How far should you go with speed reading?
An average person, who has not learned speed reading techniques, is able to read at 200-250 words per minute. You can test yourself here in order to find out your own reading speed. By learning to speed read most people are able to at least double their reading speed if they practice regularly. Regular practice means that they perform speed reading exercises every day for at least one month. There is no need to spend several hours on it each day. 45 minutes per day will do, but it has to be regular.
A typical office worker will spend about 25% of his/her working time on reading. In case of a standard 8 hour work day it is 2 hours. If you double your reading speed then it allows you to save one hour each day. If you triple your reading speed then you will save one hour and twenty minutes. So if you are reading initially at 250 words per minute, then increasing your reading speed to 500 words per minute gives you a huge gain, but taking your speed up to 750 words per minute does not help you that much.
The best speed readers can read at speeds above 1000 words per minute. Reaching so fast speeds takes a great deal of practice, but the practical value of reading so fast is not so striking.
Doubling your initial reading speed will give you the biggest efficiency gains and it can be achieved by sensible amount of practice. Being a super-fast reader may be effective and you can impress your friends with it but if you have to work very hard for it then there is actually no necessity for that. So getting the basics of speed reading and putting it into practice will be enough for us.
Speed reading it self is not a goal, it is only a means to being more productive in mental work. To be a productive worker, being able to read fast is not enough. If your time management skills are poor, if you are procrastinating and wasting your working time then it will not help you much if can read very fast. Although rushing through your papers at 1000 words per minute, can save you valuable minutes, but if your coffee brakes are half an hour long or you waste your working time surfing internet then at the end of the day will not end up with that much work being done
So, I would recommend you to be sensible with speed reading. What you need to do is to learn speed reading techniques, practice them and apply to your job-related reading. Do not go crazy about speed reading, but practice it regularly. If you do so you will get the most from it with sensible effort.
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My name is Kristjan-Olari Leping. I am a speed reading trainer. I have an associated professor position at the University of Tartu, am a policy analyst in a policy research center, I am a trainer and I am involved in many other business projects. 