Bad Reading Habits that Are Slowing You Down… and How to Destroy Them!

In this article, I’m going to show you some bad reading habits that a lot of people have, and I’ll explain how to get rid of them, so that you can become a faster reader. If you use these tips, you are guaranteed to increase your reading speed.

• Reading all material at the same speed.

A lot of people try to read all material at the same speed. This is a bad habit. Quite simply, some stuff is harder to read than other stuff. Your reading speed should relate directly with the difficulty of the text you’re reading. Most people know that they should slow down for difficult text, but VERY FEW will speed up for easy text.

Try this out: the next time you find something that’s very easy to read, start out reading at your normal speed, but accelerate until you reach your REAL reading speed for the text. You’ll find that you’re able to read text quite a bit faster if it’s easy.

• Reading when tired.
  

It is common for people, especially students, to read their books late at night. This time of day is actually the LEAST effective for reading. Trying to read in bed is even worse.

As a rule, being productive with your reading requires you to be in a productive state of mind. If you’re thinking just as much about sleeping as you are about the text, your comprehension will suffer. So read with an ACTIVE mind — when you’ve got lots of energy, and you’re feeling motivated.

• Trying to comprehend 100% right away.

Another bad habit is to just jump right into the text — starting from ZERO comprehension and aiming straight
for 100% comprehension. Doing this will almost surely result in failure. What you really need to do is work your way up to 100%, using a gradual process.

The process doesn’t have to be that complicated — it can be as simple as just scanning the material once or twice before reading, to get a general idea of what’s going on in the text. For textbooks, it might mean skimming through the pages just reading the headers and titles. Once you get that LITTLE BIT of comprehension to start with, that first 10%, then the other 90% will be MUCH easier to understand. Don’t go for the full 100% right away — work up to it gradually.

These tips will definitely help you to improve your reading ability. Just avoid these bad habits, and your reading speed and comprehension will advance significantly. For more information on how to increase your reading speed, and how to finally start speed reading, check out the Speed Reading Newsletter. It’s free to join, and you’ll discover secrets that most people will never know about speed reading.