To be successful on Steemit we need to read, alot. Besides writing interesting and informative posts we need to read posts by other steemians and support them with a vote and/or a comment.
This basic practice is what helps to build a solid community on Steemit.
Imagine you could read twice as many posts every day and interact with twice as many users without investing more time. I know my account would get a serious boost from that.
To acomplish such a feat we have to learn how to read faster, much faster.
I recently did a Mindvally quest called Superbrain. In this 30 day program, created by world famous memory and brain power expert named Jim Kwik, I learned many interesting techniques and methods to improve my memory, brain power and cognitive function.
In one of the lessons Jim shared his technique to increase reading speed drastically. Just in one session I increase my reading speed by 70% and that is no small achievement.
In this post I would like to share with Jim's speed reading technique in the hopes you would get the mind blowing result I got making your steemit game much much more effective and profitable.
Test your reading speed
If you seriously want to get a result, you first have to understand the current state your in so before diving in to the tips and techniques.
We have to measure the current reading speed.
The speed is measured by words per minute, in order to measure the speed, take a book you want to read and put on your cellphone timer on 60 seconds and start reading.
Once your finished mark the place you got to and count the number of lines you read, in average there are 10 words per line so just multiply the number of lines by 10. The result will be your current baseline.
I got 210 word as a baseline in the first time.
Please Write down your result, so you can compare the improvement.
5 problems that slow down reading speed
Before we can start improving our readung speed we need to understand what slows us down.
Lack of education - for most of us, the last time we had a reading lesson was somwhere in the age of 7 or 8. Even though many years have passed since we are still reading using exactly the same principles, while there are much more advanced methods to read quickly and understanding every word.
__ Focus__ - very often when we read we start thinking about different things and lose focus. We can read a line and not remember what we read a second later, the cause of this phenomena is the slow speed in which we read. When we read slowly our brain gets bored and starts to look for other things to do making us lose our focus. A good comparison is driving when we are going slow we tend to do many things while we drive and think about our to do list, the presentation at work or sing along with the radio.
When we are going fast, like on a racing track, we have to pay full attention to the road to be able to keep up. The same goes for reading, reading fast makes you understand better and be more focused.Internal voice - when we read we very often read the words to ourselves in our mind, this slows down the reading speed. The reason that the average reading speed is between 200 to 300 words is because that us the average speaking speed. To understand the words we are reading it is enough that we see them, 90 percent of the words we know are visually recognisable and there is no need to read every word to yourself in your mind. It is important to read to yourself words that you are not familiar with but a big chunck of our time is spend on reading words like and, for, from and other filler words.
Regression - regression is when we read the same word or sentance several times. This is pretty common, so common that we might spend 20 percent of our time reading the same things over and over. This has to do with focus and distraction that cause to lose our place in the text.
Limiting beliefs - like in all aspects of life if we believe that we can't read fast, we will not be able to read fast.
Now, we will address each of these points and offer Jim's solutions and hacks to increase our reading speed.
Speed reading hacks
Regarding the lack of education, we are solving this problem right now by reading this lesson and applying the methods described here.
Focus and Regression
The best way to keep our focus on the text is using a Visual pacer, this can be your finger, a pencil, a pen or any thing you might like that can be used to underline the text while your reading. Our eyes react to movement extremly well and when you use a pacer the eyes and the brain are focused on the pacer and the text above it.
To get used to reading with a pacer, start by using your finger and move from left to right underlining the text, use a broad movement of your forearm and not just a short finger movement.
Now, let's see how effective this method is:
Again take your book and put 60 seconds on the timer. Use your finger to underline the words.
GO
Once the time has passed mark the place you stopped at, count the lines and multiply by 10.
I improved my speed from 210 words the first time to 370 words with the pacer. The average improvment is at around 30 percent.
To get an even higher speed you can use your peripheral vision and not to move the finger all the way to the end of the line and start moving back once your eye captured all the words.
To deal with the inner voice we can use two different hacks:
We very often move our lips while reading, saying the words to ourselves. To stop this we can use gum or even to chew on the edge of the pencil or knuckle. Once you get used to not saying the words to yourself your reading speed will increase dramatically.
A little more advanced aproach is counting to yourself while reading every word. So when ypu go about reading a sentence you count words as you read them instead of saying them to yourself. This requires quite a bit of practice but in about three week this will vecome a habit and you will stop saying the words while reading.
As far as limiting beliefs go, I think just the improvement using the visual pacer or finger is enough to make us believe that reading fast is possible.
To conclude I would like to give you an exercise created by Jim. That will speed up your reading pace tremendously.
The 4:3:2:1 Speed Reading daily exercise
This exercise will increase your reading speed dramatically and it is very simple to do.
Put 4 minutes on your timer, take your book and start reading as fast as you can while the time ticks away.
When the time runs out mark how far your read, put 3 minutes on the timer and read the same passage from start to finish. It's okay if you don't understand every word, you are simply training to read faster.
Once you're done, put 2 minutes on the timer and read the same passage again from start to finish. You will understand even less but again it is the speed that counts.
Finally, put 60 seconds on the clock and read through the entire passage.
Now after we trained our reading speed, take a new page in the book, put on 60 seconds and using a pacer try to read clearly.
I got 470 words this time, more than twice than the 210 words I read in the start of the lesson.
Practice this exercise daily and keep your reading time on 20 minutes daily, for us Steemians it's not a problem at all.
I hope you use these techniques to increase you reading and learning speed and of course, to get more out of Steemit in the same time.
If you want to check out Jim Kwik's "Superbrain" program and get a Free masterclass go to this
Un-affiliated link.
Thank you for your time.
With love.
Eugene
Very interesting post about how to read fast. Yes, I agree that to be successful on steemit, one not only needs to post, but also read the posts of others and leave meaningful comments, and only then they can learn and their following can grow.
Great job,
@eugenekul :)
Following you now :)
Thank you for stopping by and reading this article, I hope you read it fast.
Interesting technique, thank you. I had been using my forefinger sometimes when I was trying to find something quickly - it helps eliminate information that is not relevant. Now I need to write quickly! 😎
I'm glad you found this helpful, I'll be sure to find something to help you write faster.
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STOPI've been practicing speed reading on and off for several years now, and I can say it takes practice and extra concentration to get fast. I can easily get to 650 wpm now, but only if I remember to do it... I'm still practicing and maybe one day I'll get to over 1200 wpm (my current goal).
It's not easy to keep the concentration required to understand while reading much faster than usual, but it's a good exercise for the mind.
I'll try the practice you suggested at the end, thanks for the post.