Speed reading update: My eyes hurt
January 14, 2010
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!
