I couldn’t help notice how long it took my wife to read a book. She was immersed in a hefty 1002-page soft cover fiction. I asked if when she reads does she hear (or sound out) the words in her head. She nodded and ignored me.

Proceeding to expound on the technical virtues of “finger tracing”, “double fixations”, and “chunking”, I launched into an eloquent discourse of the aforementioned techniques. Of course, she would hear none of that. (A productivity “prophet” is without honor in his own country)…

Many of us read, not because we have to, but because we want to. It pains me to realize that there are volumes upon volumes of great works I’ll never have time to read because there’s only a finite amount of free time available. I have to be picky and choosy about the books I invest my time in because time is a non-renewable resource. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

So how can you get better results from the time you allot to reading?

How can you read more and comprehend more of what you read?

How do you know if you’re improving on your speed?

The answers to the questions are: assessment, training, practice, and reassessment.  (I haven’t figured a fancy acronym for this yet).

1. Assessment: What do you need? A countdown timer, a book, a notepad, a comfortable chair and some “quiet” time. The instructions are easy. Choose a chapter out of the book. Set the timer for 5 minutes and start reading. When the alarm sounds, mark the end and tally up the words. Record the number and divide by 5 to get the words per minute. This is your baseline and the figure that were going to improve upon.
2. Training. For learning purposes I’m arbitrarily going to pick the  “fixation” technique to use. (More on the other techniques in future articles). Choose another chapter and rather than reading every word, I want you to “fixate” or pause on a spot at the beginning of the sentence and another spot at the end of the sentence.
3. Practice. Go down the page, sentence by sentence, starting and stopping at the fixation points. Go at slower pace to develop a rhythm. Read using this method for week or so.
4. Reassessment. Repeat step 1.

When I initially did this test I doubled my reading speed. That’s a big deal. I sub-vocalized the words I read which meant I was reading far slower than my potential. After doing the training exercise for a short interval I read twice as much in the same amount of time.

With the barrage of email and the sheer volume of information being posted on the internet daily, this little bit of training and practice will help you process more stuff than ever before.

So, does my wife care if she doubles her speed? Not really. She’s wrapped up in the story and “enjoying it thank-you-very-much”.

I’m betting you solo-workers who have to plod through page after page of dull technical reports are interested in getting through that stuff faster. Am I right? Talk to me about it.