From my blog, you might be able to tell that I’m a little bit obsessed (just a little… ) with introducing changes to my life that make me more efficient, productive, inspired, or just add a little awesome to my day. That’s why I think it’s strange that I didn’t try speed reading earlier – I guess I just always thought it was a scam. Not so.

I’ve always been an avid but admittedly slow reader. Since I bought my Kindle 3 (which is a whole lot of awesome by the way), I’ve been spending even more time reading, and so I finally did a little research on how to read faster. According to the blogosphere and Amazon reviews, Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Krump is the best out there. I’m only 3 days into the course and I can’t say enough positive things about it. The book is full exercises to increase your reading speed in a short amount of time and gives you the theory and science behind why it works.

Fast Gains

With Mr. Kump’s book, you’ll likely see results very quickly, just from the first few steps of speed reading. Simply using your finger to guide your eye makes a huge difference. In my case, before I started the course, my base rate was only 320wpm (words per minute) with medium-difficulty reading material – which is on the slow side. After an hour of practice using my finger as a guide, I jumped to 418wpm. After three days of practice and following the exercises, one hour each day, I was up to 556wpm, a 57% increase in only three days – with no loss in comprehension (Of course, like anything, the speed of your gains will follow the law of diminishing returns).

Why YOU should learn to Speed Read

For a minimal amount of time and energy – in my case, just 3 hours so far, I’ve increased my reading speed by more than 50%. That means I have more free time to do other things — or just reading more. I’ll be continuing the program, and adding some updates here and there. Reading faster is something that will benefit me for my whole life – I wish I had started years ago.