Why I read fast and you should too

I took a speed reading course. It taught me these 3 important lessons on how to read fast and retain information.

Lesson 1:

Don't read in a monologue in your head, instead scan the words on the page. Look for the important words, and skip the filler words. Yes there will be a great deal of filler words. Most books you can cut out 3/4 of the words to get the main point the writer is conveying. 

Lesson 2:

Writers have a style that they write with and most times the either start the chapter with the most important information or they end with it. Take a look at the conclusion first if you don't understand what the main points are, then go back to the introduction and find what it is the writer wants to tell you. Always read the headings and subheadings and ask yourself what does the writer want to tell me. Most times reading the heading you already know what will be covered and if your not interested skip that part. Also all those images and highlighted words are most important to read and look at first because they are there for a reason and they have a message to relay to you.

Lesson 3:

Most important out of all the lessons is that you need to either mind map or write a summary in your own words as to what you learned from the book. You are able to retain a great deal of information without doing this, however if you ever want to reference anything it is good to book mark and use sticky tabs to be able to go back to what stood out to you the most and that you felt was important and relevant information to you. Writing a summary in your own words helps you retain it better as well because it shows the level of knowledge that you acquired from the book.

Do not be a slave to the book, thinking you need to read everything word for word. Fictions books are different if you want to enjoy them you will monologue them in your head, but if you want to get down to the facts and move on than follow these 3 lessons that taught me how to read fast and learn from  the readings.

I read 3 books a week. 2 audio books at 2x the speed, yes you can listen that fast. Your brain is able to process information a lot faster then someone speaking, and there is a great deal of crap that you don't need to know. So listening that fast you can tune out when parts are unimportant to you. I also go through 1 hard copy a week to make that a total of 3 books. As with anything the more I continue to do this, not only will I broaden my perspective but also I will get better and faster at reading and listening to books. My goal is to be able to go through 5 books a week. In my future blog posts I will list the books that were the most influential to me and ill explain what I learned from them.

To be continued....