experiencing some slight problems with the main technique, which is to use your hand as a pacer as you go down the lines. That is, your hand should stop you from looking back and forcing you to continue ahead. For me, this is rather painful, even though I use a pen instead to minimize the movement. Because of this, I don't practice as much as I probably should. After today's exercises, I do seem to have improved my reading of easier material. The book tells you what sort of material you should use for different exercises, and right now you are supposed to use easier material, so I am using historical Swedish fiction, a book called "Livläkarens besök" by Per Olov Enquist, which deals with Denmark. The first time I read in this book, I managed 350 words per minute, while making an effort. I did not make a great effort for my 240 words of English nonfiction. Now, when reading this easier book and making an effort, I'm at 530 words per minute.

There is of course a great difference between reading in a relaxed manner and reading while making an effort to speed things up. I am Evidently not only interested in reading fast, I also want to understand what I read and I am definitely interested in actually remembering it. Right now, I don't see how those things are supposed to improve by reading faster, but I guess that will come later in the book. This is, after all, just lesson four or something like that.

Reading somewhat faster.

I have always been concerned about my reading rate. I have always wanted to improve it, I have always been very jealous of rapid readers. I did actually read rather fast when I was 15 and mainly read fantasy; back then I had way more confidence when it came to my intellectual capacities than I do now and I often read one book in a day. I even had more confidence when it came to my language abilities, which is quite funny since I was merely bilingual back then.

When I was 16 or 17, my boyfriend at the time gave me a speed-reading book. By that respectable age, I was already a nervous wreck when it came to my reading speed. I was almost a bit reluctant to start the book since I was convinced I would just fail at it – which I also did. It’s hard to say why exactly (except for bad attitude) because I worked rather hard with it (the method included making texts with columns and increasing your eye span ), but I think that in the end the whole thing is made me feel stressed and reluctant about reading which was really not the point to begin with… however, Thom recommended this site to me and on it you can find another speed-reading book. Since I do a lot of reading and since I am soon to become a student at the University of Oslo I thought it would be too silly to not even give it a try. So that’s exactly what I’ll do and I will evaluate the progress here on my blog.

My starting point seems to be a good one, my reading speed is rather average and according to the book I should be able to make a lot of progress. In case anyone was wondering, I can manage 240 words per minute when reading English nonfiction at the moment. I know very well that I do a lot of conscious regression when reading, but I’ve always felt incapable of stopping this bad habit. I did not, however, know that you should be sitting up all the time! I don't even have a desk to sit at, nor a normal table, so I'm not sure what I'll do about that.

Oh well, here we go!