speed reading tips, techniques and how-to

Speed Reading - Make the Most of Your Reading Investment

What I am about to say may not apply to some readers. But it surely does to nine out of ten.

The time you spend in reading is an investment. You ought to get good returns on it. But, in order to do so, you must salt down the essence of books and articles in whatever form proves most usable. It is foolish to trust to your memory altogether. Why overburden that excellent function, when it is much easier to organize your findings in the form of notes and file records?

Furthermore, You Strengthen Your Reading Habits as Soon as You Establish the Deeper Habit of Approaching the Printed Page with the Determination to Grasp It Weil Enough to Write Down a Brief Report for Filing.

System in preserving the important contents of what you read cannot fail to make you a better reader, If You Use What You Thus Save. It will help little if you merely jot down notes, file them, and then forget them forever.
A notebook is not a miser's sock in which treasure is to be hidden. It is a tool drawer, which ought to be opened daily. So too with filing cabinets and their orderly contents.

Every man chooses his own method of filing material. The method should be determined chiefly by the nature of your subjects and by the kind of use you will make of the notes. An engineer requires a well-analyzed and volum­inous note file. A newspaper man must have one still vaster, but it need not be well analyzed. The manager of a department in a factory may be well served if he has a file with only 30 or 40 topic headings that cover the affairs within his own domain. There is no rule here, you see. You must find what you need.

Speed Reading - How to Use Your Reading Notes

There are many ways. But let me suggest one that you might not hit upon. After you have finished, let us say, a magazine article on a given subject, write down your notes. Break these up into whatever topical headings you find useful. Then file them accordingly. As you do so, pull out all the other notes under the same headings and run your eye speedly through them. Link Up What You Have Just Read with All That You Have Previously Read on the Same Subject.

It is almost certain that, as you do this, you will discover new relations, if not new facts. And you will strengthen your grasp on the entire subject. The more frequently you run through your old notes thus, the surer your mastery of them.

And the better your mastery of them, the easier will be your future reading along these lines.    For you will bring to future pages a better organized mass of information. You will eventually read faster too.
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