Productivity Day | Cut Your Reading or Research Time in Half with This Secret Weapon

People keep asking me how I get so much marketing and related tasks done in so little time. When I fell ill this past year, it took three people to stand in for me, and that was with no one assigned to the task of blogging.

If you

1. make your own infoproducts,
2. write your own blog posts,
3. create your own articles,
4. do extensive online or offline reading for business,
5. do your own research,

or otherwise maintain your own authentic voice in your online personality and image, there’s a special type of training you can get that will cut your time expenditure for those activities in half, or even less. You’re probably heard of this one before and thought it was a gimmick, but I’ll tell you, it’s definitely real.

I had actually mastered this technique as a girl, but after being out of practice for a few years, never quite got back to my original level. However, just a bit of practice gave me the ability to get my research for blog posts and social sharing done in 25% of the time it takes most other people.

Here’s how I (re)discovered these this time saver.

After I fell ill last October, and then gravely ill this past winter, the recovery period was supposed to be about a year. To which I said bah humbug, there has to be a way for me to get to at least half speed. I mean, what am I, a slacker?

I was running out of savings (no health insurance means never getting to say bill me later, LOL), and bills don’t pay themselves.

The most I could work without being threatened with hospitalization again, was four hours every other day. Even with three more people to help me, there was no way I could do what I was doing without being able to train someone to replace me. Two main things, and later a third, saved my butt. This article is about number one.

I can speed read. It’s been my secret weapon, especially as a blogger. Here’s why.

My reading rate, is 708 words per minute on screen, and around 900 -1000 on paper at a fair rate of comprehension, meaning I can get the gist at the same understanding as most people do at their average speed. At my fastest speed, I absorb information the much more quickly, but can’t later recall it as well as I would when reading a little slower.

In other words, at 78% comprehension, I can still read around 500 – 600 words a minute on screen and 650 -750 on paper, depending on the difficulty of the text. (Using typing as an analogy, this would be my speed after correcting for typos.)

That doesn’t sound that impressive, but guess how fast the average reader does?

200 wpm off the screen, 240 per minute off paper, at 60% comprehension.

Speed readers can consume information at four times the average rate at the same rate of understanding, and a little better than twice the rate at 20% better understanding.

I don’t break any world records, but I can read – not skim – and get the gist an average blog post in 45 seconds, when it takes most people 2 or 4 minutes. Doesn’t seem like the time saving is worth it at first.

Until you realize that being able to read four times as fast means I can either get the same amount of reading done in 1/4 the time as my peers. Which means I can get four times as much information in my head in the same amount of time. Again this is information I retain and use, not skim and later forget.

My research will be better or I’ll be done faster. Either way, I’m more productive – though I’m not one of those scan-a-page-at-a-time people. I think that would take the fun out of reading.

Originally, I learned speed reading in the ’80s off a program my father got for our Apple II. It simply flashed words on the screen faster and faster, then in groups, then sentences. You learn to read faster by scanning groups of phrases, instead of pronouncing each word in your mind.

To learn this, first, clock yourself at your current rate. Then you can find a computer program that does this, or make yourself cue cards and practice with a friend. Before too long, you may find yourself able to consume words in groups, and that stage is enough for your speed to be about double most people.

If you’d like to start speed reading, you can start by finding out your current clocked speed of reading along with your comprehension rate for free. I’m not an affiliate of theirs and I’ve never tried their software. It’s a shame there’s no freeware sample. I could probably sell dozens of these every day.

There are tons of sites that claim to have free speed reading courses, but I’ve never had the attention span to brush up my speed from a book, nor have I attempted investing time in a weekend seminar. Even the 25% increase in speed that you can probably teach yourself at home can give you enough of a boost to make the time invested in learning pay off.