I just finished a speedreading course. I'm absolutely sure that this wil prove to be one of the best investments in time: a two-day course in mindmapping and speedreading.
What an eye opener this has been. I can actually understand more of what I read, concentrate better on boring material, and finish it faster by applying a handful of reading and eye movement techniques. I love it, am using it to get through my pre-reading material and it's quite rewarding and fun. If you’re not yet familiar with speedreading techniques, I strongly recommend investing in a speedreading course before going to b-school. It will help a lot with the tons of books we’ll have to go through.
Some figures about my reading speed in words per minute:
- Start of course: 342 wpm at 80% understanding = effective 274 wpm
- End of course: 671 wpm at 90% understanding = effective 604 wpm
- Max speed: 1450 wpm @ 60% understanding
As for mindmapping, it’s an excellent approach to organise one’s thoughts and to recall what it was all about some time later. Cool stuff, believe me! The key to retrieving stuff from one's memory is to associate, and that's exctly what mindmapping is about; making visual associations of information that we store in our heads. Mindjet Mindmanager (also for Mac) is a great tool for this purpose.
2 comments:
Hi Omar, Can you give me some more detail about the Speedreading course you took? I have been interested in taking one as well, but want to make sure that I select a good company to take it through. How did you research which was the right one for you? Thanks, John
Hi John, I organized a course at work through our training consultant, this proved very cost effective for me :-)
Depending on the county you live in, I suggest you contact a good local college or University and ask for a reference. It appears that many countries are adopting speedreading in their regular education system, so you may find out more about the available systems and learning methods through them.
My training was a 2 day course, with 2 weeks between the 2 dates. The course was packed with eye movement techniques, a lot of timed reading and tests.
Good luck!
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