Whatever your propensity for devouring books, wouldn’t it be nice to easily increase your reading speed without losing any comprehension or flavor?
Counting the books in my stacks by my bed and reading chair won’t reveal how many books I have started and am making my way through, page by page—I’ve got my kindle library, as well.
Yes, multi-tasking by listening to audio books while driving, for example, can increase the number of books you consume, but here, I’m talking about visually reading a print or digital book.
There are entire books written about how to speed-read, etc., but here is one proven method you can learn in the next few seconds. It’s based on the scientific fact that your eyes are quite muscle-bound. The stronger your eye muscles, the wider your sphere of vision. When reading, that means that stronger eye muscles can focus on several words at a glance, not just one word at a time. You can double your reading speed just by exercising your eye muscles.
Here’s one exercise: Sit and focus your vision straight ahead. Hold your arms out in a wide V and point your thumbs up. Only moving your eyes, not your neck or head, look at your right thumb, then at your left thumb. Don’t try to be rapid in switching from side to side, but do repeat the exercise 10 times, several times a day.
Not related to eye muscles at all, here is a trick I learned years ago that doubled my reading speed: read faster. Simply practice moving your vision focus across and down the page more quickly than is your norm. You’ll discover the speed that allows you to catch everything, don’t worry, but I’ll bet that speed is quite faster than you’ve been settling for out of habit.
Let me know what you discover when you intentionally learn to read faster. Enjoy!
