There is so much to read these days, that a leisurely stroll through thousands of words is no longer feasible. At least, not if you’re going to keep on top of all the technical, legal and educational developments that emerge every day. However, simply reading quickly is not necessarily the answer either. Believe it or not, a reading speed of 800 words per minute with a comprehension of around 70% (expressed as 800/70) is perfectly feasible. But the skill lies more in reading efficiently than just trying to read faster.

When it comes to reading, most people approach the material in the same way they approach a packet of cornflakes. In an age of information overload, that just isn’t good enough. You have a job to do: not only to keep up-to-date for your own sake, but to do so in order to keep your colleagues and others informed. How are you going to do it?

9 great tips for reading more efficiently

If the material is well-structured -- in other words, if the person writing it was more concerned with making sure you could get the gist quickly than with his or her own ego -- efficient reading should be as easy as falling off a log. But even if the writer spent more time thinking of flowery descriptions than worrying about your need to get stuff done, you can still save time by reading it properly.

Here's what you do:

Don't even open the document

That's right: just keep it closed, and spend 5 minutes thinking about what you're looking for, and what you think the document might contain in relation to that. Sounds like a waste of time, right? But it isn’t, because what you're doing is setting up some mental hooks on which to hang ideas as they come up from the material, or from your interaction with the material.

Read the table of contents…

… if there is one, as that will help you get a feel for what the document contains. Well, with any luck: if the author has used totally unhelpful section or chapter headings, like "All's well that ends well", you won't have much joy.

Always start at the end

Well, at the summary, to be more precise. That often comes at the beginning, in the form of an Executive Summary. Whatever. Read it first, because you'll be able to cut to the chase without all the intervening argument. Like the man said: Just gimme the facts, ma'am.

Read even more

If you still don't have what you need, well, you're going to have to read more of it. Start by reading the first and last paragraphs in each section. The first one should say what is covered. If you've chosen a good source, the final paragraph will summarise what's just been covered.

Read still more

Still not enough? OK, start again, but this time read the first sentences in each paragraph too.

The big picture

Put these techniques together to read a newspaper quickly: the headline and first paragraph, plus the picture and picture caption, should tell you all you need to know.

Read the tags

Good website articles and blogs should help in two other ways: firstly, they ought to be short; secondly, they should be tagged -- and the tags should give you a good idea of what the piece is about.

Faster reading

Efficient reading isn't the same as speed reading, but you can always do some things to help you read faster:

How much detail?

Ask yourself if you really need all the detail. If the answer is "no", then you can skim-read the document. A good way of doing this is to train yourself to look out for certain "signpost" words -- and then ignore the rest of the sentence.

For example, "for example" is an obvious kind of signpost: it tells you that there is an example coming up. Duh. Well, if you already get the point, or you don't need the detail, why waste time reading an example?

Another signpost word is "Moreover": that is often used to embellish a point, and whilst it isn't the same as an example, if you're in a real hurry you might want to skip it. At least for now.

Take in more words at a time

Another thing you can do is to read more words at once. You can train yourself to do this, and there is software that can help you. I tried one out a few years ago, but it seems to have disappeared now. No problem, because there are lots of others, as this list shows. (That list is a few years old now, but a search for speed reading apps yields more up-to-date results.)

I haven’t used any of the apps on that list, but I suspect the principles are similar to the one I did try. That one tested your reading speed and comprehension, and trained you to see more words at once. The reading/comprehension test was a little artificial: in a real context, you would probably have some familiarity with the subject matter, hopefully some interest in it, and almost certainly some forewarning of it. As for the section that trained you to read more words at once, I'm not sure how permanent the results are, but there's nothing to be lost by trying it out. 

I have tried apps that purport to help you to read faster by flashing up each word on the screen in rapid succession. I’d be happy for someone to tell me I’m wrong, ut it seems to me to be a rather inefficient approach, because you’re still reading one word at a time. Until the next word comes along, you may not be sure what the context is. By the time you’ve worked that out, the original word is long gone!

Concluding remarks

By reading efficiently, you can become more knowledgeable about more things. That will help you a lot when your headteacher or pupils starts asking for your opinions on things, or when the department for education publishes its next magnum opus.