This is part nine of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 9, Reading on a Technical Track

Technical reading. Technical material is material “with unfamiliar vocabulary or terminology, numbers or statistics you must know, or completely new information.” Day 9 of 10 Days to Faster Reading teaches us how to better read technical material.

The explained suggestions include:

• Pre-view
• Become familiar with unfamiliar terms
• Identify your purpose and responsbility
• Look for 5W’s and H (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How)
• Modify a faster reading strategy
• Re-view

The book’s content is becoming a review of everything previously discussed, with a few little helpful hints thrown in here and there. On to the tool of the day.

The tool of the day is referred to as “the thumb push.” The thumb push is very similar to the white card method discussed in day 1, but using your fist instead of a white card. I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out, and if for some crazy reason you can’t, buy the book! Or just buy it anyway, it’s worth it if you want to improve your reading skills.

This is part eight of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 8, Fine-Tuning Your Reading Speed

Knowing your purpose (Day 3) and applying pre-viewing (Day 5) are the key factors for determining your overdrive speeds: skimming, scanning, or skipping.

What factors affect your reading speed? There are several, all explained in Day 8 of 10 Days to Faster Reading:

• purpose and responsibility
• pre-viewing
• background knowledge
• noise level
• distractions and interruptions
• time factor
• time of day
• physical condition
• using a speed technique
• location
• temperature and lighting
• interest
• column width and print size
• author’s style

The idea is to “take as much control over your reading material, reading time, and physical environment as possible to make your reading experience as efficient and as effective as possible.” Basically, if you really want to learn something, it’s probably not smart to read while the kids are fighting over who gets to play what video game, while the dogs are barking at the kids acting all kinds of crazy, and while your significant other is in the room not doing anything about it. Or if your single without all of the above wonderfulness, don’t read and expect to learn much while the TV is on your favorite show and you’re about to fall asleep.

Read in the best conditions and your experience will be as efficient and as effective as possible.

Three reading techniques (or “not reading” techniques) will help speed you along: skimming, scanning, and skipping. Day 8 describes each of these techniques in detail and provides exercises for the skimming and scanning techniques. Abby Marks-Beale could have included an exercise for skipping, but chances are you’ll skip it.

Use skimming when you’re looking for the main idea. Use scanning when you’re looking for something specific. Use skipping when the material is familiar or irrelevant.

The absolute best part of this chapter is the following:

1. Always identify your purpose for reading. Remember that without knowing why you are on the road, you waste time, get lost, and become frustrated.
2. Pre-view everything you read. Pre-viewing gives you the background knowledge to decide whether the reading is worth your time and helps you refine your purpose.
3. Overcome your fear of missing material. There is more than enough reading material to last a lifetime and your job is to q-u-i-c-k-l-y find what is mot valuable to you.

I have a good reason for constantly referring to the ideas of defining a purpose and pre-viewing everything you read: it helps! Since I began to seriously study this book, I’ve recognized the good things and bad things about my reading technique. I’ve always been good at skimming, scanning, and skipping, but as for defining a purpose and pre-viewing? Nope!

I’ve been making a conscious effort to define a purpose and pre-view everything I read. It helps tremendously. I still haven’t fully overcome my fear of missing material, but I’m working on it.

The tool of the day is referred to as the “finger snake.” This one works best on narrow-columned material sitting on a flat surface. Place your index finger (either one) in the center of the column under the first line of text. Move your finger down the column like a snake, in a smooth, continuous motion. The goal is to learn to see and read more than one line at a time.

This is part seven of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 7, Reducing the Pileup

Have a lot to read and feel like you’re never going to be able to get through it all? That’s what Day 7 of 10 Days to Faster Reading is all about. The chapter discusses causes and solutions to your ever-growing stack of material you have yet to read.

Several causes contribute to your reading pileup: procrastination, feeling the need to read and remember everything, and personal/professional development requirements. Procrastination is a tough one, and I’m going to give you a few suggestions from the book that may help. Reading and remembering everything is impractical, and I’ll give you hints as to why. And personal/professional development? That may be the most important material you can read.

Helping to solve procrastination involves cutting out the unimportant. What is your purpose for reading specific pieces of material? If you can’t define a valid purpose, if the material isn’t of much importance to you, then you simply don’t need to read it. Unsubscribe to all publications (both regular and electronic mail) that you don’t have a good reason to read (see: inbox zero). Toss any unnecessary reading clutter.

Another technique for limiting the amount of material you have to read, and thus helping your procrastination toward reading, is to pre-view everything you read. Pre-viewing will not only give you the big picture of the material, but it will also allow you to decide if it’s worth spending more time in a detailed read. If it’s not, toss it aside and move on to something else.

The main point here is to read selectively. Think a bit before you dive into material. Do you really need to read it? Is it going to benefit your life in any way? If you can’t answer yes, don’t read.

When choosing to read selectively, you might feel an increased urge to remember everything you read. After all, if you’re being more choosy about what you put into your mind, you might as well remember it all. But, this simply isn’t practical. You don’t need to remember everything and you shouldn’t waste your time trying. Remember only what you must remember — you must have a purpose for doing so.

There is an interesting exercise in this book that I’ve completed previously — one in which I highly recommend. If you don’t know where your time is going throughout the week, keep a detailed log of your activities. 7 days. 24 hours. 15 minute increments. Analyze the log at the end of the week and find more time to be productive and to read the most important reading material of all: personal and professional development.

The tool of the day is referred to as the “open hand wiggle.” With the material flat on a reading surface, open either hand with your fingers extended outward, palm facing the page. Center your middle finger in the middle of the column and move your hand down the page in an S-shape.

I’m not really digging the open hand wiggle. I still prefer the two finger pull discussed in day 4 and the white card method discussed in day 1. Whatever pacer tool works best for you, the most important thing is that you use it! Using a pacer helps you stay focused while reading, thus increasing speed and comprehension.

This is part six of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 6, Hanging Out the Caution Flag

“Hanging Out the Caution Flag” teaches a number of things: criticism, quick preparation, challenging the author/content/yourself, and how to read certain material (newspapers, op-ed pieces, jargon-filled content). Let’s start with criticism.

Criticism, a word often thought of in a negative connotation, actually means “to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly.” You must not accept everything in a nonfiction book as fact. Earth might still be thought of as flat (hint: it’s ROUND) if we accepted everything said to be factual. You must consciously criticize what you read, considering merits and demerits, and judge accordingly.

Three aspects should be challenged: the author, content, and yourself. The act of challenging the three aspects can be done with questions to answer for each. If you want the specifics, you can find them in chapter six of 10 Days to Faster Reading.

Don’t be a lemming. Challenge everything. Be a conscious critic. If the author is attempting to sway you into a belief or stating something as a fact you don’t believe to be true, do your own research and prove them wrong. And if you prove yourself to be wrong, accept it and move on.

By this point in the book it’s becoming clear that reading faster (and understanding better) has much to do with multiple passes over the material. Abby Marks Beale has re-iterated the notion of previewing everything you read several times now, so it must be important. From personal experience, previewing is definitely important.

Previewing your reading allows for several things to happen. One, you become familiar with the material prior to reading it in detail. Two, this level of background knowledge aids in faster reading and deeper understanding. Three, it allows you to skip the reading altogether if it’s not important to you. Reading faster with a deeper understanding is the point of this book, so previewing everything you read is extremely important.

Not discussed much in the book so far, but I believe equally important is reviewing. After you preview, and read in detail, reviewing the material. This is exactly the same as previewing, only it can’t be called previewing after you’ve read in detail. If you really want the material to sink in, preview, read, and review (and take notes, and discuss, and so on).

The reading tool introduced in chapter six is referred to as the pen-push. With your reading material on a flat surface, place your pen vertically on the page, pen tip a few lines above the material you are about to read. As you read, push the pen down the page. You should be focusing on key words and phrases, and attempting to push the pen faster and faster down the page.

This is part five of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 5, Reading the Road Map

A terrific way to get through reading material faster is by not reading it. Seriously. Preview it. (Deliberately skim it.)

Previewing material accomplishes three important tasks that will enhance your learning abilities. One, it can help you decide whether or not the material is even worth your time to read in detail. Two, it gives you the chance to further establish a purpose which leads to deeper learning. And three, it gives you background knowledge for the detailed read, again making the material easier to learn. This whole process also serves as an introduction and review for the material.

Non-fiction writing follows an outline. Knowing the structure of non-fiction writing allows you to preview more effectively. Abby Marks-Beale’s detailed description of the outline of non-fiction writing serves as a great reference for previewing. With this information close by, you can learn how to preview practically any non-fiction writing efficiently and effectively.

The tool of the day is referred to as the “pull down center.” Using your index finger in the center of a page, pull your finger down the text while reading the line above. Make sure your finger is moved at a continuous pace. This works best on a flat surface with narrow-columned material.

Tips (“it is no secret that your ability to efficiently read and learn is easier when you are well rested, relaxed, and feeling well”):

• sleep — adults, between eight and nine hours of sleep
• exercise — make your brain more alert by oxygenating the blood
• brain food — rich with protein, avoid breads, pretzels, and pasta
• reduce stress — feeling overwhelmed? prioritize

Thoughts

I believe that’s it for this chapter. More than anything, it serves as a good reference for the outline of non-fiction writing. This is something that will help me while practicing pre-viewing other material I’m currently studying. As for the tools thus far, they aren’t anything groundbreaking. I’m surprised more people don’t use them naturally. Though, I do happen to like the index card method discussed in chapter one. The idea of blocking material you’ve already read as a way to prevent regression is very nice.

This is part four of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 4, Getting Up to Speed

This day’s text begins with “This chapter is going to be a lot of fun.” It wasn’t. But, it was much more important to me than being “fun.” It was enlightening. It was during the reading of this chapter that it occurred to me that faster reading, along with better comprehension, is definitely possible for most people.

By practicing the techniques outlined in the first four chapters of the last month, my reading skills have improved. I’m reading a little quicker, and maintaining, if not improving slightly, my level of comprehension. Last month!? But doesn’t the title say something about “10 days?” Of course it does. But I’m not so sure that a tool per day is an appropriate amount of time to practice each of the tools mentioned at the end of each chapter. So what is? Well, it depends on the person obviously, but I believe the knowledge gained from each lesson should be put into practice for a sufficient amount of time before moving on to the next. Possibly a week, or at least a couple of days of reading using the methods described.

Topics in this chapter include stopping on key words, eye exercises, and reading for thought groups. The “stopping on key words” is the most interesting to me. I believe the following explains this the best:

Think about what would happen to your reading if you could read, or stop your eyes on, five words out of eleven while still understanding what you read. The result? At least a doubling of your reading speed.

Take the following sentence for an illustration on key words: “The task is defined by a series of steps and elements.” All key words are italicized. The usually longer and important words provide most of the meaning of a sentence. Focus on these words and improve your reading speed. What this also does, and is probably even more important for me, is it helps keep you concentrated on the reading material.

The tool of the day is referred to as “the two finger pull.” For this tool, place both of your index fingers on opposite sides of the text. As you read, slowly, but continuously, move your fingers down the page of text.

I’m liking this tool so far. Anything that engages and prevents the mind from wandering is a great thing (in any task).

This is part three of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 3, Revving Up Your Concentration

The third chapter is all about concentration. I forgot everything already because I was too busy thinking about a million other things when I was reading the chapter. Like, what type of ice cream flavor I would get if it were my last. Or possibly what type of hamburger I might like if I were to go to McDonald’s for lunch tomorrow. I must be hungry.

Anyway, let’s concentrate on the topic of concentration. Abby Marks-Beale lists ten top distractors of concentration (you could probably guess most of them — phones, email, reading stupid sites such as this one) and follows up with ten helpful ideas to get you “on the focus track” (you can probably guess most of these too — alone time, classical music, short breaks every 20-30 minutes). So let’s instead get to an important topic discussed in this chapter.

Choose your reading material carefully. You can save a lot of time by reading only what is useful. Why are you reading a particular piece, and what will the information be used for? If you can’t come up with good answers for both — toss it, it’s a waste of time. Your concentration will improve because you’ll be reading only material that has importance to you.

The same can be said for other aspects of life. Keep only what is useful — eliminate clutter. Eat only what is useful — avoid eating too much and avoid junk food. Do only what is useful — stop wasting valuable time doing stuff that has no true purpose. Do you actually enjoy those seemingly meaningless tasks you perform at work? Talk to your boss about it, or have him/her talk to their boss about it. It may be meaningless indeed. But I digress (having trouble concentrating, my location may be too comfy).

The tool of the day is the “right-side pull.” I guess Marks-Beale was stretching for a specific number of tools, because this is the same thing as yesterday’s reading tool, the “left-side pull.” Now you are putting your finger or pen on the right side, slowly but continually moving down the column.

I feel like I should end these entries with something important, like “JustAJot reminding you, help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered.” Maybe. Maybe not. Concentrate.

This is part two of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Day 2, Rebuilding Your Speed Reading Engine

Abby Marks-Beale maintains a racing car analogy throughout 10 Days to Faster Reading. It’s helpful, maybe a little tiring at times, but helpful. This partly explains the title of the second chapter.

Rebuilding Your Speed Reading Enginge discusses the differences between an efficient versus inefficient reader. This is essentially broken down into active habits versus passive habits. An active, engaged reader proves to be more efficient, meaning that the reader moves through material quickly with good comprehension. A passive reader often has many habits that don’t contribute to the efficient comprehension of the material — mind wandering, regression, and subvocalization.

One of the best ways to reduce mind wandering, regression, and subvocalization is — to read faster.

Simply reading faster without knowing how to read faster is going to get you into trouble if you have passive habits opposed to active habits. You almost have to “unlearn to re-learn.” Borrowing Marks-Beale’s racing car analogy, you’ll probably crash if you try to start driving that car too fast without first learning how.

The tool for this section is the “left-side pull.” The left-side pull involves moving your hand down the left-hand side of the page as you read. Keep it constant — that’s it.

10 Days to Faster Reading

This is part one of my time with 10 Days to Faster Reading, a book on the Personal MBA Quick Start reading list. To read all posts related to this book, see 10 Days to Faster Reading on JustAJot.

Introduction

10 Days to Faster Reading by Abby Marks-Beale and the Princeton Language Institute is a how-to book on speed reading. The book exists in the Quick Start section of the Personal MBA. The Personal MBA is essentially a great list of business books, and books are meant to be read, right? It doesn’t take a genius to put the two together — it’s an excellent starting place for the Personal MBA, and I’m really glad Josh Kaufman included a book on this topic. By the way, there is also an excellent article available by Paul N. Edwards — How to Read a Book (PDF).

I’m still unsure of my opinion on speed reading in general — of whether it is effective or not. Previous dives into the subject of speed reading have led me to believe that reading quickly is more about having interest in the text more than anything else.

For example, have you ever caught yourself engrossed in a good book or article? Notice how fast you were reading? Was it noticeably faster than what you are reading RIGHT NOW? Probably. And this is my point. It is natural to read interesting text faster than the typical crap you are pretty much forced to read.

Anyway, on to what I’ve learned for the day.

10 Days to Faster Reading: Zip Through Books, Magazines, and Newspapers. Understand and Remember Everything You Read! Self Improvement In Only Minutes a Day!

Everything on the front cover of the book seems to be what speed reading is all about: read faster, comprehend better. Abby Marks-Beale explains this further in the introduction. The book doesn’t say that there is one best way to read, instead, it introduces you to a variety of strategies you can use to further improve your reading and confidence in reading. 10 Days to Faster Reading focuses on methods for non-fiction reading, noting that with fiction reading, speed shouldn’t matter.

Day 1, Putting the Key in the Ignition

Marks-Beale begins with a number of benefits to increasing your reading speed:

• Read more in less time
• Improve your concentration
• Understand material with greater depth and accuracy
• Retain information better
• Enjoy reading more

Again, the hallmarks of speed reading. The author also lists personal benefits of reading faster. I’m not going to list those, because I’m sure you can think of a number of things you could do better if you were able to read faster.

One very important idea Marks-Beale mentions is attitude. Like it is with learning any other new topic, attacking with the right attitude is key. You also have to realize that you’re human and aren’t going to be able to learn material as fast as Johnny Five from Short Circuit. And if you haven’t had any reading training since grade-school, it’s that time if you have any interest in improving your reading skills.

Each day (chapter) includes a time trial. I actually took this trial almost a year ago, when I first purchased the book. You know I never finished it. And this is one of my reasons for writing about everything I’m reading in regards to the Personal MBA — to stay on course — to follow through. Anyway, the results for my first time trial were as follows:

• 1 minute, 12 seconds
• 80% comprehension
• 345 WPM

According to the book, good comprehension is between 70 and 90 percent. 200 to 300 WPM is average, 300-400 good, and 400-500 above average. Looks like I’m doing pretty good so far (or at least I was a year ago).

Each chapter also includes a section on tools to help you read faster — pacers. This chapter’s pacer is a white, 3×5 index card, or blank back of a business card. Placing it on top of the lines you read prevents regression and helps you “pace” your reading speed.

This concludes Day 1 — I’ll be posting my thoughts on the next chapters soon.