Welcome back, we’re going to start off with the speed reading exercise we talked about in part 3.

Speed Reading Exercise

This is a very simple exercise that will teach you not to reread text.

Start by grabbing a book and you will need a pen or pencil – you won’t be writing with it.

Using your pen or pencil as a pointer, read a section of text. The pointer is to guide the eyes so move it at a steady pace just under the words you are reading. Do NOT allow your eyes to move back over words, only forward.

This is important – you must not reread anything, you must not backtrack. The pointer and your eyes may only move forward. Again, forget about comprehension, it isn’t important at this stage.

As you practice this, start to increase the speed at which you move the pointer and keep on doing this until you get to a stage where you can hardly understand anything that you are reading. All you are doing is training your brain and your eyes to read forward steadily, without backtracking.

Do NOT fixate or put the pointer on the starting or ending words of each line of text.

Technique 3 – Learning to Concentrate

Concentration is one of most important parts of reading effectively and it is also one of the most challenging parts. Why?

You must deal with your mind. We all have that little voice that gets distracted very easily – a key to controlling this is to practice meditation and mindfulness.

We also have stimulation to deal with, or a lack of, in some cases. The human brain is capable of processing way more than we can read. Once you get good at reading, it becomes a habit – for example, I must read every single day. If I don’t, I feel like there is something missing from my life. One thing that does happen, though, is that while you are reading like this, you can do it with a wandering mind, BUT this is what makes you backtrack. You may be able to unconsciously read a book but comprehending that book is not easy without making a conscious effort. And to do that, you need complete focus and no distractions.

The speed reading exercises included in this series will not only help you to learn how to read faster and more efficiently, they will also help to improve your concentration levels.

A Few Last Pointers

As you go through your practice, read diverse types of material. For the first week, just read easy, light stuff and then start to move on to more challenging books. Again, while you are teaching yourself to speed read, forget about comprehension. For now, you are building a new habit. Comprehension will come naturally as your brain and eyes get into the habit of speed reading.

You should also practice with material that you read a lot of. If you work on a computer screen, reading lots of research articles, for example, then practice on a computer screen.

Speed reading can be a lot of fun when you become proficient at it but don’t expect miracles; take it slow and build on the techniques one at a time.