How to Speed Read: A Bit of Nonsense

If you are only now reading this sentence, you are not a speed-reader. A speed-reader has already finished this blog and gone to lunch. Whereas you are only here. And now you're here.

Your problem is, you haven't learned to skip useless information, such as a whale may be rendered harmless by holding its tail fin out of water. There you go again.

You may ask: How do I know that useless information is useless before I read it? Silly, useless information is useless all the time -- before you read it, after you read it, whenever. Speed-readers know this.

One thing speed-readers do is read the last sentence first. If it makes sense, there's no need to read everything that led up to it. If it doesn't make sense, you have saved yourself reading something that comes down to a sentence that doesn't make sense.

Another thing speed-readers do is skip redundant words. Much of what you read is redundant, Not only that, it's repetitive. This was observed years ago by the late, great Victor Borge in analyzing the nursery rhyme, Little Bo Peep.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And doesn't know where to find them.
Leave them alone, and they'll come home
Wagging their tails behind them.

Now, if Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep, then of course she doesn't know where to find them. And if she doesn't know where to find them, she can't do anything but leave them alone. And what else do sheep wag but their tails and where else but behind them? So a trained speed-reader would breeze through read this rhyme as follows.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.
They'll come home, wagging.

Now, for practice, go back to the top of this blog and read it the way a speed-reader would, skipping everything that is useless and redundant.

That should bring you to here.

Actually, you should already be at lunch.


-- Robert Brault