Speed Reading: Does it work?

[el_fefes]

So I always see the speed reading program that is offered (effective speed reading I think) and wondered if anyone has taken it and if it worked?

I'm thinking of taking it but I just wanted to know if it would be a waste of time.

[00sir2]

I took it 3 or 4 years ago and I think I increased my reading speed by about 3 times. I would recommend it.

[Proboscis]

that blow and go box??? Q eye

[rage2]

It works very well. I never took any actual speed reading courses, but I got tips from friends that have and developed my own speed reading methods.

The only problem with speed reading is if there's poorly written material, it's very easy to misinterpret the actual meaning completely. We had an email from an employee to the management team which was misinterpreted by ALL the speed readers because of how everything was worded. Could've meant 2 different things, and both speed readers (me and my boss) picked up the wrong interpretation .

[Watcher]

The speed reader blames the writer? It might be true, but kinda funny.

[403Gemini]

Originally posted by Watcher
The speed reader blames the writer? It might be true, but kinda funny.

no kidding hey

id love to learn how to speed read for books and what not, but any legal documents or shit for work ill take my time

[rage2]

Well, I blame speed reading. All I'm saying is that it works MOST of the time, but it can fuck you over if the writer isn't clear!

And ya, I have over 150 LEGIT emails a day... you gotta friggin' speed read to get thru all that shit! lol.

[403Gemini]

Originally posted by rage2
Well, I blame speed reading. All I'm saying is that it works MOST of the time, but it can fuck you over if the writer isn't clear!

And ya, I have over 150 LEGIT emails a day... you gotta friggin' speed read to get thru all that shit! lol.

lol touche rage, touche.

any tips you can give over the net or do you need to go through some elite special training?

[max_boost]

haha What about photo reading? hehe Now that shit is as fast as turning the pages or holding down the scroll button on a web page.

[bigboom]

speed reading works, but like rage2 said it really depends on how its written. the essence of it is you kinda just follow the page/words and skim it with your eyes without reading every single word and if its written bad you get the wrong meaning. which has happened to me before too.

[rage2]

Originally posted by 403Gemini
any tips you can give over the net or do you need to go through some elite special training?

You just have to recognize which words are important in a sentence and ignore all the other crap that's not important. That was the hardest part of learning how to speed read, what to process, and what to drop. For example:

Originally posted by bigboom
speed reading works, but like rage2 said it really depends on how its written. the essence of it is you kinda just follow the page/words and skim it with your eyes without reading every single word and if its written bad you get the wrong meaning. which has happened to me before too.

I read and processed that as:

Originally posted by bigboom
speed reading works, rage2 said depends how written. you follow page/words skim with eyes bad get wrong meaning. happened to me.

and voila, you fly thru paragraphs like it's nothing. I can't do that crazy infomercial shit where someone names a page, sentence and word number and know exactly what words there. I just speed read to filter thru all the BS in words to get to the general idea of what the writer is trying to convey.

If you haven't noticed, I make a lot of mistakes speed reading on beyond too... when I argue with someone who's agreeing with me haha.

I practiced by reading car magazine articles that I've read before and understand exactly what the writer is trying to say. Learned to skim thru it and practiced recognizing whats important and what not then slowly just developed the skill to read new material and be 95% accurate in terms of knowing what i need to know.

[el_fefes]

Thanks for the replies. I'll see if I can take that course...I'll save so much time both on the forums and for school

[Si_FlyGuy]

One concept is to use your peripherals to pick up the shapes of words. Therefore, your eye should not stray too much from the center line of the page. It's worth the time investment.

[nagooro]

Bump...Has anyone tried this lately?

[HyperZell]

5 year old bump? Nice.

[rage2]

I still do it everyday, and I still do misread once or twice a month.

It's kind of sad that my email count has gone up since my post 5 years ago.

[derpderp]

I was going to question the point of speed reading, but I can see how that is a good tool for the business world when you're getting slammed by e-mails constantly.

You can speed read beyond and post more rapidly.

[J-hop]

beyond has increased my reading speed by at least 3x. Exact same concepts apply, skim the BS pick out the good stuff

[brucebanner]

So Rage what do you do for walls of text? Just pass them by altogether because they have nothing useful in them to pick through anyways?

Reading forums and reading fairly regularly has increased my reading speed quite a bit. When we're slow at work and I'm reading whatever book, I usually get a couple guys shocked that I finished it "so fast" haha.