Speed Reading

My instructor took this photo of me at a Uni of WA Summer School I attended. I did a course on how to speed read. I’m not sure what I had in mind with the haircut, the watchband or the course, but I was on a fast track somewhere.


Speed reading skills were fashionable back then because I suppose it meant you could consume three times as much in half the time.


But really, speed reading is like having a quick bath. It would be better to wallow in the words, sink into the sentences, and play in the paragraphs to appreciate reading. None of which you can do when you speed read or have a quick bath.


Speed reading is a matter of intense concentration while deploying a steady and steely gaze down the centre of a written text, picking up the total content with peripheral vision as you burn through the page.


Not much fun there.


And not much fun spending a Perth Summer indoors at a Summer School.