speed reading tips, techniques and how-to

Speed Reading Limitations - Poor Reading Habits

We vary in our speed of reading to an astonishing degree. The vice-president of a large textile company says, "It takes me a couple of weeks to read a book such as my boy of fourteen reads in an evening. Probably he could tell you the gist of it as well as I could, too." Contrast to him a woman I know who thinks nothing of reading three, four, or even five fat books in the course of a day, all of which she retains with considerable accuracy.

Even more widely do we vary in our speed of skimming. Every experienced newspaper editor races over hundreds of thousands of words every week and manages to hold in his memory quite enough to give him his bearings about a thousand and one news items for as long as these are of value to him in his business.

Suppose that at this very moment you pick up a book and say: "I must read Chapter VII in this work at once." A few factors play in upon your act and the reading which ensues. Two examples are:

  1. The interests that lead you to read the book.
  2. The habits of body and mind that you use in the act of reading.

Your primary interests in reading that chapter of that book at this moment may be nothing more than self-protection. Your general sales manager may have called a conference for this afternoon and may have announced that everybody who attends it ought to check through the market statistics given in that particular passage. To save your face, you are going to glance at the pages; for it will be humiliating to be called upon to express an opinion on them and to admit lack of knowledge. Reading therefore is merely a means to the end of stand­ing in well with your sales manager.

Your Interest in Reading Ought to Determine the Way You Read. It is wasteful, therefore foolish, to pursue one and only one reading method for all kinds of matter and all interests. Your school teachers never taught you this. They merely taught you to read and usually the interest they forced upon you was that of reading in order to pass a school examination on what you read. This forced you to cram on all the petty details of the text.

Reading Posture - The Actual Bodily Position

Posture, in the narrower sense, is the body's own position; that is, the position of its members relative to one another. So far as reading is concerned, posture is important in so far as it affects (a) The circulation of your blood, and the tension of your muscles. Any posture that disturbs blood circulation is bad. So is any posture that causes any muscles to become tense. The two commonest bad postures are bending low over the printed page, and lying flat and looking up at the printed page.

These are by no means equally bad for all persons. Some of us find that we read fairly well while lying flat, at least for a little while; and we get a special satisfaction from it because in this position we relax those muscles which have been tense in the course of the day's work. People who are on their feet all day often find the recumbent position excellent for reading. Sedentary workers are less likely to In any case, however, check up on yourself.
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