August 10, 2005

EyeQ

How many hours a day do you think you spend reading? Between the newspaper, your favorite websites, stuff for work, the books you’re currently reading…it’s probably quite a bit. Most likely several hours a day for most people especially if you’re one of these “knowledge workers” we always hear about.

So if you spend several hours a day doing something, wouldn’t it make sense to become more efficient at it? Yet when it comes to reading speed most people take their current abilities as given. People tell themselves how they are “slow readers” while not taking into account that reading, like just about everything else, is a learned skill and one that can be improved upon.

You’re probably just about to ask what we’re doing talking about reading on an “audio and video learning” site. Well, here’s the deal. I’ve tried a number of “speed reading” strategies in my life. Some worked well for certain types of reading but not so well for others. For example, one technique had me tracing the words with my index finger. That tended to get the monitor a little grungy during all the computer reading I do… 🙂

The method that I’ve found the most useful and easy to learn is the EyeQ reading program. It’s not really a technique but rather a series of computer-based exercises that get you moving your eyes quicker and help you to filter out the words you do need to read from those you really don’t (an important part of increasing reading speed). It’s really easy to practice and because it’s a computer-based course the improvements work for both online and offline reading.

EyeQ is a bit expensive but in my mind, it’s well worth investment. Think about it. Let’s say you spend three hours a day reading. If you can improve your reading speed by 50% using EyeQ (very doable based on my experience) then theoretically that’s an extra hour every day that you’re saving. That’s more time to go to the gym, play with the kids, make love to your spouse (hey, whatever you want to do with your hour is none of my business!).

Seth just put up the EyeQ titles and I’d encourage you to check them out. I can’t think of very many skills which are more useful to spend some time polishing.

EyeQ: The Deluxe Edition
EyeQ: The Personal Edition