The average reading speed of English is around 400 words per minute (wpm).
At half this speed I was a very slow reader, only reading about 200wpm.
My reading material was almost entirely technical information that contributed to going at slow pace.
Being overwhelmed by the amount of information to read was a stress inducer. Perhaps you’ve felt like that too?
I found the solution in learning speed reading, and thoroughly recommend it to others I meet. It has enabled me to go from a sluggish 200wpm to 1,200wpm and beyond. I worked at it for a month, at least 20-30 minutes per day.
I thought comprehension, and retention would suffer with such increases, but the reverse has proven to be true.
With particularly technical material, it can be read in a number of passes. Each pass building up a layer of detail in comprehension from the document. The total time to read the document a number of times still being much less than my one reading when I was a slow reader.
Another interesting thing starts to occur as ones speed advances through the 700wpm-900wpm range. Words no longer seem like words but their grouping seems like a picture. It’s a very odd concept, and hard to describe, but feels like you are eating information through your eyeballs.
If someone like me, who was such a slow reader, can speed read, anyone one can do it!
