Tuesday, November 18, 2008

New Day #327

Today I did something I've always wanted to do. I studied speed reading. First I took a couple of classes on the You Tube with this guy who appears to be teaching in his basement:

God, how I love the Inter-web.

Then I took this totally fun test, which I highly recommend for wasting time at work.

In case you're interested, I read 500 words a minute with 80% comprehension.

I'd like to improve that. With the amount of tasks I try to cram into one day, I go to bed each night feeling like that morning was three days ago. If I can keep my inbox to fifty unanswered e-mails, it's a good day. At any given moment, I have twenty books out from the library and a ten inch pile of papers to sort. And still I surge ahead, rarely saying "no" to any opportunity.

After all, it's very possible that my life is already half over. I figure I can sleep all I want when I'm dead.

5 comments:

Rick Bettencourt said...

I have speed reading on the long list of my to-do's. It sounds like it would be a productive investment. I didn't know if was readily available on You Tube. I'll have to check it out.

Fran said...

Speed reading's okay for content, but I love to luxuriate in words, so it doesn't always appeal to me.

I'm glad you tried it, though. It's kinda cool, isn't it?

Unknown said...

This post depressed me. I am dyslexic and have slowly moved from functional-illiterate to what I like to think of as literate. Still when I took the test online I was reading slower than that average person talks. At least my comprehension was 100%. Still listening to audio books on fast forward may forever be my best option for information gathering.

Anonymous said...

Okay...maybe I'm a moron, but that "lesson" made absolutely NO sense to me whatsoever. AEIOU AEIOU AEIOU...WHAT THE F? But then, it may be that I was so focused on his hideous outfit - blue striped button down under a brown, 1970's sweater - I couldn't concentrat on anything else!!

Anonymous said...

I'm also learning speed reading. My reading speed was 230wpm two weeks ago, and now I'm about to reach 400wpm. I'm following a program, hope my speed can continue to go up.

I just found a new speed reading test here, and my speed is now 392wpm. I put it in my name, see if you are interested to try.