Speed Reading
Here’s an old note about speed reading, almost 10 years old…
Everyone wants to read quickly because there’s so much information everywhere, and you want to absorb it as quickly as possible. Moreover, information is the key to success in the modern world. Therefore, reading quickly is very important and useful for personal growth… said another business coach-dude-personal developer. But in reality, we need to look deeper into this topic and not make hasty conclusions. First of all, speed reading won’t allow you to easily read complex literature or really speed up self-development. For example, you want to read Knuth’s “The Art of Computer Programming.” I assure you, it’s impossible to read it quickly (it’s practically impossible to read it at all — :-)). There’s no point in speed reading fiction either because it’s leisure. Give yourself time, relax, read, dream, use your imagination — there’s no place for speed reading here.
Thus, I’ve defined the purpose of speed reading for myself — if you need to form an opinion about a note-article (whether it’s worth reading in-depth or not, or quickly understand something about a solvable and Googleable problem), or just show off your skill — it’s suitable here. Otherwise — it’s nonsense and nonsense again. Just limit your information streams, I assure you it will be much more beneficial. Tutorials, lessons, and articles on this, that, the fifth, the tenth (including this article) are watching us from all sides, but in 90% of cases, there’s no sense in reading them. There’s no need to know 100500 seduction techniques or rules for processing in Photoshop, or 3290840329 programming languages a little bit. Or 432094832 patterns and articles about them. If you feel a passion for something — just try it. If you like it — continue. If you want to get better in your field, just practice and study something purposefully, without rushing. There’s no need to read everything, thinking that it develops personality. It’s not true. Rather, it clutters the brain, and then you need time to clear it properly. And don’t believe anyone.
P.S. How to actually learn this thing (speed reading), if it’s still necessary? Just glance over the note — not a coding book, no, just some note. Or Google your question and learn to quickly extract where the answer is and where there’s fluff. Just don’t read the fluff. Read the non-fluff. Usually, in the internet and in real life, 90 percent of texts are fluff (this one is no exception). It’s quite easy to understand where the author writes nonsense and where it’s to the point. Skip the section where there’s nonsense (unless you want exactly that, and the essence doesn’t matter). In this example — these two top paragraphs. You can skip them without losing time for mastering the technique. Further — don’t articulate the words, for a quick review of the article it’s not necessary and will save a lot of time. When the essence of the reading (i.e., important information) is found — you can articulate. But still, the most important advice on speed reading — minimize incoming information, it’s an important skill in the 21st century. I fell for this trend of consumption and now it’s hard to get rid of it, and there’s no benefit, just harm.
And 10 years later, information minimization is still a relevant task. :D
