6x Your Reading Speed Today! (Dave Does Spam)

Happy Friday!

I just tried reading a book one page at a time, at a speed of 5 seconds per page (I used an online beeper). This is 6 times quicker than my normal reading pace and meant I could finish the 352 page book in less than half an hour. ZING! It also gave me brain fatigue and a headache by about page 180, so perhaps this technique needs to be trained up.

Still. A book inside 30 minutes - not bad!

Well, maybe quite bad. I'd be lucky if my comprehension at that speed hits 10%. Try it for yourself by all means, but it's basically as if my first paragraph read:

I time, used my 352 ZING! by trained

Not super helpful. I'll get someone to test me on the book later, but for now I used this random internet page to estimate my normal reading speed and comprehension. My speed was great at 501WPM and technically my comprehension hit 91%, but... I guessed 4 of the answers correctly (as well as 1 wrongly). A free answer comprehension test, rather than the multiple choice they used, would have had me down at more like 55%.

Crap. I'd really like to remember the things I read and 55% isn't good enough - especially when at that speed it'd take me 3 hours to read my 352-page book (assuming no fatigue).

What I'd really like is a way of reading that is both fast and leaves me with sky-high comprehension. Are there any shortcuts? The answer seems to be no. Or YESYESYES! if you happen upon any one of the thousands of self-dev gurus trying to sell you something. But mostly, according to The Science (as collected by Scott H Young) - no.

Gutted.

Instead, to increase reading comprehension Scott advises us to: "take paraphrased, sparse notes or rewrite factual information you want to remember as questions to self-quiz later". Dude. Boring.

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SOUNDTRACK TO WRITING THIS EMAIL

{ SILENCE, PUNCTUATED BY CAR ALARMS AND THIRD FLOOR HIP-HOP }

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I'm off to try some Kundalini Yoga tomorrow morning - as recommended by someone I met on Wednesday who changed her name to Katherine T. Kirk. Think about that for a moment.

Live long and prosper!
- dc

p.s. Life To The Lees: Cycling Around Britain is still merrily asale.

p.p.s. Oooh... You can forward this email to a friend!
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