How To Speed Read – The Real Truth

Learning how to speed read was probably the most giddy I have ever felt as a grown man. Now picture this for a second. I’m a decent-sized guy—not small by any stretch. I also served my country for years in the Armed Forces and did so proudly. “Giddy” just wasn’t something I did. I mean, come on. I’m a guy, for goodness sake! Giddy is what teenage girls do at the mall.

And yet, be that as it was, the moment I truly got how to speed read, my whole world changed. All of a sudden I saw things differently. The world became only a series of ideas to acquire. And now that I truly understood how to speed read, I knew I had the skill to do just that with ease.

Now . . . for the record, today I am up well over 600 wpm, but I didn’t start off that way. It took some practice. I can maybe offer you the same results, but you should know it may take you some time to get there. What I can definitely do now, though, is to teach you how to speed read today—not in a few weeks—right now. And the steps are fairly easy. I think you’ll be surprised actually. And not with me, either. But with how quickly you actually learned it for yourself as well (and then how quickly you perfected it afterwards). Good luck!

Two fantastic methods to speed read

There are really two techniques I want to teach you today. They both work and because they both stem from the same principle, you can use them both, simultaneously.

Technique 1

• Step 1 is really just a tip. I want you to trust your instincts while reading. In learning how to speed read this is key for both techniques because once you become blazingly fast—which you will—you may doubt what you think you have read. If you make this mistake—which is to say if you doubt yourself—you will crash and burn! Why? Because once your mind gets all tied up with the conflict of “did I do that right” then you won’t be flowing. You’ll be stuck. And stuck means that you won’t be speed reading.
• Step 2 is where we literally just jump in and go! So how do you start? For one, read silently. Don’t say each word and don’t even move your lips to form the words in your mouth. Then, from here, you read directly down the center of the column. It will probably be tempting—especially at first—to try and scan back and forth. Resist! You can scan a few words on either side of the center, sure. But we don’t want your eyes to get used to moving back and forth. We want you to simply perceive more while moving down the center.
• Step 3 is another tip. It’s okay to use your hand to guide you down the center of the column. But soon you won’t need the crutch. It will just be natural.
• Step 4 is about the judicious choosing of your reading material—especially while first learning how to speed read. You may not be a pro just yet! So what do you choose? The first (and easiest) target is magazines. They are naturally written in narrow columns. So are junior-high textbooks. Since they are created with narrow columns already, it’s easier to start here. Super easy (if you trust yourself). Next up comes newspapers. Especially the smaller, less well-known writers. They only get narrow columns. Once you are good at this, should you try moving on to novels. Make it easier on yourself while first learning how to speed read, and your skill will make it easier on you later, once you have mastered it.
• Step 5 applies here, and also in the outside world as well. Try to keep an open mind.. If you prejudge, you will likely end up wrong. Be open. Stay open. Believe it or not, it actually makes your reading easier if you don’t assume you know what is coming next.

Technique 2

• Software! And this is where I hit my over-600 speed. Don’t get me wrong, I was good before, but after I learned about Spritz, I became great! What this software does for you, is to align all of your sentences from a normal-looking text so that you can still read down the center as we’ve learned. Additionally, they give you a bright-red middle letter to keep you focused. It was, and is, awesome! Oh, and one added bonus: they track your speed! We would LOVE IT if you posted your scores in the comments below. It might not be possible for you to post your scores from before you learned how to speed read, but maybe at the very least you could post your Spritz Scores!  All in good fun, of course!

Why learn how to speed read

Once a child learns to read, the entire world opens up. Imagine now that, because your world is already open, how much faster you will accelerate beyond your peers. Let me explain it this way. Try to picture in your mind a small little stick floating at the side of a stream. It is stuck in a little swirl off to the side. Day to day it has a good existence, but the scenery doesn’t change much. The view it has of the world stays fairly constant. This is what life is like for most of us.

Now imagine the little stick breaks free. From the point of view of his friends on the bank, he has literally taken off! In a burst of energy he has rocketed past all of them. From the point of view of the stick, his entire world has opened up. Things come to him faster now, effortlessly. This is what life can be like for us after we have learned how to speed read. You will get through your topics faster. You will gain skills faster. You will open up your own world and your career opportunities. This isn’t just a call to learn how to speed read, this is a call to change your life. Now, if after you learned how to speed read, you then went and decided to read literally every article on Wisdom Times, who could blame you?!