Last Christmas I got the book Breakthrough Rapid Reading. I haven’t read it yet, but after listening to Skeptoid’s podcast on speed-reading I may not read it at all.

According to the Podcast the only good way to improve reading speed is… Wait for it:

To read faster, concentrate on reading slower, and read more often.

All those things they teach you with rapid reading are gimmicky: you just trade comprehension for speed. Speed reading doesn’t look that attractive when you know that… I’ve put the book at the bottom of my reading pile: I’ll probably never read it.

My biggest problem when reading is distraction. I read a few paragraphs, I get bored, and I look away for a few minutes. When I come back to the book, I’m out of it, and I have to re-read those paragraphs to get back into it. When that happens I estimate it takes me triple the time to read and comprehend this chunk of text.

Meditation is supposed to help focus, but I think to thing I need the most is sleep. I’m still pretty bad at going to bed at a reasonable time.