Speed reading update: My eyes hurt

I’m practicing speed reading tonight. One of my greatest difficulties is that I’m usually so busy that I rarely make the time to read anything. I’m falling prey to the very problem this blog is meant to identify! I’m allowing day-to-day concerns to prevent me from acquiring the superpowers I could have.

Tonight I’m practicing on some Mark Twain I downloaded. I don’t mind reading on a computer, and it’s nice to be able to calculate exactly how many words I’ve read (using the Word Count tool of Microsoft Word), rather than estimating based on the words-per-line multiplied by the lines-per-page of whatever I’m reading. It also means I don’t need to carry a book around with me.

I’m noticing several things. First, I haven’t practiced enough to know if I’ve really improved any, but I probably haven’t yet because I really haven’t practiced much yet.

Second, I need to record my words-per-minute separately based on whether I’m reading for comprehension, or reading for speed. Reading for comprehension is obviously important, since it trains my mind to absorb the concepts quickly. Reading for speed is also important, though, because it helps my eyes learn to move quickly, perceive words rapidly, and pick up words to the left and right of my focus (so I don’t have to move my eyes all the way to the ends of each line). Reading for speed is much faster (no surprise there!), so if I’m ultimately going to graph my progress, I need to keep the two separate.

Third, my eyes ache! I guess I’ve never spent minutes at a time rapidly moving them around (except during REM sleep). I hope it’s just a muscular thing, and once I build up muscular eyeballs, I’ll be able to speed read without feeling the ache. Has anyone else experienced this when learning to speed read?

I’ll start posting my progress soon!

Speed Reading

Speed reading is sort of like a comic-book superpower, don’t you think?  It’s a bit like super-intelligence.  It’s one of those things that, like solving a Rubik’s Cube, is a skill you can learn, but which conveys an aura of genius, because most people don’t know how it works.

I’m no expert (yet!), but speed reading is learned by unlearning a number of habits we pick up when we’re learning to read, and learning new habits. For example, when you read, your eyes actually make lots of little stops along each sentence, and even jump backwards to previous parts of the sentence.  Learning to speed read means learning to move your eyes smoothly over the words, and learning to absorb words at a much faster pace.  (I take almost all of my understanding of speed reading from this article.)

So far I’ve only spent a couple of hours practicing this, in no more than half-hour segments.  Which is a recipe for almost-certain failure.  I need to set some deadlines, and also make some real time each day to practice this skill.

I also think my multitasking has been detracting from my efforts.  In my defense, I’ll turn off my music and minimize any other distractions when I’m practicing.  But because I have to do reading for grad school, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone by practicing on my reading materials.  The problem, though, is that the reading is concept-dense, making it difficult to absorb.

Y’see, I’ve come to believe that speed reading actually consists of two broad skills – word absorption and concept absorption.  Your brain needs to learn to absorb a lot of words quickly, and the post I link to above has exercises that ask you to practice scanning words quickly without focusing much on retention (or even comprehension).  Your brain also needs to learn how to absorb a lot of concepts quickly.  I could be wrong, but I think these skills are separate. And I’ve been trying to learn both at once by reading difficult material.  Even when my eyes can pick up words pretty quickly, I often need to pause to think about what the author is saying, and spend time integrating that with my other knowledge.

So my goal is to check out a nice piece of fiction (probably some Asimov) from the library, and practice word absorption there.  Once I can read that lickety-split, I’ll ease myself into more difficult concepts, and get used to absorbing concepts really quickly.

Anyone want to share their experience or thoughts on speed reading?

Introducing the Superpowers Project

Here I commence the Superpower Project.  I’m asking all of you to join in with me on this project.  For this, I first need you to ask yourself two questions.  Think about the answer to each before continuing to read.

1. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

I’d pick flight.  Or perhaps telekinesis.  Either one would be extraordinarily fun, and extremely useful.  Pardon me while I lose myself in daydreaming for a moment…

Think about what you’d want.  Then, on to our second question:

2. If you could actually gain your superpower through hard work and practice, how hard would you be willing to work for it?

Think hard about this. If you really could develop a superpower through practice, how hard would you actually work for it?

The reason I ask this is because there are lots of real-word abilities that can be achieved through hard work, and which aren’t far different from superpowers, in that they can give you abilities that are both fun and practical.  Like superpowers, they make you a more effective, more powerful person in many aspects of life.  I’m talking about things like:

• Working out, which makes you stronger, healthier, more attractive, more confident, and more
• Learning another language, which opens the door to communication to people you couldn’t previously talk to
• Speed-reading, which allows you to absorb information much faster
• Juggling, which is fun and can impress people
• Learning to play an instrument, which is extremely gratifying, develops a different part of your brain, and of course impresses people

We all have access to a huge array of real-world superpowers.  I think many of us, including myself, pass up many opportunities to develop our abilities, though.  We’d like to have superpowers, but don’t want to work for them.

So!  I’m not happy with this state of affairs, and decided to create a list of abilities I’d like to have.  Then I’ll work toward them, and document my progress, as a way of holding myself accountable.

In no particular order, here’s an initial list of superpowers I’d like to develop through the course of this project (I don’t know if all of them are even possible to achieve):

• Speedreading
• Working out regularly
• Slack-lining
• Juggling
• Lip-reading
• Typing speed of 150 words per minute
• Immunity to carsickness
• Immunity to poison oak
• Bridge shuffling
• Loud whistling
• Fluency in Spanish

I want you to join me on this.  Come up with your own list of abilities, and email them to me if you want me to help keep you accountable.  I’ll even consider posting the goals and progress of readers.

There’s a brave new world out there, and our wonderful bodies and minds have amazing potential.  Let’s see what we can discover about ourselves!