| Speed
Reading for Business Efficacy
By Daniel Theyagu
Today we are challenged with increasing volume of
reading materials. This includes journals, records,
papers and emails. If you could read faster it would
mean that part of every hour spent in reading can be
utilized in other areas such as planning, decision making
and spending more time with your families. Speed Reading
is a learnable technique that you can acquire at any
moment in your life. What you need is a bit of commitment
and lots of confidence that you can actually acquire
this skill.
The average person reads approximately 220 to 240
words per minute. This is because our eye takes approximately
1⁄4 second to register an image. Therefore if
we see one word in a 1⁄4 second, in one second
we see about 4 words, depending on the length of each
word. In one minute this works out to be 4 words per
second multiplied by 60 seconds which gives us the grand
total of 240 words. It is possible to increase the number
of words that we see in a single glance if we put to
practice some essential techniques that helps us to
read faster.
There are several different techniques of speed reading.
Here I will share with you a few relevant ones that
you could probably use in your daily work life.
Finger Technique
One of the most effective and easy to use technique
of speed reading is to use your finger to read. Yes!
Your finger! Our eye has an innate tendency to follow
a moving object. Try staring at an inanimate object
for an extended period of time. You will find this an
arduous task. However, when there is movement, the eye
has a tendency to follow the moving object. It is a
basic survival instinct that we possess. Moving objects
might imply a source of danger or that something is
alive. We have to become alert. On the same footing,
when you read there must be movement. Since the words
do not move, you need to move your finger with the words.
When you do this you will find that your eye will follow
the movement of your finger and capture the words that
you are reading at a faster pace.
Vary the speed of your moving finger until you find
one that is comfortable for you to follow what you are
reading. Initially this might seem a bit irritating
and if you do feel irritated that is a good sign. It’s
a fact that the clumsiest things that we do are the
ones we eventually master effective. Think about the
time you might have learnt to ride a bicycle or learnt
how to drive a car. The first few times you tried might
have been clumsy and you might even have wondered whether
you can actually drive the car or ride the bike at all.
Once you’ve learnt the technique, it becomes internalized
in you and you do not consciously think about doing
it now.
Speed reading is similar to riding a bicycle or driving
a car. It’s a skill that you need to engage in
actively. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes relatively
easy.
Peripheral Vision Technique
This is slightly more challenging but once you mastered
it, you will realize that you could read at speed exceeding
1000 words per minute. In this technique, instead of
looking at one word at a time, try looking at a few
words at a time. The best kind of article to practice
this technique is the newspaper. Practically all the
newspapers in the world are written is columns. The
average lines in a column consist of 4 to 6 words. What
most readers do is to read every word in the sentence.
Thus their eye movement narrows onto each word. Like
shown in the diagram below:
This is how peripheral vision words. Capture a few words
at a glance.
What you need to do is put your finger somewhere in
the centre of each line per column and stretch your
vision as much as you can to capture as many words as
possible. As is illustrated in the diagram below:
You will notice that our eyes are actually engineered
to see more than a word at a glance. Initially this
technique might slow down your reading speed. However,
as you become more accustomed to it, you will start
reading faster and better.
Skimming and Scanning
The trick to reading faster is to do what is called
‘adaptive reading’. This can be explained
with the parable of a sports car. A sports car might
have the capability of reaching a maximum speed of 250kph.
However, if you own such a sports car it does not mean
that you can achieve that speed. Not with the condition
of the roads and the various traffic laws that you have
to obey. This means that even a sports car might have
to travel at 50kph if the situation requires it so.
Likewise, if you are familiar with the article you
should learn to skim through the article and pick out
key words that are important. Again this is not a big
problem for most of us, especially if you are reading
articles that you are familiar with. Many a time you
only need a specific gist of the information that you
are reading. This is where skimming is useful. Let’s
say that you bought a new DVD recorder and want to know
how to record immediately. Chances are you know how
the DVD works so you are not going to read the whole
manual until you arrive at the point that tells you
how to record. You will simply jump to that portion
of the manual and see how it’s done.
Scanning is a technique that is useful for reading
newspaper, magazine, emails and internet web pages.
You will more or less know what you want or you could
simply be browsing. Hence, you can scan through to pick
out information that you think that will be useful to
you.
Practice makes Perfect
In many ways learning to speed read is a fulfilling
experience and a useful one at that. Learning to speed
read helps you improve your vocabulary and general knowledge.
This will make you a more creative individual as well
as allowing you the opportunity to keep your brain lubricated
with a regular influx of information. Just like any
new technique that we want to master, learning to speed
read does not occur overnight. You need patience and
most importantly consistency in your practice of the
techniques of speed reading. For a start you might want
to re-read this article again using your finger and
see how fast you progress.
About the author:
Daniel Theyagu is a keynote speaker and seminar leader
for conferences and training
programmes. He runs Lateral Solutions Consultancy which
designs and conducts
competency-based training for organizations He is also
an adjunct lecturer with
Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS)
.
For seminars and workshop enquiries:
E-mail: dtheyagu@singnet.com.sg; website: www.thinklaterally.com.
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