For the last 6 months, I have changed the way I read. I now do it only (when able) electronically. I read with word flashing. This is where one word flashes on the screen (or my phone) at a time at variable speeds. The average reader is somewhere around 100-150 words per minute reading a physical book or piece of paper. Reading with word flashing, I can read comfortably at 500 words per minute. Not only is it faster, but my retention is exponentially better.
When I read conventionally, my eyes go back and forth. After about 20-30 minutes, my eyes get rather tired. At regular speeds, 20-30 minutes has yielded about 2500-3750 words. Because my eyes get tired, I lose concentration. I find myself having to go back and re-read certain parts.
With word flashing, my eyes don’t move back and forth, so they don’t get tired. Also, because of the speed, I’m not sounding out the words (which isn’t necessary for comprehension). Therefore, in 20-30 minutes, I am reading 10,000-15,000 words. That’s a substantial increase in a manner that allows me to retain what I’ve read much better.
For reading on the computer, I use spreeder.com and for reading on my phone, I use speed reader lite.
The options for electronic books are huge. I have nearly my entire physical library (~1600 books) in electronic form, along with nearly 9000 additional books. I add about 50-100 books to my collection weekly.
I just backed up my books to an external drive and found they consume nearly 6gb of drive space!
Reading physical books is a thing of the past….
Reading so much faster with better retention sounds great but I have to say I love books, the look of a book, the feel of a book, the smell of a book… real books rule!
true – bookshelves full of books are still an exciting sight. It’s just woefully inefficient as a means to obtain the information contained within.