Read Faster, Read Smarter

 The Internet is a new continent where the maps are

constantly changing. What was a small stream becomes a

roaring river. What was a desert becomes a lush green

valley.

To keep up with the changing landscape of the Internet,

you must read. And the best place to read about new

developments on the Internet is in Newsletters or

Ezines.

But you may not be reading efficiently.

Did you know that most of us use only 4% to 10% of our

mental abilities?

Speed reading is not just about reading faster; it's

about learning to use much more of the extraordinary

powers of the Mind.

When you read, are you aware of an inner voice following the words as your eyes move across the page or

the computer screen? This inner voice is called.

'subvocalization.' You probably experience it as a

slight movement in the tongue or throat region. As

long as you subvocalize, you limit your reading to the

speed of everyday speech to about 300 w.p.m.

The Mind is capable of thinking much faster than that.

So when you subvocalize, you're literally holding back

your Mind.

Try this exercise:

As you read, count to yourself, silently, from one to

ten. Or, repeat the sound 'Eee,' 'Eee,' 'Eee.' It will

be impossible to do this at the same time as

subvocalizing, so this is an excellent way of breaking

the habit of subvocalization.

As you do this exercise, you'll become aware that

you're no longer processing the words in the

tongue/throat region but in an area called 'thought

stream' that you experience at the top of your head.

Thought stream moves much faster than subvocalization.

And that's why people who subvocalize often have

comprehension problems.

There's a mismatch between reading speed and thinking

speed. The Mind is constantly racing ahead of the

inner voice, getting boring. You experience this

as an inability to focus on what you're

reading. You have to back-skip words or read the same

line twice.

As your reading speed catches up with your thinking

speed, reading becomes much less tiring and your

comprehension improves.

Once you've got a feeling for reading in 'thought

stream', the next thing to do is speed up your eye

movements. This will also help break the habit of

sub-vocalization, since your eyes will be moving

faster than you can possibly subvocalize.

Your eyes move across the written page in a series of

quick jumps. There's a stop lasting

a fraction of a second between each hop, called a 'fixation.' The

fixation is when the eye actually takes in the written

word.

The untrained eye takes about a quarter of a second at

each fixation, and takes in 2 or 3 words per fixation.

By speeding up your eye movements, you'll learn to make

fewer fixations per line and take in more words per

fixation.

Try this exercise:

If you use a glass 'anti-glare' screen, draw 2

vertical lines in felt-tip, 5 cms apart, so that you

have a strip 5 cms wide located over the middle of the

the text you are reading.

Now move your eyes in a 'Z' pattern down this central

strip, at speed faster slightly faster than is

comfortable.

Because your Mind is not reading each word, it is

forced to 'fill in the gaps. This engages much more

of the Mind since it builds associations and

patterns in the written material. This, in turn, leads

to greater comprehension and increased memory of what

was read.

This technique takes advantage of the fact that much

of written English is highly redundant; a lot of words

can be skipped without any loss of meaning.

When your eyes move down a central strip of the text,

you also engage much more of your peripheral vision.

And that, in turn, brings the right hemisphere of the

brain into the reading process. As a result, you make much more use

of the right brain's ability to synthesize and build

relationships within the material.

So speed reading is not just about reading faster; it

also allows you to access much more of the brain and

thereby increasing your comprehension and creativity.