Speed Reading

[MikaelYosef]

Hi folks,

I came across this new app _http://www.spritzinc.com/ a couple of weeks ago. So far it still seems to be in development, but there are other free apps already available (e.g. QuickRead) which appear to have copied the concept.

Basically, you can link to a website or cut and paste any amount of text into a box and it will spit it out one word at a time. The spritz page has a demonstration available, starting at 100 words per minute up to 700 words per minute. The average is apparently a little over 200 words per minute.

I've been using it so far for a couple of days and have worked up to 1000 words per minute. While it is possible to read quickly, I'm finding comprehension isn't the same as when you read in a traditional way. But I figure I will stick at it due to it being a new skill and maybe the brain has to do some rewiring first to accept this new method of information input.

With the amount of content on this forum, plus SOTT, it may be a little less daunting for slow readers (like myself) to get through it all.

- Mike

 

[3DStudent]

Hi, MikeJoseph82, I am a slow reader too. I bought the Ace Reader program and eventually gave up on it. It came to the point where I would rather read than practice reading faster. It really feels like work to try to get my brain to accept a few letters at a time. It seems like the auditory subvocalization is a big part of how I process information.

There was a thread about speed reading and learning processing in general. Best of luck!

 

[edgitarra]

Hi, MikeJoseph82, I am a slow reader too. I bought the Ace Reader program and eventually gave up on it. It came to the point where I would rather read than practice reading faster. It really feels like work to try to get my brain to accept a few letters at a time. It seems like the auditory subvocalization is a big part of how I process information.

There was a thread about speed reading and learning processing in general. Best of luck!

There is also the the website called "spreeder". It is simple, and you can have custom options on the speed, number of words(1 til 6) etc.

This is the website
http://www.spreeder.com/

And it is free!

 

[MikaelYosef]

There was a thread about speed reading and learning processing in general. Best of luck!

Thanks for that link 3D Student. I note the last comment in that thread by Mr Meowgi states "I searched "speed reading" and got nothing so that is why I started a new subject." I too did the same thing, and even now when searching for 'speed reading' in 'Entire Forum' a total of 30 matches are generated, none of them having this or the other thread listed as a result. If anyone has read this and groaned and thought to themselves 'urghh....newbie....didn't even try to do a search first...' - I'm sorry but I actually did! Maybe this particular phrase just slips through the search algorithm?

There is also the the website called "spreeder". It is simple, and you can have custom options on the speed, number of words(1 til 6) etc.

Thanks edgitarra, I hadn't heard of that either and I like the option of having a few words to read at once so will give it a try also.

 

[Arwenn]

I remember Laura mentioning in the Wave series that she was eternally grateful to one of her school teachers who taught her how to parse a body of text and speed read. Maybe she will chime in here with exactly what that process was. It certainly seems to have served her well, so much so that there's an emoticon for it!

 

[DreamGod]

I would like to know a good method to read fast with a good degree of comprehension.

Hope Laura could share that with us. :D

 

[whitecoast]

In my experience, the best way to learn to speed read is to just out-read the voice in your head.

It's like driving a car through winding roads, speeding up until you feel like you're out-driving the road and risking a crash. Crashing in this analogy is losing comprehension. If you ever lose the plot, you simply stop and re-read. With that out of the way, just blaze ahead until you feel your comprehension dropping, then slow down a smidgen. Once you're moving along nicely again, just slowly dial up the speed again.

Eventually you'll reach a sort of "phase transition" where you're processing the words purely as visual information, instead of subvocal auditory/phonetic. It's just about feeling comfortable enough to cross that threshold when you're ready to get some serious reading done.

That, at least, has been my experience.

 

[monotonic]

I think it's important to comprehend fast even if you aren't reading fast. Because sometimes you want to think a little more about what you're reading.

My problem is, I may feel like I'm comprehending what I'm reading, but after I close the book I'll have completely forgotten what I may have read. Sure, I understand what it means, but that doesn't mean I'll remember it. For this reason I try to think a lot about what I'm reading while I read it - to increase the processing quality rather than quantity. Unfortunately like many here interested in speed reading, I feel the quantity is a bit lacking.

 

[Minas Tirith]

My problem is, I may feel like I'm comprehending what I'm reading, but after I close the book I'll have completely forgotten what I may have read. Sure, I understand what it means, but that doesn't mean I'll remember it. For this reason I try to think a lot about what I'm reading while I read it - to increase the processing quality rather than quantity. Unfortunately like many here interested in speed reading, I feel the quantity is a bit lacking.

Same with me! And I am also employing your method of intentional reading, but the worst is if somebody asks me to summarize what I just have read, it's basically impossible...My head "just swims" then ... I always wondered if one could train to become better?

M.T.

 

[Eboard10]

My problem is, I may feel like I'm comprehending what I'm reading, but after I close the book I'll have completely forgotten what I may have read. Sure, I understand what it means, but that doesn't mean I'll remember it. For this reason I try to think a lot about what I'm reading while I read it - to increase the processing quality rather than quantity. Unfortunately like many here interested in speed reading, I feel the quantity is a bit lacking.

Same with me! And I am also employing your method of intentional reading, but the worst is if somebody asks me to summarize what I just have read, it's basically impossible...My head "just swims" then ... I always wondered if one could train to become better?

M.T.

I find myself in the same situation in terms of forgetfulness. While I have a clear understanding of the concepts as I'm reading them, I will forget most of it within a matter of hours and have a hard time explaining it in a clear and concise manner. I've had this short memory span issue since childhood and I would say it almost borders on ADD. Would be great to have some techniques that could be used to train the mind to overcome this condition even if only partially.

 

[luc]

My problem is, I may feel like I'm comprehending what I'm reading, but after I close the book I'll have completely forgotten what I may have read. Sure, I understand what it means, but that doesn't mean I'll remember it. For this reason I try to think a lot about what I'm reading while I read it - to increase the processing quality rather than quantity. Unfortunately like many here interested in speed reading, I feel the quantity is a bit lacking.

Same with me! And I am also employing your method of intentional reading, but the worst is if somebody asks me to summarize what I just have read, it's basically impossible...My head "just swims" then ... I always wondered if one could train to become better?

M.T.

I find myself in the same situation in terms of forgetfulness. While I have a clear understanding of the concepts as I'm reading them, I will forget most of it within a matter of hours and have a hard time explaining it in a clear and concise manner. I've had this short memory span issue since childhood and I would say it almost borders on ADD. Would be great to have some techniques that could be used to train the mind to overcome this condition even if only partially.

I have the same problems. What helps, I think, is to always try to make connections in the mind to your own life and experiences while reading. Laura said somewhere, I think, that this is important in order to store information in the long-term memory. I found that to be true! For example, when reading about psychology, I try to connect the concepts - how does it relate to Gurdjieff's concepts? Haven't I thought about this before and it's basically a similar concept here? Wasn't that evident when I did this or that in the past? Could this be an explanation for the behavior of my mother, or my friend xy?

So I guess it's all about making connections and building new pathways in the brain - when successful, I can then explain what I've read easily to others using my own words and my own understanding. But I also found that mostly, I "get" only a fragment of what I've read this way, even when I thought I understand everything while reading! I also found that it's getting better the more I read and make connections.

So, I think oftentimes "quality over quantity" is the way to go. In that regard I found this post by Pierre in the Historical events database thread very helpful and inspiring:

I understand this mechanicalness of ours. That’s the way we were taught for years in school: listen, repeat, agree, forget your critical thinking. We were also pushed to maximize our output: more pages, more figures, more dates for better marks.

Having spend years working directly with Laura I also understand her suggestion. Here the keypoint is trying to rewire ourselves, re-discover our curiosity, our critical thinking, our discernment. It won’t happen overnight, it’s like a muscle that we almost never used and that we finally decide to train.

It might lead to results or not. We don’t know and anticipating a result would be counterproductive. It’s even a paradox: how is it possible to anticipate the solution of a problem we haven’t really solved yet?

Such anticipation can only lead to prejudice and it can also make us overlook/discard/ignore a data that we would consider as irrelevant because of our prejudice but that was actually the missing piece of the puzzle.

If you think about things you discovered during your life, you’ll probably see that it was due to some kind of serenpidity. When you expected the discovery the least, while reading a barely related book, while thinking about an unrelated topics, having a seemingly irrelevant discussion, suddenly the idea popped up, out of nowhere.

As the Cs said, and I’m paraphrasing here: don’t hasten on your path or you will miss the gems hidden between the cobblestones.

The quotes from the chroniclers are the cobblestones. We can pile them up blindly and quickly (quantitative and mechanical approach) but then we will miss the gems: all those seemingly irrelevant and unimportant things that are more or less related to the quoted event. The gems are in the context that you explore because of your curiosity. It’s open-mindedness acting together with curiosity that leads to discoveries.

So ultimately your main driver must not be maximizing the number of entry, entering data because Laura asked for it but curiosity: "I want to know more about this event?", “who was this bishop?”, “who was this chronicler?”, “where is this city?”, “what the story of this army?”, “is the same event mentioned by other sources?”, "how is this event compatible with this other data?”, etc.

If you feel this curiosity, feed it. You might even enter only one entry but do it in this spirit.

 

[edgitarra]

I think one good method when speed reading is to associate with mental images. Instead of using mind voice, i try sometimes to use mental images that fit with the phrases. Like short movies for each phrase. It is close to suggestopedia. And it also works to have some classical music in the background, but on a very low volume. It also helps to underline some words(in a book) that will bring back the information in the mind, just like an a,b,c test. The a,b,c tests are easier because you don't have to reproduce something, but you know that one of those options have already the answer that resonates with parts of information stored in the mind.

 

[Arwenn]

I'm fine with the comprehension, I'd just like to be able to read/comprehend faster than I do at present, because the books on my reading list just seem to keep growing (not to mention SoTT and the forum)!

 

[monotonic]

It strikes me after these comments that what we are really looking for is high comprehension. If you comprehend well you will read exactly as fast as you need to. So with this in mind I think we should think of ways to improve comprehension.

Speed-based reading can still be used for when you are searching through documents and have something in mind you're looking for. So we shouldn't limit ourselves to one way of reading.

I've also noticed that even if I don't explicitly remember reading something, I'll find myself remembering it in connection with other things during the day, so there seems to be a level of subconscious processing that has to do with comprehension. If you were to simply store the writing in your mind and then comprehend it gradually throughout the day with a good memory, this would perhaps be ideal. This would allow the act of reading to be blazing fast, and comprehension could come as one is ready for it, and while one is doing other things.

One problem I think this might have is that the subconscious will have a lot of say in the comprehension process, so it may be easier to comprehend wrongly because of subconscious attitudes.

I'm starting to think the comprehension process is not necessarily so linear, based on the success people have had with speed reading.

When you read something, if it has any relevance it will begin a sequence of thought. As I read I feel when this happens, and I know to stop and allow the thoughts to follow through. However sometimes for true comprehension you need context that is given later in the text. I have a theory that if we just feel the thoughts starting, but continue reading, that the subconscious will work on them in the background and they may resurface later with a cluster of similar thoughts which we can work through. After all, we know in cases of trauma that the subconscious will slowly release information to the conscious mind as it is ready for it. The beginnings of the thoughts are like entries in the subconscious database, which might be accessed later based on the human search algorithm. In my experience one can feel this happening if you are self-aware and have a good attention span.

Eboard10, I think there are ways of modulating/controlling our attention span to improve it, but I have found that good health is one of the best ways. Aside from that, I've found working memory exercises (like N-back) to work very well, if you can use them without disrupting your neurochemical balance which seems to be a problem for me. Any exercise where you struggle to hold many things in your mind simultaneously, in addition to self-remembering, doubled attention, etc. seems to help. Finally, when trying to understand many different linear and nonlinear mechanisms in analog amplifier electronics, I found that I would subconsciously take a comfortably sized breath and then breathe out so slowly I'm almost not breathing at all. This seems to shift me into a very intense state where I have much better working memory and focus ability. What mystifies me is that it's unlikely for me to succeed at this unless it happens unconsciously, and any interference from negative subconscious attitudes stops the flow from the outset; it requires a very sober state of mind. When I had a psychological evaluation I found I was able to memorize surprisingly long strings of numbers and reorder them this way (surprising to me at least; the test administrator gave the impression that I did very well), although it would take quite a while for me to finish.

 

[Mikha'El]

I just discovered Spritz and I have to say that I think it is amazing. I was going to start a thread about it but you already took care of that Mike.

They now offer a free browser applet that can read any webpage or any part of a page that you highlight.

What really helps me is that the text is enlarged and you can center the applet anywhere on the screen. I wear glasses and my eyes get very tired when I read webpages. I now have a way to read faster, with better comprehension and less eye strain.

Hopefully they can get Amazon on board and we can use the app for Kindle or any other type of ebook.

It is extremely easy to install and I have tested it on SOTT and these forums and it works flawlessly so far.

It makes it especially easy to read some of the longer posts from all of the excellent posters on this site. You just highlight the text in the post and start the applet.