There is just too much to read! Picture by Terry Freedman
There is so much to read these days, that a leisurely stroll through thousands of words is no longer feasible. At least, not if you’re going to keep on top of all the new books and articles that appear every day.
Not only that, but slow reading can potentially affect your bottom line. I have a reputation for being able to read and review a book in next to no time. For example, I’ve just been asked to submit my reviews of two books by next week. That’s like a holiday: a few weeks ago I was asked if I could read and review a book by the following day!
(I hope to write an article about how to write a review quickly, but the first step is being able to read the book quickly.)
However, simply reading quickly is not necessarily the answer either. Believe it or not, a reading speed of 800 words per minute with a comprehension of around 70% (expressed as 800/70) is perfectly feasible. But the skill lies more in reading efficiently than just trying to read faster.
When it comes to reading, most people approach the material in the same way they approach a packet of cornflakes. If you think about it, that can’t be the best approach, not least because it sounds so passive. I think that one needs to be an active reader. I hope the meaning of that term will become clearer as this article progresses.
As a writer, you have a job to do: not only to keep up-to-date for your own sake, but to do so in order to keep your readers informed. How are you going to do it?
I should mention that this article is somewhat more applicable to non-fiction than fiction. Having said that, I still apply several of these techniques to my fiction reading, but my approach is different enough to warrant a separate article. I’ll link to that when I’ve written it.
9 Great Tips For Reading More Efficiently
If the material is well-structured -- in other words, if the person writing it was more concerned with making sure you could get the gist quickly than with his or her own ego -- efficient reading should be as easy as falling off a log. But even if the writer spent more time thinking of flowery descriptions than worrying about your need to get stuff done, you can still save time by reading it properly.
Here's what you do:
Don't Even Open The Document
That's right: just keep it closed, and spend 5 minutes thinking about what you're looking for, and what you think the document might contain in relation to that. Sounds like a waste of time, right? But it isn’t, because what you're doing is setting up some mental hooks on which to hang ideas as they come up from the material, or from your interaction with the material.
Read The Table Of Contents…
… if there is one, as that will help you get a feel for what the document contains. Well, with any luck: if the author has used totally unhelpful section or chapter headings, like "All's well that ends well", you won't have much joy.
Always Start At The End
Well, at the summary, to be more precise. That often comes at the beginning, in the form of an Executive Summary in a report, or something like “In this chapter we’ll cover…” in a book. Whatever. Read it first, because you'll be able to cut to the chase without all the intervening argument. Like the man said: Just gimme the facts, ma'am. If the chapters have conclusions, read them at this point too. The idea is to gain a good overview of the book very quickly.
Read Even More
If you still don't have what you need, well, you're going to have to read more of it. Start by reading the first and last paragraphs in each section. The first one should say what is covered. If you've chosen a good source, the final paragraph will summarise what's just been covered. This is usually the case with the news sectin in newspapers, of course. With this in mind, you can gain a pretty good idea of what’s been going on in the world simply by reading the headline and first paragraph of each article. (This tends not to work for feature articles though.)
Read Still More
Still not enough? OK, start again, but this time read the first sentences in each paragraph too.
The Big Picture
Put these techniques together to read a newspaper quickly: the headline and first paragraph, plus the picture and picture caption, should tell you all you need to know.
Read The Tags
Good website articles and blogs should help in two other ways: firstly, they ought to be categorised; secondly, they should be tagged. The category and tags should give you a good idea of what the piece is about.
Faster Reading
Efficient reading isn't the same as speed reading, but you can always do some things to help you read faster:
How Much Detail?
Ask yourself if you really need all the detail. If the answer is "no", then you can skim-read the document. A good way of doing this is to train yourself to look out for certain "signpost" words -- and then ignore the rest of the sentence.
For example, "for example" is an obvious kind of signpost: it tells you that there is an example coming up. Duh. Well, if you already get the point, or you don't need the detail, why waste time reading an example?
Another signpost word is "Moreover": that is often used to embellish a point, and whilst it isn't the same as an example, if you're in a real hurry you might want to skip it. At least for now.
Take In More Words At A Time
Another thing you can do is to read more words at once. You can train yourself to do this, and there is software that can help you. I tried one out a few years ago, but it seems to have disappeared now. No problem, because there are lots of others, as this list shows. (That list is a few years old now, but a search for speed reading apps yields more up-to-date results.)
I haven’t used any of the apps on that list, but I suspect the principles are similar to the one I did try. That one tested your reading speed and comprehension, and trained you to see more words at once. The reading/comprehension test was a little artificial: in a real context, you would probably have some familiarity with the subject matter, hopefully some interest in it, and almost certainly some forewarning of it. As for the section that trained you to read more words at once, I'm not sure how permanent the results are, but there's nothing to be lost by trying it out.
I have tried apps that purport to help you to read faster by flashing up each word on the screen in rapid succession. I’d be happy for someone to tell me I’m wrong, but it seems to me to be a rather inefficient approach, because you’re still reading one word at a time. Until the next word comes along, you may not be sure what the context is. By the time you’ve worked that out, the original word is long gone!
Concluding Remarks
By reading efficiently, you can become more knowledgeable about more things. That will help you a lot when you are looking for article ideas or, like me, hoping to read and review a book quickly.
If you found this article interesting, why not subscribe to my free newsletter, Terry Freedman’s Books Bulletin, for independent book reviews, interesting places to buy books, and other book-related matters?