10 Days to Faster Reading Page 4

  Method 2: Discovering your eye span. Choose a letter in the center of a line of text and place a finger on the left and right of it. Stare directly at the letter without moving your eyes or head. Slowly move your fingers apart, exposing more letters and words. Look at how much you see while still focusing on the letter. This is your present eye span ability. With practice, you can widen your eye span.

  Turbo Comprehension: Start to Widen Your Track

  In Day 4, you will learn how to widen your eye span with two specific strategies: reading key words and reading phrases. But right now you can get a jump start on learning to widen your eye span.

  The Eye Span Pyramid

  Focus carefully on the number at the center of each line. Start with the top number and slowly jump your eyes to stop on the next number down. By focusing hard you will see the numbers or syllables at both ends simultaneously. It will be more challenging as you go down. Come back to this from time to time to gauge your peripheral vision ability.

  4 1 6

  26 2 57

  44 3 60

  38 4 16

  92 5 11

  47 6 15

  81 7 66

  94 8 12

  80 9 28

  j 1 r

  ad 2 bo

  be 3 to

  ko 4 gr

  fit 5 mop

  lo 6 is

  fa 7 ti

  fun 8 jan

  it 9 tip

  Phrase Flashing

  This exercise is designed to help you develop a quick and accurate perception of phrases as thought groups. It also serves as an introduction to a faster reading technique called phrasing. The objective of this exercise is to glance at each phrase, completely reading the phrase as a whole.

  With a blank 3 x 5 index card in your hand, cover the column of phrases with the card. Then with a quick flick of your wrist, move the card down to reveal just one phrase and immediately cover it back up again. This exposes the first phrase of the column for an instant. Keep the rest of the column covered. Predict what you believe you saw by saying it aloud or writing it down. If you're not sure, take a guess. Then check yourself by uncovering the phrase or column. Quickly move down each column, repeating the procedure for each line. Return to this exercise from time to time to retest your skill. Keep track of how many phrases you get correct by putting the number at the bottom of each set.

  Set 1

  success story

  more and more

  get out of hand

  the grim reaper

  as they do say

  once and for all

  the other one

  bright and early

  being in fashion

  six months ago

  nothwithstanding

  before and after

  what time is it?

  better than ever

  in the meantime

  free information

  finished product

  beyond question

  the spare tires

  our way of life

  Number correct out of twenty: __

  Set 2

  her purple dress

  strange question

  old acquaintance

  forever and ever

  now and again

  lead him to dance

  not my fair share

  incidentally

  do the impossible

  the nurse practitioner

  musical revue

  as clear as crystal

  old as the hills

  an optical illusion

  bacteriological

  the spare tire

  out on strike

  add to the mix

  take to the party

  telecommuter

  Number correct out of twenty: __

  The more phrases correct out of twenty, the less help you will need with this technique. However, if you didn't do well, there are other ways to improve. For example, the next time you are at a light or stuck in traffic look at the license plate in front of you and then quickly look away. Can you accurately predict what you just saw? Also try this with road signs, billboards, or writing on the sides of trucks.

  An Important Word About Your Brain

  Your eyes act as a window to your brain. If you have been an untrained, passive reader, your eyes have been open only a crack. In the process of learning to read faster, your eye muscles have to stretch in order to get more information to your brain in a shorter amount of time. Initially your brain will have a difficult time handling the extra load. You can almost hear it say, "Whoa! What are you doing? I'm not used to all this information at once!"

  Find comfort in the fact that your brain is constantly seeking meaning for everything it registers. It is always looking to comprehend even though at times you may not think so. It takes the brain a little time to figure out what your eyes are doing and, before long, your comprehension is back, or even better than before.

  Start Your Engines: The Left Side Pull

  In Day 1, I described the reasons and uses of "Adding a Stick Shift to Your Reading." You might want to go back to this section to refresh your memory about pacers. Initially, you may experience some natural discomfort as you adjust to using each pacer but with practice it will become more comfortable.

  When trying the eye span flashing exercise earlier in this chapter, you might have noticed that you were more accurate on the left side than the right. This is because you have learned to read left to right.

  The Left Side Pull — today's new pacer — helps you focus your eyes on the beginning of the line as well as keep your place reading down the text. Choose a page in a magazine, newspaper, or this book to experiment with. With an empty hand, either left or right, point your index finger next to the left side, or beginning of the line. As you read across a line, slowly but continually move your finger down the left side of the column. As you get more accustomed to using it, try moving it a little faster.

  Gauge Your Attitude

  Let's take an attitude check. Mentally fill in the blank of the following statement:

  I am a(n) ________ reader.

  Is your reading attitude changing?

  Pit Stop: Tip of the Day

  If you are like most people, you have no idea how much time you actually spend reading on a daily or a weekly basis. You may know, however, by looking at your piles that you need more time. To really make use of the information in this book, you need time to read and experiment with the new techniques. Otherwise they won't work for you. It doesn't mean you have to read a specific amount every day. It doesn't mean you need to spend hours at a time. You probably read every day. Think about it. You read your mail. You check your e-mail. You peruse memos, reports, textbooks, newspapers, or magazines. You can use these times to practice without making any extra time to read. Whatever you do, you need to figure out when you can fit in more practice reading.

  Look at your schedule. Decide when you can add a little reading to your day or use your cur rent reading time to experiment. Be flexible with the time. Just do it!

  Day 3 will focus on learning how to improve your concentration, which is one of the most important skills to reading quickly with better comprehension.

  Day 3: Revving Up Your Concentration

  Concentration is the art of being focused, the ability to pay attention. Unskilled readers try hard to concentrate but frequently daydream instead. This is especially true when reading nonfiction, or factual material, such as most work materials and textbooks.According to Becky Patterson, author of Concentration: Strategies for Attaining Focus, there are five basic reasons why concentration is important, especially while reading. Concentration helps you:

  1. Function more productively in a fast-paced world.

  Our lives are busier, our options more plentiful, and our time increasingly more precious. Without the ability to concentrate, we fall into the trap of trying to balance a dozen things in our mind at the same time or staying so busy that we don't even notice we are not moving for
ward.

  2. Emulate an important characteristic of successful people.

  Successful people have learned to shut out everything and zero in on a single task such as reading or running a meeting or making a phone call.

  3. Improve the quality of your life.

  Think about it: How much of your reading time do you spend thinking about the past and the future? Is your present going by unnoticed? Learning to focus on the present is the best way to live life to the fullest.

  4. Accomplish more in less time.

  If you focus while you read, you will spend less time than if you spend your time passively daydreaming.

  5. Tap into a deep reservoir of energy.

  When you are really concentrating, you don't feel hunger, fatigue, or boredom. Instead you are filled with energy and don't place limits on yourself.

  Do you think you are fully concentrating right now? If so, what is enabling you to do so? If not, what is distracting you? How can you develop more concentration? The answers to these questions are the focus of this chapter.

  Dialing In to Concentration

  A car racing team's expertise is preparing the car for a race. The process of dialing in means doing a series of activities, not just one, including tuning up the engine, changing the oil, checking the tire pressure, and so on. Lack of focus from anyone on the race team could mean losing the race.

  In reading, there are many conditions that create concentration. However, there are just as many or more that derail it. You are ultimately responsible for setting up the appropriate conditions for achieving the highest level of concentration.

  Let's learn how to create concentration while reading by becoming aware of what distracts you and taking control over these distractions.

  Choosing What to Read

  If you have a week's vacation coming up, you have several things to think about, such as where you want to go and why, how you are going to get there, and what you want to do.

  Just as you would mentally prepare yourself for your vacation, you also need to prepare your mind for reading. This is the first step for ensuring concentration and reading efficiency. The two most powerful questions you can ask yourself before you read are:

  1. "WHY am I reading this" and

  2. "WHAT might I need this information for?"

  Your answers to these questions help you uncover your purpose and responsibility. Before I read, I have a mental conversation with every piece of reading material. For example, let's say that the next item on my reading pile is a professional journal. I place it in my hand, look over the cover, and mentally ask, "Why am I reading this?" If I cannot come up with a valid reason, I choose not to read it. If I'm not sure, I open it and quickly scan the Table of Contents. If I see an article I'm interested in, I again ask the question "Why would I read it?" I mentally answer the question. For example, I am reading this "to enhance my knowledge" or "to keep abreast of current world affairs."

  You will come up with additional reasons if you remember to ask yourself the why question before you read.

  Once you identify your purpose, then think about your responsibility. "What might I need this information for?" or "What might I use this information for?" For example, I need the information "for a test," "for a meeting," "to sell my prospect," "to help my child do better in school," and so on.

  Many of my workshop participants have told me they are so amazed when they take the time to consciously decide their reading purpose and responsibility. They say that they save a lot of time by reading only what they find useful to them. They also find that their attention is focused, which helps with comprehension.

  Fast Tracks: Where Do You Read?

  Think about the place you most often read. In your mind, visualize how it looks. Take a blank piece of paper, any size will do, and draw a rough sketch of the location. Include everything in the space such as a computer, TV, chairs, telephone, stereo, doorway, window, garbage can, and so on.

  When you complete your sketch, place an X in the picture where you usually sit in the room.

  Then circle or highlight anything in the room that distracts you from reading. Review the list of distracters below and see how many you identify with when you read.

  The Top Ten Reading Distracters

  Here is a list of the common reading distracters compiled from my workshop participants. Becoming aware of what steers you off track while reading is another step in ensuring better concentration. You may want to place a check mark next to those that apply to you.

  1. Other people. Whether you work in an office or are at home with your kids, you can be sure that other people will distract you. If you get interrupted, you lose your concentration, you forfeit reading time, you lose your place. If you are interrupted regularly, you probably become stressed and frustrated, making it even more difficult to concentrate on your reading.

  2. Telephone. If you have roommates or teenage kids, the telephone will ring frequently. If you are at work or home alone, constantly having to stop and answer the phone will interrupt your reading time.

  3. E-Mail. If your computer is programmed to automatically notify you that you have new messages either with music or an instant message, it interrupts and distracts your reading time.

  4. Faxes. The telephone, e-mail and faxes have all become what I call "twitch factors." It means that when your phone rings, or your e-mail dings, or your fax chimes, your brain twitches. For many, this happens frequently throughout the day, making for repetitive twitching. It is one thing to be aware of an incoming communication. It is another to stop what you are doing to attend to it.

  5. Music. For many adults, listening to music is not something they generally do when they read, mainly because they find that as they get older, they have less tolerance for noise in their reading environment. Teenagers are a different story. They are convinced that they can concentrate while listening to loud music with words. Music with words, however, is especially distracting because it reduces the number of words the brain can process while reading. It slows you down.

  6. Television. If you are trying to watch TV while reading for school or work, what happens? Do you focus more on the reading or the television set? Some people read during commercial breaks, allowing maybe eight minutes per half hour to read. Since television is visual and auditory, you're left with no other senses with which to read.

  7. Location is too comfortable. To read for pleasure, where do you like to be? On a comfy couch, in a cozy recliner, or a warm bed? When you read for work or for school, are you in any of these places? Your brain is conditioned to relax on a couch, in a recliner, or in bed and to work at a desk or table. If you are trying to work in a place the brain expects to relax, you spend more time reading less.

  8. Not interested in the material. If your reading material doesn't grab your attention, your mind wanders to wishing you didn't have to read that boring piece of material. Unfortunately, there are times, especially for work or school, when you must read things that are not of interest to you.

  9. Being preoccupied. It is difficult to read when your brain is full of other goings-on. Just as you cannot squeeze any more data onto an already full computer screen, you cannot add to a full brain.

  10.Reading at the wrong time of day. Everyone can name a time or times of day when concentration is easier. Some people are morning people. They are more productive and focused during the early hours of the day. Some are night owls who concentrate at night, sometimes very late at night. As important as it is to know what time of day you are most alert, it is also important to know when you are least alert. Adults returning to school find that they end up doing their schoolwork late at night after a full day of work and family responsibilities. If this is not their ideal time of day to read, they spend more time reading with less understanding. They may find it more effective to set their alarm earlier and read before work.

  Getting on the Focus Track

  For all of the distracters, there are some common sense s
olutions for getting and staying on track depending on your situation.

  1. Squirrel yourself away. Business people can use an open conference room or an empty office to get away from other people as well as their own phones and computers. If you have a door to your office or room, close it. Students can go to the library or use an empty classroom to find quiet time. Parents at home could swap time with another parent by scheduling alternating play dates.