Spreeder CX can import and accurately convert files with the following extensions.
Now you can speed read content from 46 file types!
To Book Lovers who can’t decide where to put their unused books, here are 10 tips to creating new and useful designs of pre-loved books. Try it out and Share it with your friends!
1) Christmas Tree of Books
2) Indoor Lantern Decor
3) Book Flower
4) Picture Book Frame
5) Photo Holder
6) A Worthy Study Table
7) Side Table
8) Book Vase
9) Stack It Up
10) Book to Book Shelf
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Mindfulness boosts your productivity. The once-lauded “multitasking” has fallen out of favor as its usefulness in overall productivity has been debunked by studies time and time again. Multitasking actually risks depleting your energy and the focus necessary to complete a project successfully. No matter how badly we want to believe we can simultaneously write an email, talk on the phone with a client, and watch the funny cat video a friend sent, it doesn’t work.
According to the American Psychological Association, multitasking entails a lot of risks and costs for the multitasker. Not only does it impede our overall productivity, it has a negative impact on each task we engage with. For example, it raises the risk of making more mistakes.
Your brain can afford to engage in light multitasking quite easily, but when it comes to demanding and complicated cognitive tasks, the brain just loses it after a certain point. By practicing mindfulness, by contrast, you increase your ability to focus and you decrease your susceptibility to give in to the temptations multitasking presents.
With an advanced ability to leverage your focus and attention, you instantly energize yourself to do well in a stressful or demanding environment. Mindfulness gives you a productivity boost. When you’re mindful, multitasking won’t affect your ability to concentrate, because you practice self-control and carry on with the task you’re engaged in, no matter what.
But what does typing have to do with mindfulness and productivity, you might ask?
Well, typing fast(er) brings you into a high-paced cognitive mode that makes you more focused. When you are focused, it’s harder for you to come out of your productivity mode when you’re using accelerated typing techniques, and less likely to think about looking at your inbox or switching to a less demanding task.
Touch typing requires attention and increased focus to be done correctly. What’s more important, touch typing can be both a practice and an end in itself.
Touch typing will help you improve your mindfulness. Next time you touch type, make an effort to stick to it for at least 5 minutes. Don’t stop to think, don’t stop to correct anything. Keep the words coming and you will notice that soon your productivity will soar. Undivided attention can do wonders for your efficiency. Don’t underestimate its power.
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What drives consumer action? A new Twitter study titled “Discovering the Value of Earned Audiences” reveals that when consumers are exposed to brand-based tweets, this positively affects their online and offline behavior.
The study findings were revealing.
Consumers engage with brands, they don’t just follow them. The study confirmed that brands drive the conversation on Twitter and improve the way people interact with them. Active brands tend to have not just passive followers, but potential consumers that are keen to engage with that brand.
People don’t see brands as remote, faceless companies; they see a media-savvy company as a responsive, social, and friendly entity they can engage in conversation with, a fact that adds further importance in how much leverage brands actually have over consumer opinion.
Brand engagement on Twitter improves consumer action. The study revealed that half of the 12,000 study respondents took action immediately after seeing a brand tweet. This action included visiting the brand’s site or Twitter page.
Brand engagement improves purchase decisions. The figures are indeed telling; almost 1 in 5 Twitter users will eagerly retweet a tweet that mentions a brand. And the same percentage (19%) is contemplating a purchase after being exposed to a brand-related tweet, proof that brand-based social engagement does drive consumer behavior.
Non-brand originating tweets encourage more action from consumers. When tweets originate from a non-brand related source, then Twitter users are more likely to take some online or offline action related to that brand. Only 43% of the survey respondents confirmed that brand-initiated tweets encouraged them to act.
Other important figures to consider:
8 in 10 respondents said they had mentioned a brand in their own Twitter activity at some point during the measurement period (September 2013 – March 2014).
20% of the respondents said they do online research on a brand after being exposed to a brand tweet.
About 58% of the 13-to-17 age group take action after being exposed to a brand tweet.
This Twitter study is revealing for both big and smaller brands and companies. Social media marketing does pay off as consumers engage with brands in ways that are profitable and beneficial for the brand.
By crafting shareable tweets you can increase user engagement with your brand or product and ultimately even boost your sales. Remember that a compelling tweet needs the following ingredients:
– Relevant and targeted vocabulary
– Catchy intro
– A call to action
– An image or video
– Original, witty content
– Brevity
– Tweet (about) news
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There are many words in the English language that are difficult to spell. Some of those words are difficult because they have clusters of consonants, others because of the “I before E” question, and many words are simply so unusual or uncommon that even the best spellers have to stop and think about the order of the letters. Actually, stopping and thinking is a great way to make sure that you’re spelling all your words correctly. Don’t forget that a few minutes of editing your text will save you time (and possibly embarassment) later.
Whoops! That should be embarrassment. We always get that one wrong …
Doubled letters are hard to handle in many words, and today we’ll look at seven of the words that people often misspell because of that double-letter problem. When you’re learning how to spell a word, it’s a good idea to write the word out several times, and even write it out in a sentence. If your eyes get used to the look of the correctly-spelled word, and your fingers and hand get used to how it feels to type or write it out, you’ll be less likely to misspell the word in the future. We’ve given you an example sentence for each of the frequently-misspelled words below:
embarrass
My mother used to embarrass me by asking my dates all sorts of personal questions.
illegible
Why do you think even the best doctors have such illegible handwriting?
committee
We want you to be on the library funding committee this year.
possession
I knew the game was over when Gonzalez lost possession of the ball with thirty seconds to go.
misspell
Practice every day, and soon you won’t misspell any words!
disapprove
Paul’s father might disapprove of his plan to become a clown, but he’ll pay for a year at the National Circus School anyway.
professor
That professor always grades exams while drinking a cup of tea.
“Don’t look back, Ashley, don’t look back. It’ll drag at your heart until you can’t do anything but look back.” – Scarlett O’Hara, in the 1939 film version of “Gone With The Wind”
That’s sound advice for many aspects of life, but particularly applicable to practicing your speed reading skills. One of the bad reading habits that many people develop is regression, or “looking back” at text that they’ve already gone over, whether they need to or not. There are several reasons for this habit:
– Their early reading teachers stressed the importance of making sure they read all the text.
– They aren’t focused , so they forget the text at top of the page by the time they reach the bottom.
– They don’t trust their reading skills, so re-read “just to make sure.”
When you first learned to read, you probably were reading words one at a time, but even then your eyes and brain were processing the text on the page more quickly than you realized. If you’re even an average reader, you’re unconsciously taking in more information that you’re consciously aware of. Take advantage of the power of your brain and relax – you don’t have to work as hard as you think you do to be a fast reader.
You do, however, need to stay focused. Developing your power of concentration and attention will help you in more than your speed reading practice. Another way to keep your focus on the text is to “look ahead” before you start reading, and take a few minutes to think about why you’re going to read that particular document. Are you looking for something specific, a fact or set of figures, or just overall general information on a topic? If you keep the goal of reading in mind while you read, you’ll find it easier to focus on the text.
As Scarlett O’Hara said, when you spend too much time looking back you’ll forget how to move forward. If you catch yourself re-reading text automatically, work on breaking the habit by covering the text or pages you’ve already read, or keeping your hand off the “back” button or scroll bar. Don’t let the habits of the past keep you from the speed reading future you deserve!
If you spend long hours at the computer, you’re getting the practice you need to be an expert touch typist, but you may also be increasing your risk of developing a repetitive strain injury (RSI), or other problems related to the muscles, tendons, and nerves in your shoulders and back and neck. In order to stay healthy while you type, remember to use these ergonomic tips that we explain in the Typesy training program:
a. Keep your head straight and facing forward, without tipping your head up or down. The screen should be in front of you and level with your eyes. Use a document holder to bring papers that you need to refer to up to the same level.
b. Make sure your back stays supported and straight. Don’t lean forward or backward when you type. Use a lumbar pillow to support the natural curve of your lower spine.
c. Let your arms fall naturally from your shoulders – you shouldn’t have to raise your shoulders to bring your hands to the keyboard, or force your arms down either. Your elbows should form a 90-degree angle so that your wrists are flat on the keyboard.
d. Your chair should provide support for your legs, with your thighs remaining horizontal to the ground and your lower legs bending 90 degrees at the knee, forming an L shape. Use a footrest if necessary to keep your legs in the proper position.
e. Don’t stress your eyes, which are just as important as your fingers for typing. Set up your workspace so that you have enough light to easily see the screen and documents, but angle the light sources so that there is no glare on the screen. Don’t set up your computer facing a window – there will be too much contrast.
f. If you use a mouse, make sure that you have it at the same level as the keyboard, and approximately at the same height. Try not to move your arm too far to the side when using the mouse.
g. Finally, don’t forget to take a break every now and then! Even if you have a lot of typing to do, get up and stretch regularly, look away from the screen to refocus your eyes, and give yourself a quick hand massage to relax and refresh your muscles.
by Michael Stavropoulos
Learning our mother tongue is easy and takes a few years to be able to talk about the basics of the world we live in. When we learn a foreign language, though, things get more complicated. We have a number of obstacles to overcome. At first, learning is facilitated as we connect our new words with everyday objects, real things. But as our lexical input increases, we often stumble on obstacles. “What’s the right word for this?” we wonder. Or we learn a vocabulary item, but a few days or weeks later we can no longer remember it, especially when we need this word to do a speaking or writing task where we can produce language and prove we have made progress.
My teaching experience has shown me there are a few methods we can use to boost our lexical learning capacity and our ability to remember and retrieve the right word at the right time. Here are a few things I tell my students to do:
When first learning a new word, never learn only its translation into your first language; this is a common mistake made by many students who are in a hurry or who have never been shown another way. The reason for this is that words have connotations: in other words, they carry “feelings” and “colours” with them. Does the same word carry the same “feelings” and “colours” in our first language? Maybe yes, but more often than not, no.
“So”, my students say, “let’s say we don’t learn the translation only. What should we study?”
Here is my answer: “Always use a good monolingual dictionary that will have an accurate definition of the word. Study this definition carefully, but you need not learn it by heart as you will rarely be asked to define a word in any real context in everyday life.
“And why should we study something we will not learn?” they go.
“Because by reading the definition, you keep in your mind all -or most of- the essential knowledge you need to know about this word”.
“And then what?” they say.
“Every good monolingual dictionary will always have an example of how the word is used. Study it. Carefully. Repeatedly. Notice other words in the example that you can connect with the target word i.e. the word you are trying to learn. If you want, learn the example by heart. This will not do you any harm. If you learn things more easily by writing them down, then write the example down in a vocabulary notebook. If you can dedicate more time to this, write your own sentence with this word: this will enable you to connect the new word in your memory with a personal experience you may have had, somebody you know or any connection that is uniquely meaningful to you and your mind.”
My students look at me in disbelief. “It’s not right that learning a word should take so much time.” The class laughs.
“You may be right about the time”, I say. “But it is time well-spent and time saved.”
And I always finish this didactic conversation with my classes with a bang:
To paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein: “The meaning of a word is its use”. Prove to me you can put the word in the right context and I will know you have really learnt the word.
You’ve got a lot of bases to cover when it comes to spelling! You need to memorize rules that will help you remember whether there’s one M or two in the word committee (two), whether you need more than just an S to make a word plural (yes, quite often), and how to avoid making spelling errors with easily-confused words. Since one of the best ways to remember something is to repeat it, it’s useful to spend some time going over things that cause spelling problems, even if it’s just for review. Each time you review a list of words or rules, you’ll create a firmer foundation for the knowledge and stronger links that will help you remember those words in the future. Today, let’s look at three categories of words that create difficulties in spelling: homophones, homonyms, and homographs.
Homophones are words that have different spelling but the same pronunciation. This category of words is tricky if you’re only speaking and listening to the sound of the word, but when you see them written out the words are generally quite different. Getting good at using the right spelling for the right word is really just a matter of getting familiar with the words and how they’re used. Here are some examples of homophones:
aloud / allowed
flour / flower
martial / marshal
thrown / throne
When it comes to homonyms, you might think you’ve solved all your problems! These words have the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings. Because the words are identical in appearance and sound, you won’t have to worry about remembering two spellings, but you will have to remember which definition of the word you’re concerned with.
long (in length) / long (to wish for)
bear (the animal) / bear (a burden)
quail (the word) / quail (shrink back)
Homographs have the same spelling, but different pronunciation. Here’s where problems start again, because in this category you’ll find many confusing words, simply because of the way they sound. It’s not logical to have two identically-spelled words sound and mean different things, but there you are, it’s not logical – it’s English! Check out these examples of homographs, and practice saying them out loud.
wind (the movement of air) is pronounced with an IH sound
the verb wind (to wind up a clock) is pronounced with an EYE soundlead (a soft metal) is pronounced with an EH sound
the verb lead (to go ahead of, to direct) is pronounced with an EE sound
Unless they’re an academic prodigy, a student probably won’t take tests like the SAT (originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test), the LSAT (Law School Admission Test), the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations), or even the GED (General Educational Development, a North American high school equivalency text) until they’re at least 16 or 18 years old. However, preparation for these tests starts months or even years ahead of the actual test date, as students repeat and review information, and learn new vocabulary, and brush up on their math skills. There’s a lot of pressure on students to get high scores – a good score can lead to acceptance by a top university, or provide the edge the student needs to beat other applicants in the race for a limited number of spots in law school. But there’s also something that helps reduce some of this pressure: the skill of speed reading. If you’re planning for these tests in the future, you should start practicing speed reading now.
In order to succeed on tests like these, you’ll need to have a good general knowledge of math, science, literature, English grammar and spelling, history, and sociology. The tests are famous for providing examples and asking questions on many different topics, and the more you know, the easier those questions will be for you. When you’re a speed reader, you’ll have the time to go through more texts on more topics, and your speed reading skills will help with comprehension and memorization as well. Better reading comprehension skills mean that even if you’re presented with an essay question on an unfamiliar subject, you’ll be able to read and respond clearly and coherently.
Another part of test-taking success is time – the time you need to read the questions, as well as the time you need to write down the answers. The faster you read, the quicker you’ll get to the “answer” part of the equation. This is especially important when you have comprehension or essay questions, because the extra time you gain by moving quickly through the multiple-choice sections due to your fast reading speed can be used for thoughtful reflection on the longer written essay answers. You’ll even have time to spare to go back over your answers to double-check that you’ve gotten them right.
Don’t wait until the last minute to develop your speed reading abilities! Even if you’ve already passed the tests and are moving forward in your career, you’ll find that speed reading has benefits that will help you succeed for years to come.
Do you know how to touch type? I mean, are you really good at it?
If you are, then keyboarding can be your ticket to a good full time or part time job. Many entry-level jobs require touch typing skills, so improving your touch typing won’t hurt your career, no matter what field you want to work in.
There are numerous jobs you can easily get if your typing performance is above average.
Administrative/ Executive Assistant
50-60wpm
At this typing level you can get an administrative assistant position. Of course, you will probably also need other technological and managerial skills – think about brushing up your skills in language(s), Internet and Microsoft Office knowledge, or CRM and other common software products.
Responsibilities of this job include creating documents and reports, filing, customer support, and administrative support such as setting up meetings or client appointments. The position can even include social media account management.
Editor / Language Specialist
60-80wpm
At this typing speed and with a passion for language you could get a job as an editor at a publishing house, a magazine, an online newspaper, or any other print or digital media agency. The proliferation of digital media companies that publish their own content makes editors a sought-after profession these days.
Your daily duties will include various levels of editing and proofreading of books, articles, white papers, and all other sorts of content. You need to have an eye for detail and good typing speed and accuracy, so that you can both spot and correct grammar and spelling mistakes.
Medical Transcriptionist
80-100wpm
If you have advanced typing skills you could become a medical transcriptionist. The profession is always short of staff and if you’re into medicine it could be the perfect entry level job for you.
A medical transcriptionist transcribes medical and legal recordings of busy doctors. While you need to be familiar with the doctor’s specialty, the profession doesn’t require any other skills, other than good typing skills and excellent language use.
Data Entry Worker
80-90wpm
Data entry is a non-demanding job you can easily excel at if you have above average touch typing skills. It can be a bit tedious and uninspiring, so you may not want to make it your career, but as an entry level job it could work great for getting you exposed to corporate culture. You can become a freelance data entry clerk too, working from the comfort of your own home, if the corporate world doesn’t sound very appealing to you.
Legal Assistant
60wpm
At 60wpm you can become a legal secretary or paralegal. You will get to draft legal documents, do extensive research, and get to work in an exciting environment with challenging cases.
As a college student, and during your first steps into the job market, touch typing could be the key to landing you your first well-paying job.
If you want to improve your typing accuracy and speed you can try practicing with Typesy™, a typing tutor that makes learning to keyboard a breeze thanks to its step by step video tutorials and customizable typing practice.
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