Speed \u200b\u200breading and intelligence development. Fast Reading Basics Effective Speed \u200b\u200bReading Techniques

Read this article and master the speed reading technique that will allow you to read this article faster than you read this sentence.

Yaroslav Sviridov

Sergey Radionov

According to the University of Berkeley, if in the 90s the volume of information doubled every five years, now such an increase occurs every one and a half years (and largely thanks to scientists at the University of Berkeley, who publish more and more scientific articles). Well, by 2020 you will not only paste a new photo into your passport, but you will also face the fact that the flow of information will double every 73 days.

Even today you spend a lot of time looking for a fresh joke in the daily mailing of bearded jokes and fishing out a subpoena in a heap of paper spam from your mailbox, but imagine what awaits you in a beautiful far away ... As you already understood a few lines ago, talking about these horrors, we lead to the fact that in such circumstances you should master the basics of speed reading. Having learned to separate the information grains from the chaff at lightning speed, you can finally enjoy reading the carefully selected chaff, not paying attention to the grains you do not need.

Measure yourself

Find out your current reading speed before starting the exercises. Read some text. It is advisable to turn off the phone and remove strangers from the room. Don't push yourself, read at your normal speed. We will still not be able to verify the veracity of your result, so we will not laugh at you, even if you show very weak reading skills in warehouses. Time your stopwatch and start testing.

Now go through the table and determine at what level your reading ability is.

“With the help of speed reading techniques, any tempo can be increased 2-5 times,” says Yulia Orlova, a speed reading course teacher at the Presidential Business School. True, for this you will have to not only read these exercises, but also do them for an hour a day. You can alternate tasks in any sequence: the skills acquired in one exercise will be useful in others.

1. Deadly talk

80% of people pronounce words when reading. Some (news anchors using a teleprompter) express this explicitly, others indirectly. Sometimes mute articulation can be noticed by a slight movement of the lips of the reader, but more often - only during X-ray filming of the larynx.

According to Yulia Orlova, you acquired this bad habit that inhibits reading while learning to read - by speaking the text about mom washing the frame, letter by letter, then by syllable, then putting them into words. As a result, you are used to assimilating the text only after you have spoken it. But for understanding, it is not necessary to use the muscles of the larynx.

Looking at a photograph, you do not explain to yourself what is depicted in it. ("So, what do we have here? The girl is sitting on the couch, her hair is loose, her legs are apart ... Ah! Got it!) Information from the picture is immediately transmitted to the brain, bypassing the organs of speech. The same can be achieved with reading.

To suppress the movement of your lips while reading, press them with your finger. To combat internal pronunciation, read the text while counting to thirty or hum (without words) a song. The muscles in the larynx will be involved, and the brain will begin to receive information directly. For the first week or two, you will not understand the content of the text, but gradually everything will return to normal.

2. Follow the white pointer

Despite the fact that it seems to you that your eyes move smoothly along the line when reading, in reality the pupils make regular stops every 1.5-2 words (apparent smoothness is achieved due to the eye's ability to leave the seen image on the retina). Although these slowdowns are short-lived, they can add up to two minutes per page.

To take the eyes off the brakes, use the trait acquired by the eye in the process of evolution. Among other things, the very first eye was created many millions of years ago in order to capture movement (the second eye was created only for symmetry). It is in the movement that the basic information about what is happening around is contained.

Take a pencil in your hand and, leading it under the line, start reading the text. The eye, having caught the movement, will rush for the pointer, along the way reading what you slipped into it.

Having mastered with the initial speed, each time accelerate the pointer movement. Gradually, the eyes will get used to the increased load, and the speed will noticeably increase.

3. Do not retreat

“In addition to periodically fixing a gaze and speaking, the most common mistake of an inexperienced reader is eye regression,” says Yulia. A certain time during reading takes a "bounce" of the pupils to the left in order to reread the already passed word, which, as you subconsciously think, you have missed or did not understand.

You could become addicted to this way of reading in the elementary grades of school, and by now you are no longer aware of it, just as you do not notice long-developed reflexes.

Here you will need a business card that has been lying on the table for two years, which you automatically re-read from time to time, although you know how it all ends there. Flip the business card over with the back (blank) side so that the letters do not distract you. Now start reading any text you come across, covering each word you read with a card (Fig. 1).

It is not necessary to strive to understand the text. Now it is more important for you to learn how to prevent the eye from leaping in the opposite direction.

4. Widely spaced eyes

Of the 260 million photoreceptors in the eye, 220 million are responsible for peripheral vision. All that is required of you is to teach them to read.

Take a clear sheet of plastic, book-page size, and divide it into four columns (Figure 2). Put the prepared sheet on the page and try to read the text, fixing your gaze in turn on each column.

This is best done with a metronome or simply by tapping out a clear beat. Don't try to read the whole words. IN THE BEGINNING, most likely, YOU WILL see ONLY incoherent scraps like THOSE scraps, WHICH WE HAVE IN CAPITAL LETTERS IN THIS OFFER. Over time, the eye will begin to cover ALL LARGE VOLUMES, AND YOU WILL SEE EVERYTHING AS ON YOUR PALM *. Then line the sheet again, reducing the number of columns. Continue in the same spirit and further. Ideally, in one fixation of your gaze, you should see the entire line as a whole.

* Here, in addition, there is a law discovered by psychologist Georg Müller, who established that information is easier to assimilate if the text is divided into separate informative blocks. Words read separately are more difficult to understand than a phrase swallowed at once.

5. On all four sides

As you continue to improve your panoramic text perception, forget about letters for a while and switch to numbers.

Fix your gaze on the unit in the center. Without taking your eyes off it, try to find with the help of peripheral vision the remaining numbers from 2 to 25 in turn.When, after a couple of lessons, you begin to clearly distinguish all the numbers without moving your pupils, enlarge the table: instead of a 5 by 5 square, make a new one - 7 by 7 Then 9 by 9, etc., until you can perceive a margin the width of a book page.

6. Hello Christmas tree

Since peripheral vision is the most important technique for achieving high reading speed, here's another exercise for you to develop a useful skill. In addition, this skill will help you look at the surrounding girls on the beach without drilling them with an annoying look.

7. Closing will show

“Masters of speed reading never try to read all the words from the first to the last letter, and often skip them entirely,” explains Julia. This does not interfere with the understanding of the text. The point is that any text is redundant.

First, in any text, words and their synonyms associated with the main topic are constantly repeated, with some frequency. Secondly, the logical construction of the text implies that, having met, for example, the word "first," you will inevitably come across the word "second". Often, in order to understand what you are talking about, you not only do not have to see the whole word, but you don’t even have to see the whole word, but you don’t even have to see the whole word.

This exercise should develop your ability to predict and guess words. If you read a lot and have an extensive vocabulary, it will not be difficult to complete. If your vocabulary (by the way, do you know this word?) Is small, you will build it up by doing the exercise frequently.

Take a text that is not particularly difficult to understand and cover it in different places with opaque tape (Fig. 3). For the first lessons, the tape should not be too wide - it is enough if they cover no more than three letters. Gradually increase the width of the ribbon and the percentage of hidden text.

I look in the book, I see a fig!

1925 The world's first speed reading course, prepared by the University of Syracuse, New York, is published. The creators of labor saw the key to mastering fast reading only in the presentation of the text (the type should be large) and the hygiene of reading. It was suggested to read in good lighting, in the correct posture, with obligatory breaks to rest the eyes. 1940 The tachistoscope was invented in 1920, and at first this device was used to determine the speed at which a pilot could detect an enemy vehicle: images of aircraft were projected onto the screen at an accelerating rate. Only 20 years later, instead of airplanes, they tried to show words on a tachistoscope. After classes, the reading speed of the test subjects doubled, which was the impetus for the emergence of "tachistoscopic" schools of speed reading. It soon became clear, however, that after weaning a person from the device, in most cases, the reading speed returned to its original pace. 1958 Evelina Wood, 15 years studying rapid reading and learning the secrets of mastery from phenomenal readers, presented a paper at the University of Utah, the provisions of which were included in her textbook "Dynamic Reading". Since then, nothing new has been invented. Evelyn Wood's methods are still the basis for all the speed reading courses you come across, and all the books on mastering this technique that you did not even bother to flip through.

8. Basics of orientation

When at night you have to get out of bed and shuffle into the bathroom in complete darkness, you usually do not even open your eyes, continuing to watch the dream, and nimbly walk around the angular furniture. But when you find yourself in the same situation in the house of your new girlfriend, you have to walk at a snail's pace for a long time until you find the door of the toilet, which, after the light comes on, turns out to be a refrigerator.

You have to make the same progress by touch when you read a completely unknown text. Preface your reading with a cursory acquaintance with it.

This is not so much an exercise as a method of approaching text. Skim the book before reading it. Pay attention to the length of the chapters and what they are about. Read the opening paragraphs of some chapters. Take a look at the end. (However, you can continue to read detectives in the old way.) As a result, you will make a "map" of the text in your mind, which will help you to better assimilate the information and not waste time on unnecessary parts.

9. Sports interest

According to physiologists, in a person who sees something exciting, the pupils reflexively dilate. The same thing is observed during reading. When you get to an interesting point in the text, the pupil takes the shape of a triangle for a hundredth of a second. Actually, in reality, the pupil just dilates. We specially wrote this nonsense about the triangle in order to arouse your interest and enlarge your pupil.

So that's it. When the pupil expands, more light enters the eye, which means that it can capture more information at that moment (this is another reason why it is better to read in bright light). So the whole problem is how to make yourself believe that the annual report is as interesting as the match report.

Fortunately, your smart brain can be fooled. From a neurophysiological point of view, interest arises when the brain compares new information with the one already in memory. Anything that goes against her is interesting. Seasoned firefighters are less interested in contemplating a zoo engulfed in flames than you are looking at an ordinary bonfire.

Before you start storming the text, remember everything you know about the topic that it touches. You need to activate your memory and remove the layers that relate to this problem to the surface.

Thus, in the process of reading, the brain will automatically start comparing new information with what has already been learned. If you don't, your gyrus won't even move (or won't have time to do anything) when you need to quickly recall something. In the case when the topic is unfamiliar, you will certainly not be able to remember what you know about it. So just assume what exactly can be written in the text. The brain will be forced to compare fabricated information with real information and, willy-nilly, show interest.

The secret of mastering the speed reading technique is regular exercises in the development of memory, attention and mastering other skills of fast reading.

What reading speed exercises will be useful at any age?

The greatest benefits are those exercises that eliminate the cause of the low speed of perception and processing of visual information.

The main mistakes that create a barrier in the speed of reading in both children and adults are considered involuntary recurrent eye movements (regression) and unnecessary articulation, which we learned just in childhood.

The main disadvantages that impede the efficient and quick perception of information:

• trouble concentrating;
• small angle (field) of visual coverage of text information.

So, exercises for speed reading in grade 1 should be aimed primarily at developing the ability to concentrate and expanding the field of information coverage. "Small field of vision" is perhaps the most important reason why children are taught to read first by letter, by syllable, then by whole words, phrases and sentences with an expression that confirms the reader's understanding of the meaning of what is written.

Not every adult can boast of the ability to perceive long phrases and whole sentences “at a glance”. This is where the development of visual reading skills for most people stops.

Expanding the field of view

"Development of peripheral vision according to Schulte tables"

Regular training using Schulte tables will not only allow your child to have an interesting time, but also contribute to increased concentration, peripheral vision and memory development.

"Defocused gaze"... The main task of training is to use a dispersed gaze to perceive a larger area of \u200b\u200bthe page or screen. The exercise can be performed in various ways, for example, to search for identical elements with diffused vision, or to memorize more elements that you managed to capture without moving your gaze from the central object of attention.

Improving concentration

"Activation of both hemispheres"... Take the text of a topic familiar to you and read through the paragraph alternately with your right and then your left eye. Thanks to this simple technique, you will activate both hemispheres of the brain in turn.

"Highlighting the main thing"... Many prominent personalities have used this technique. Just take a marker or pencil and highlight the 2-3 most important thoughts from the page. It is even better to improve this exercise and not just highlight the main thing, but put down your critical remarks with signs: very important information - "!" or "NB", agree - put "+", disagree - "-", etc.

"Name the color"... Call out loud as you read the following colored text in the color of words. Precisely the colors, not what is written.

Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. Purple. Orange. Brown. Blue.

Red. Blue. Green. Purple. Yellow. Brown. Blue.Green. Blue.

Do not rush to do this with incredible speed. It's good if, after training, you basically managed to complete the exercise without mistakes.

Find the word... Exercise options:

• Search the page for all words starting with a certain letter.
• Search the page for all occurrences of a certain word or phrase.

Guessing riddles - a simple and very effective way to train attention skills at any age. Trick puzzles or trick logic questions work well for this purpose.

Getting rid of regression

"We cut half a line"... When reading the text, cover half the line (top) with a sheet of paper. Thus, you make the brain guess about what has been written and at the same time in such a situation it will naturally want to see the next line even before you “cut off” part of it. This exercise will teach you to get ahead of yourself while reading and not return to what you read at the same time.

"Pointer"... To unlearn the habit of returning your gaze to what you have already read, have your gaze constantly follow a pen, pencil, or finger that will lead you forward all the time.

"Reading at speed"... Consider the elementary school reading speed test. We take a timer and measure our current result by reading one page, chapter or article.

Suppress articulation

"Alternative text"... In parallel with reading, we say something that has nothing to do with the subject of attention. For example, we hum the motive of a song ("la-la-la, tru-lal-la") or say another text in our mind, for example, proverbs, tongue twisters, or keep counting in order, regardless of the number of words or lines read. The main thing is not to lose concentration.

"With your mouth closed!" If your lips move or your tongue moves while reading, you need to keep them busy. This mistake is often present in children after constant reading aloud in elementary grades. Try chewing on a pencil or crackers in parallel, or chewing gum.

"Drumroll"... We tap some rhythm on the table with our fingers, the more difficult it is, the better. If the fingers are busy, the speech center of the brain will be automatically at least partially blocked.

"Reading to distracting music"... A great way to suppress the urge to speak the text you are reading is to listen to music that has no constant rhythm. Jazz is best suited for this purpose.

Develop memory

"Non-standard reading"... Reading text rotated 90 degrees away from you, 180 degrees, 45 degrees, etc. An example of the exercise: turn the page upside down and set the task of reading the text backwards (i.e. from right to left). Such training is especially useful for children in order to form patterns of complete letters in their memory, regardless of how they are located.

"Recover missing letters."An excellent exercise for the development of verbal and logical memory. While reading a text with missing letters, the stops to "guess" the next word are forced to keep in mind the words and the meaning of the previously read. It is a good workout not only for memory but also for eliminating obstacles to fast reading such as recurrent eye movements and articulation.

Developing the speed of thinking

One of the main reasons why it is possible to significantly increase the reading speed of any person is the redundancy of information at all levels of texts (especially those posted on the Internet), ranging from headings and introductory constructions intended to attract attention, to individual words with weak or no semantic load.

Regularly solving logical problems develops the ability to separate the main from the secondary, develops the skill of "turning on blindness" in relation to redundant information and "instantaneous" perception of important thoughts. This is achieved, first of all, thanks to regular exercises in the speed of perception of the conditions of the problem and understanding of the essence of the question being asked. Conscious analysis of the structure of tasks develops the skill of dividing tasks into conditions and groups of conditions, highlighting one or several questions, understanding the optimal order of solving subtasks, searching for solutions.

Completing tasks from LogicLike will help at any age:

• improve concentration of attention;
• develop the speed of thinking;
• increase the ability to think logically correctly;
• and as a result, significantly increase the speed of reading and memorizing important information.

20-30 minutes of LogicLike classes every day is a proven way to develop logic and speed of thinking, attention and memory.

Speed \u200b\u200breading is a powerful engine for the development of intelligence. A person with this skill reads 1-7 books per week, spending much less time.

Speed \u200b\u200breading includes: speed, comprehension, and reading retention. With this skill, you can quickly learn the subject of interest, area, specialization, science.

The more a person reads useful literature, the more educated and intelligent he becomes. With speed reading, intelligence develops with virtually no limits. Its development is similar to driving a car compared to the speed of a pedestrian. When the brain works in turbo mode, there is no time to think and pronounce words, understanding comes instantly. The brain no longer wastes time on speaking and extraneous thoughts.

Exercises online

Schulte tables

They develop peripheral vision, search for the desired element in the text, memory, concentration, speed of thinking. This is the most popular exercise for developing speed reading. Click on the start button and look for numbers from 1 to 16, looking only at the center of the table.

Gorbov-Schulte red-black tables

First find the black minimum number, then the red maximum, then the next black minimum and the next red maximum. For example, for a 5x5 table: 1 and 12, 2 and 11, 3 and 10, and so on.

Anagrams

Solve the words for a while, learn to see the whole word.

Find letters

The faster you find letters, the faster you will navigate the text.

Digit search

We train in the search for numbers by analogy with the Search for letters:

Zero reading

School course for the development of speed reading

To reach the required speed faster and easier, I recommend enrolling in the Speed \u200b\u200bReading course 30 days in advance. In this course we will work:

1. with classic exercises
2. synchronize the hemispheres of the brain to speed up the brain
3. use my personally developed techniques to accelerate reading speed
4. disassemble the psychology of speed reading
5. sort out questions from other course participants.

Course Reviews

School courses for the development of intelligence

Interactive development courses

In addition to the Speed \u200b\u200bReading course in 30 days, the brainapps interactive courses on the development of speed reading, memory, and attention are perfect. For 490 rubles per month or 1400 per year, you get 4 browser programs for training speed reading, memory, attention and a bunch of games for brain fitness.

For example, among the exercises is the Find All Words game. In this game, 256 letters will be shown on the screen, of which only 3 words are composed that need to be found. This exercise trains the eyes to quickly find the right words in the text, which noticeably speeds up the speed of reading. The other exercises in this course train other critical reading skills.

Development of memory and attention in a child 5-10 years old

Purpose of the course: to develop memory and attention in a child so that it would be easier for him to study at school, so that he could better remember.

After completing the course, the child will be able to:

1. 2-5 times better to memorize texts, faces, numbers, words
2. Learn to memorize for a longer period
3. The speed of remembering the necessary information will increase

Super memory in 30 days

As soon as you sign up for this course, a powerful 30-day super-memory development and brain pumping training will begin for you.

Within 30 days after subscribing, you will receive interesting exercises and educational games to your mail, which you can apply in your life.

We will learn to memorize everything that may be required in work or personal life: learn to memorize texts, sequences of words, numbers, images, events that happened during the day, week, month, and even road maps.

How to improve memory and develop attention

Free practice session from advance.

Speeding up verbal counting, NOT mental arithmetic

Secret and popular techniques and life hacks, suitable even for a child. From the course, you will not only learn dozens of techniques for simplified and quick multiplication, addition, multiplication, division, percent calculation, but also work them out in special tasks and educational games! Verbal counting also requires a lot of attention and concentration, which are actively trained when solving interesting problems.

Money and Millionaire Mindset

Why are there problems with money? In this course, we will answer this question in detail, look deep into the problem, consider our relationship with money from a psychological, economic and emotional point of view. From the course you will learn what you need to do to solve all your financial problems, start accumulating money and invest it in the future.

Outcome

For the rapid development of intelligence, practice speed reading. Speed \u200b\u200breading will help develop intelligence, and turn the brain into a supercomputer, making a genius out of an ordinary person.

In this article, I talked about 5 classic exercises for developing speed reading. These exercises will double your reading speed in 2-4 weeks.

A person perceives texts, on average, at a speed of 150-200 words per minute. At this pace, it's nice to read your favorite books and interesting articles on the Internet. But in order to quickly assimilate a large amount of information, you need to accelerate harder.

This is quite possible if you master the speed reading technique.

What is speed reading?

This is a skill that allows you to assimilate texts several times faster than usual. The word "read" is not entirely appropriate here. The principle of speed reading - highlighting the essence and meaning, that is, the rapid assimilation of information. But the speed of reading words plays a decisive role in this technique.

For example, Napoleon Bonaparte swallowed texts at 2,000 words per minute, and Theodore Roosevelt read one book every day before breakfast. Speed \u200b\u200breading was also owned by John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Honore De Balzac, Alexander Pushkin, Karl Marx and other famous personalities. It can be assumed that this skill influenced their success.

Of course, speed reading is not always suitable for enjoying fiction. The main goal of this reading technique is to gain knowledge, to assimilate the meaning. People in many professions have to process large volumes of texts every day. Lawyers are constantly working with a bunch of all kinds of documents, teachers proofread abstracts, term papers and diplomas. And for a philology student with his list of references, this skill is simply vital.

Speed \u200b\u200breading allows you to quickly work with texts and be as productive as possible, not be distracted by unnecessary details and assimilate only the most important information.

You can learn speed reading at special courses (at least one speed reading school is in every city), or you can independently.

There are several techniques that must be followed to master this skill:

1. Follow the text

2. Don't go back to what you read

As we read, we often reread sentences or paragraphs that we think we have not learned. To improve your reading speed, you need to carefully monitor this and try to avoid returning. Sometimes it seems to us that we have not memorized a piece of text, but in fact the information has been assimilated. You can read and at the same time mark in the margins those passages to which you should return later. By controlling the return process, we will move through the text much faster.

3. Do not speak the text in your head

4. Develop peripheral vision

One of the features of the speed reading technique is to capture a few words or a whole paragraph at once. This is also called diagonal reading. To quickly move through the text and highlight the main words in it, you need to see them well. To do this, develop peripheral vision. There are several exercises for this. For example, you can focus on one point on the wall and try to see everything around that point. Or use Schulte tables.

The more distracted you are from reading, the slower you do it. Therefore, it is important to concentrate as much as possible and immerse yourself in the text, to comprehend it immediately at the moment of reading. So the information will be assimilated more fully and quickly.

The key to successfully learning speed reading, like any other skill, is constant training. Better to have a clear repetition schedule. It is recommended to practice every day for 1 hour, or 3-4 times a week for 1.5-2 hours. If additional responsibility motivates you, ask someone to supervise the learning process.
If you regularly develop the skill and do not take long breaks in learning, then the results will appear in a month - you will increase your reading speed to 300-500 words per minute.

Many people who plan to master the speed reading technique have a question: is it possible to continue reading normally if you have already learned to read diagonally? Speed \u200b\u200breading is not an irreversible process, and if you learn to perceive texts at lightning speed, you can easily switch back to standard speed to continue to enjoy reading fiction and poetry.

The easiest way to compare speed reading with eating food. In the same way that we consume proteins, fats, carbohydrates and vitamins, we use written information. By reading quickly, we shorten the "lunch time", but in some cases it doesn't make sense.

Besides calories and nutritional value, there are many other pleasures in food. We are not trying to swallow at speed a restaurant dish prepared by the chef, decorated according to all the rules on the served table. Reading fiction at high speed looks just as odd, unless you are, of course, a philology student who needs to download a long list of literature in a semester.

It is necessary for business purposes, for educational purposes. When we say "reading" in this article, we mean reading educational or business literature, professional texts and news. The average reading speed of an ordinary person is about 800 characters per minute, taking into account the memorization coefficient. How much can it be increased?

Business speed reading is also different:

• Analytical - the hardest part. You need to master and understand new paradigms, principles, approaches. For this information, the structure of assimilation has not yet been formed, we do not know how to use it and how to classify it. This is the slowest reading because this information needs to be seriously considered. My speed is 3,100 characters per minute.
• Introductory - simple and straightforward reading. We already have a system of knowledge on this subject in our head, we just add new facts, concepts and points of view. This also includes all news and stories. Fast reading. One and a half to two times faster than the analytical one. My speed is 4,800 characters per minute.
• Search engine - the fastest reading. Search for the necessary information in a large array of text. Suitable for restoring knowledge in the head. High-speed reading, 4-5 times faster than analytical. My speed is 14,000 characters per minute.

The advantages seem to be obvious. Reduced speed - taking into account the memorization coefficient. After each test, questions are asked to check what information is left in the head.

With these objective advantages of speed reading, I come across "evidence" that. Unfortunately, these statements are promoted by people who either do not own speed reading, or tried to master, but could not. Classic story: "I have not read Pasternak, but I condemn."

What to do to love speed reading

Imagine a preschooler sagely claiming that reading by syllables is a much more mindful approach than reading by words. It allows you to thoughtfully perceive each word, listen to its sound. Is it funny? This is how a person looks who proves that slow reading is better than speed reading.

Of course, speed reading won't work if you learn to simply absorb the text. To read quickly, the ability to quickly load text into the brain is not enough. Speed \u200b\u200breading is a set of skills for processing written information. What else do you need to be able to make speed reading become a useful and favorite tool for you?

Ask questions

A basic skill, without which it is generally useless to read. You need to prepare for reading. If we read without question, then the information has nothing to cling to, it passes us by. Questions are hooks that we place in the path of information. Our task is to catch the meanings. Thanks to the questions, we immerse ourselves in reading consciously, focusing not on the process, but on the goal.

Ask yourself, “What do I want to find in this book? What actions am I going to take after reading it? What do I want to learn to do differently? What am I missing? "

Train your memory

The amount of information that remains in the head does not depend on the reading speed. Therefore, the statement sounds strange that after speed reading, little information settles in the head. Let me ask you, how much did we remember from the last one read at normal speed? Will we be able to retell its content or main theses? For information to fit in your head, you need to develop memory.

There are hundreds of exercises that help us keep new knowledge in our head. There are mechanics that fix new words, images, data.

Train, even if you are not going to master speed reading: a strong memory will always help in life. Make the "30 seconds" exercise a habit: learn to formulate the key messages of any communication in 30 seconds.

So your attention will always be focused on remembering important meanings and linking them to the existing system of knowledge.

Concentrate on the text

Our mental capacity at the moment has a limit. We can keep a limited number of thoughts in our head. Usually, reading slows down and memorization decreases because we are constantly distracted by extraneous thoughts. If we learn to control external stimuli and concentrate on the text, then much more information will remain in our head.

Attention gets scattered when we are either bored or anxious. To concentrate attention, you need to get out of this state.

Other concentration exercises can be easily found in the literature and on the Internet.

Think in parallel

We all have rudimentary two-channel thinking. We can talk on the phone and think about where to turn at an intersection. We can make plans for tomorrow and prepare lunch. But we do not develop this ability, but we can use it to its fullest: simultaneously read and ponder the text at high speed. If you read quickly, but do not have time to think it over, then, of course, you lose the meaning of what you have written.

Over time, you will upgrade the second channel of thinking, and when reading one book, you will be able to read and think at the same time.

Go back to what you read

What if the information is too difficult to comprehend on the go? We usually stop and think about an incomprehensible text. Such stops slow down reading in general, because you need to accelerate from zero every time. At the same time, we are all familiar with the principle of Tetris, when continuous actions become faster and faster. How not to lose speed or information?

For me it is reading with a pencil. There is no need to stumble over every interesting thought, and then accelerate again. It is enough to mark interesting places in the fields that require reflection and return to them after the “speed approach”.

Sift the text of the book through your questions. When you come across answers that need to be pondered, just mark them, you don't need to ponder right away. Re-read them later - this way you will spend much less time.

Use the information received

This is a continuation of the previous rule. The overwhelming majority of readers do not return to the material they have read, do not use it in life. They read a lot, but do little. For these people, speed reading will not help until they change their behavior.

Few of us turn information into results. It doesn't matter how fast a book, article or news item was read. We suffer from information obesity: we receive information and do not use it, do not turn it into knowledge and action. It looks like a person who absorbs sweets and starchy foods, receives huge doses of energy, while he sits on the couch. But after all, there are people with a high metabolism: even if he eats a chocolate bar at night, he will not deposit anything anywhere.

How to increase information metabolism? It is necessary to apply in practice the chain of information transformation. The reading should make sense.

• Information that has not become knowledge is meaningless. Questions turn information into knowledge, we started with this rule.
• Knowledge that has not become an action has no meaning. Knowledge turns purpose into action. What do we want to change with the help of information, what to achieve?
• An action that has not become a useful result is meaningless. Will and discipline turn action into results. Create your habits.
• An unsatisfactory result is meaningless. Values \u200b\u200bturn results into satisfaction. Is the result obtained in line with our inner values?

If there is a need for specific information, purpose and value, then speed reading is a necessary and useful skill. If you are ready to process and absorb a large number of meanings, then you will need to be able to read quickly.

To read quickly, you need to be able to:

1. To ask questions.
2. Memorize.
3. Concentrate.
4. Think in parallel.
5. Return to what you read.
6. Use information.