Train your Brain with Speed Reading!

Speed reading

Reading is one of the activities that help people acquire knowledge. Remember how your parents read fairy tale books and other interesting children’s books for you up to the time you learned how to do it independently. Aside from intellectual health, other aspects in a person’s life are also improved because of reading. Social and mental abilities are developed, and in some ways, the physical aspect as well. Generally, people are bound by interests. When you share something interesting you have read which lights up the interest of another, there is a great possibility of forming bonds and friendships and your social circle will continue to expand. Additionally, reading is good for the brain as it induces mental activity. It keeps the brain busy and creative.

Information Overload

With all those pieces of information stored in your brain which you acquired from reading, you are now faced with the challenge of remembering the details. Information overload happens, and all other knowledge gained from your reading experience may seem irrelevant.  In the case of information overload, the brain will involuntarily throw out all the necessary information that you need and retain ones that you don’t need. This may be temporary, but experiencing information overload is not good for your mental health in the long run. It would affect the way you make decisions. You also tend to become clumsy and forget things. Information overload is prevalent especially in the Internet Age where people get access to a lot of ideas. The world is becoming more and more demanding, and the only way to cope with it is to train and expand your brain’s abilities.

Scanning & Skimming

There are reading strategies that help develop reading speed and reading comprehension. When you read a material, it does not necessarily mean that you understand it instantly. In order to know if you truly understood a passage you just read, take reading comprehensions tests. These tests are a way of assessing one’s reading speed and reading comprehension ability. However, reading word per word takes a lot of time in understanding the whole reading selection. To prepare for these tests, scanning and skimming is used as a reading strategy. Scanning and skimming helps save some time especially in reading comprehensions exams that are mostly comprised of long passages with follow-up questions. Readers are taught at an early age on how to scan and skim important details especially in long passages and excerpts. Scanning is done by looking for the most relevant details in a reading selection to get the thought of the whole material. Meanwhile, skimming is done by reading the first and last sentences and understanding the main points of the paragraphs in a reading selection.

Speed Reading

One of the most effective ways to train your brain is through speed reading. Contrary to popular belief, speed reading does not only improve your pace in reading. It also improves retention and comprehension. Additionally, it develops intellectual health because by then you will be able to train your brain to take in loads of information without experiencing information overload. Readers who do not practice speed reading and other reading strategies tend to stop at a certain portion of the reading material and read it over and over again until they understand it. Speed reading keeps the reader focused on the material and not on anything else. An advancement that speed reading does is to not go back to the previous sentences once you went over it. Practically speaking, this enables the reader to save a lot of time.

Avoiding Eye Strain with Speed Reading

For wide readers particularly, this reading strategy is helpful because they can avoid eye strain which mostly results from concentrating too much on a novel or book within a period of time. In other words, it reduces the time you spend on one book. With speed reading, you can read as much books as you want because you spared yourself some more reading time. Also, you do not have to worry about having strained eyes.

Speed Reading for Professionals

Doctors, lawyers, professors, and writers need to read tons of materials needed in their line of work. Doctors need to update themselves with researches, studies, and papers on medical advancements. Lawyers read a lot of case readings everyday. Professors need to have a good grasp on different topics so that they can share more information with their students. Writers, on the other hand, need to read a lot to come up with several writings in line with their field. All these and more are successfully done with speed reading.

Speed Reading for Personality Development

Speed reading enables readers to retain more information in their brain. This gives them ideas on just about everything, whether they also personally experienced it or just read about it. Some people love it when you try to give an answer to everything. It means you are capable enough to handle unexpected situation. Being able to share ideas fruitfully empowers your self-esteem. This leads to lasting bonds with people.

Basics of Speed Reading

Practice speed reading in a quiet place. Get comfortable and avoid distractions as much as possible. Keep track of your reading time to achieve the reading speed you want. There are also modules on speed reading available on the Internet for more guidelines. You can either download or purchase them. Being able to do speed reading is very practical and worth all your effort.

Reading has been deemed important ever since. Any time spent on reading is never a waste because it is indeed a productive activity. It gives a lot of benefits to the readers regardless of which book it is, may it be a novel, a science book, or a collection of fables. It enables the reader to try new things according to what they have read. It also challenges the reader’s existent beliefs and makes a room for discussion. Reading expands a person’s knowledge, values, and interests for a more fruitful life.