You don’t need a speedreading class. Concentrate on rational reading instead.

Do you want to save a lot of time reading? Do you also have the feeling that too much information is available, and you don’t get an overview? Then it’s time to get involved with rational reading.

define your reading intentions

To prepare a presentation or write a term paper, you have to work through a few hundred pages of text — at least! Those who still read without a concept and word for word will soon be hopelessly lost because the day does not have more than 24 hours, and even eyes and brains are only limitedly durable.

But what can you do when everything is so important? Attend a speedreading course? You can do it, but you don’t have to. Many things can already be improved, simplified, and thus accelerated by a different approach to texts.

To find out what you could do differently, you first have to know how you have done it so far. So how does an average consumer read?

Imagine you have a book in your hands that is just right for the current purpose, such as the planned research-paper. What do you do next?

Well, most people would open the book and start reading. And already the course is set in the direction of wasting time.

Those who are not entirely clear about what they expect from the book will only be able to benefit moderately from it and waste a lot of time. The expectation you have of a book is called reading intention, and it can be very different.

You can read to pass the time, you can decide to understand and keep everything from the book, or you can have particular questions about the text.

In the case of a presentation preparation or if you have to write a term paper, then you already have the question about the book. It is identical to the topic to be treated.

If the theme is: “The 20th century under the sign of ideologies”, then the question to the text is, for example, “Which ideologies were dominant in the 20th century?” or “How did these ideologies affect world politics?”

But if you are looking for a concept for a presentation on this topic, then you could also ask: “What are the main issues of this text, and can I also use these for my structure?

Now perhaps you will ask: Why should I read faster just because I know what I expect from the text? The text does not become shorter, thereby.

Find the essential information in books

Please note: A book has a table of contents! We assume that this is not for nothing. What can it do and therefore be of use? A lot!

Maybe the directory already contains some hints if you can skip some chapters altogether.

Imagine you are merely looking for an overview of the most important ideologies of the twentieth century and the resulting fundamental problems. Then you can spare yourself sections which, according to the table of contents, deal with particular questions or which even make an excursion into neighboring subject areas.

If you know what you want to know and above all, what you don’t want to know, the table of contents will give you some first valuable guidance.

Some books have a table of contents, an alphabetical index, a list of places, and a list of persons or at least one of these.

If you are new to a topic, you can find out from such a directory which terms, names, and places are central to this topic.

If 50 page-numbers are listed behind the term “Marxism” in the subject index, but only two behind “anarchism,” then you can assume that Marxism is much more centrally thematized in this book than anarchism.

By the way, if you’re planning a term paper on anarchism, you’re lucky because of your preliminary considerations and your studies of the subject register: You’ll only read two pages instead of going through the whole book. If you can find further footnotes at the places mentioned above, you already have clues for new research at hand.

The different registers, therefore, provide you with critical vital terms of the book. These can also be essential keywords for your particular topic and should be noted down so that you can research more about them later. Rational reading does not only mean to deal with a text faster but also to track down further information in documents more quickly.

Find the most critical information in articles and Journals

In the case of shorter texts, such as articles in specialist journals, such indexes are, of course, missing, and a table of contents is not always to be found.

Nevertheless, one can also get an overview here before the actual reading by observing possible subheadings or by searching for hints in the introductory sentences where the text will probably lead.

Besides, you should also know that for most texts, 80 percent of the information is in twenty percent of the text.

The information density at the beginning and end of a paragraph is particularly high. Therefore, it is quite possible to read from a text first only all paragraph beginnings and conclusions, to then summarize at the end for oneself what one has just read there.

If this summary already contains everything you wanted to know, then you don’t need to read the rest of the text anymore, and again you have saved time. Otherwise, you will have to search for missing information more intensively.

Maybe you’ll try out these tricks on a thick tome that you’ve wanted to read for a long time because it’s vital for your studies. Have fun and success!

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