Reading for the Rushed

I've taken a speed reading course through Groupon (Iris) and it has increased the amount of books I consume by 100x. Good for Amazon. :)

Speed reading might be broken into two parts. There's the part where you train your brain+eyes to consume more words faster (stop vocalizing words, better peripheral vision, etc.)

But the most important part for me isn't what people typically think of when you hear "speed reading".

It's better skim reading.

The technique I learned was read each chapter 3 times...

Start your chapter. Read the first paragraph or two at your normal reading pace. Get a handle on what the chapter is going to be about. Then, skip to the last paragraph of that chapter. Consume it at your normal reading pace. Go back to the beginning of the chapter and read the first sentence of each paragraph in the chapter at your normal reading pace. Now, you have a great outline in your head on what this chapter is about. Now go back through it a third time, and speed read the crap out of it :) Try and read it as fast as you can. Because of the first 2 reads you'll have much better control on what paragraphs can be skipped, which need a little attention, and which need to be memorized.

It's not perfect, and you probably wouldn't read your best fiction this way, but it's helped me a ton.

One of my best investments/buys last year was an Audible platinum membership - basically buying 24 credits/audiobooks for roughly $9 each. Especially since a credit gets you even brand new books, irrespective of length, it's an insane value - almost like getting CDs for $3 or new video games for $10. I was never into audiobooks when they required lugging CD cases around but with Audible's iPhone app, they're actually the most convenient book form, since you can even "read" while driving, walking, doing housework, etc.