How to Read Faster and Retain Information (10 Pro Tips)
The average adult reads about 300 words per minute. And there are obviously more benefits to that if you are able to read more without losing your comprehension. Imaging all the minutes you’ll be saving and the things you can do with it. For most people, the faster they read, the less information they retain. That’s true, but can that be fix and have the information stick? The answer is “yes.” Now, here are 10 tips on how to read faster and retain information.
1. Pay attention
In order to read faster and retain the content in your mind, you need to train your mind to pay attention to what your eyes are looking. This way, you will stay focused and be able to understand and retain most of what you’ve learned. In addition, you will need to avoid distractions that will slow you down or make you pause.
2. Avoid sub-vocalization
This is also known as auditory reassurance. It involves saying words in your mind when reading. We don’t say them out loud but our mind says them unconsciously. When our mind pronounces a word, it slows down our reading. A good way to reduce this is to look at a word without having to pronounce it. For example, when we see a castle, we know it’s a castle. We normally don’t say it and it can work the same way for words. This sounds abstract in the beginning but it will work for you.
3. Find a personal angle
In order for our brain to truly learn something, it should have a meaning. You need to relate what you are learning with something you know or something you have experienced. Science has shown that knowledge sticks best when it’s attached to something familiar.
If you’re interested, check out: How to study well for exams without forgetting
4. Practice Scanning and Skimming Text
Scanning is reading rapidly to spot the main ideas of the material. Skimming refers to the act of reading rapidly to get the basic idea of the material. Skimming is not as important as scanning. However, you can adopt it in order to get a quick overview of the material when you intend to read a lot of content at the same time. Remember that the more you practice the faster you’ll get.
5. Skip small unimportant words
The ultimate step in reading faster is knowing which points are important and where they are found. You shouldn’t confuse this with skimming. Leaning to read faster starts with eliminating the small unnecessary words that fill up the page. Some of them include; “to,” “is,” “if” and, ‘’the’’. We need them to construct sentences but they do not carry any relevant information that you may need. When we are trying to read faster, we can skip or eliminate them from our reading.
6. Use a pointer, Indicator, or your index finger
Using a guide is considered to be reserved for kids. However, when we are trying to read faster we have to adopt the old skill that will work for us. Getting confused when jumping from one sentence to another is a natural occurrence when learning to read faster. This method is focused at reducing the time that you take backtracking in case you skipped a word or two. If you choose to use this method, you should not slow down. You are supposed to move it from one end to another, quickly. By doing so, you are forcing yourself to read faster by following the pointer’s movement.
7. Train your eyes to minimize movement
In most cases, you will have to backtrack because your eyes are not yet trained to move in a single, fluid line. Keeping your eyes fixed at one place at a time will greatly help with speed reading. If you cannot reduce eye movement, you can move them together with your head. This will help create relaxed and fluid motion as you transition from line to line. This way, you will be able to maneuver your eyes across the pages at a good speed and at the same time giving your mind enough time to relate.
8. Record key insights
If you are using the pointer method, as I just explained earlier. You can use your pencil to mark the most important parts of the material. You can also make short notes while you do so. I do understand this will slow you down a bit, but your retention of that material will greatly increase. This way, you will end up with a brief summary of the whole material that you can review within a short period of time.
9. Review your notes
Save some time to go through your notes. This way, you will be able to remind yourself about what you just went through. You brain is more likely to recall the information if you periodically see it, but if you don’t review it, it’ll slowly fade away and disappear.
10. Track your reading progress
You will not be able to know if you have improved if you don’t know where you’ve started. Find out how fast you can read. Then practice reading and time yourself to see if you are able to pick up the pace without losing comprehension. In a few weeks, record your progress and repeat again until you are satisfied with your results.
When you want to learn how to read faster and retain the information, you need to embrace the importance of practice. You will be eventually become better at it if you are persistent. This means that you should take your time and repeat the above steps more often in order to see results. Just image all the time you can save and things you can learn if you can just read faster.