Photoreading

I read quite a bit. At any given time I’ll have about three books going at the same time. Reading one book at a time is too boring. I’ll plow through about 2-4 books a month using this method. Mostly non-fiction. I particularly like autobiographies and books about mountaineering or stories about human endurance. I also read newspapers during lunch and lots of online periodicals. I’d say I spend about 90 minutes every days reading in this way. This doesn’t include all the e-mail and work related reading I have to do.

I consider myself a pretty fast reader, but have lately been wondering if I could speed things up even more. When I was a kid I tried a speed reading program. I used Howard Berg’s system. I saw Kevin Trudeau schlepping it on an infomercial and nagged my dad to buy it for me. Yes, this is the same guy who was banned from TV a few years ago for making false claims about other products of his. I’m sure you’d recognize the guy if you saw him. Regardless, the speed reading program didn’t work very well, but I also must admit that I did not give it a 100% sincere effort. I was also 12 years old at the time! It doubled my reading speed but it took so much energy to use the techniques, I couldn’t keep it up.
I’ve decided to give it another try. I read Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog, and he recomm different Photoreading system. He claims to have experienced many benefits, including:

Read books at least 3 times faster. I’d say that’s the low end. Some books you’ll be able to read 10 times faster — or more.
Read more books. The faster you read, the more you can read.
Read faster online. PhotoReading adapts nicely to online articles and blog posts. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can blast through this site’s 500+ free articles.
Extract ideas more efficiently. PhotoReading’s nonlinear, multipass reading strategies allow you to extract the key ideas from a book without getting sidetracked by the fluff.
Avoid reading lousy books. In just a few minutes, you’ll determine whether a book is worth reading… or discarding. You’ll love using this technique the next time you visit a bookstore.
Improve your memory. Because you’re focused on idea extraction instead of scanning every word, you’ll retain more of what you read.
Enjoy reading more. PhotoReading keeps your mind fully engaged, so reading becomes much more stimulating.