Category: Speed Reading

When we surveyed our customers in the recent Spreeder Pro launch, an iPad version was hands down the most popular request.

It’s not hard to see why – the Spreeder experience is perfectly suited to the comfort, convenience, and portability of the iPad.

The Spreeder team have been working on the iPad version for over a year now, and we’re almost ready to release Spreeder Pro for the iPad.

The iPad version of Spreeder Pro is truly beautiful. Here are some spy photos taken in the office of CEO Marc Slater. Marc is already using the iPad Spreeder (test versions) to power through all his important reading material.

We expect this to be released by the end of the month, and all existing Spreeder Pro customers be given immediate free access.

Since we announced Spreeder Pro a few days ago, we have been literally swamped by questions on our helpdesk, in the survey, and in social media. Thank you for your feedback – it’s both humbling and encouraging to receive such a massive response.

Spreeder Pro is going to be released to the public at 7PM PST on Wednesday, January 27th. Just so you’re ready, here are the answers to your most common questions about Spreeder Pro:

What is Spreeder Pro?

First, Spreeder Pro is the world’s most advanced and powerful “speed e-reader”. Second, Spreeder pro gives you expert training, a cloud library, computer training and more. It’s all designed to help you read faster, learn faster, and comprehend more.

Does Spreeder Pro allow me to easily read all my material such as websites, blogs, books, files, etc?

Yes, Spreeder Pro is designed first for reading entire texts and books faster, so you can use Spreeder pro for all your reading and save lots of time. It’s great for anyone with a lot of reading that needs to be done quickly.

Does Spreeder Pro remember my location in every e-book, document, and webpage I’m reading?

Yes it does. You can import multiple books and documents. Spreeder will store them all in your cloud library and remember your location in each book, document, and webpage you’re reading.

Can I use larger chunk sizes in Spreeder Pro or is it limited to a word at a time?

It’s very important to have the flexibility so you can match the text display to your reading style. Spreeder Pro can handle chunk sizes of a single word, all the way up to 30 words on 5 lines. So you can work in the mode that suites your reading style best.

Does Spreeder Pro address bad reading habits such as subvocalization, re-reading, etc?

Yes. Spreeder has specific training courses, techniques, and lessons designed specifically to address the bad reading habits that are slowing you down.

Will Spreeder Pro help with my comprehension, retention, and memory?

The RSVP method of reading that Speeder uses has been shown in studies to increase reading speed and comprehension. If you have used the free Spreeder app then you have already experience this. Spreeder Pro takes this same concept to a whole new level.

Will Spreeder Pro be available on the iPad?

Yes it will very soon. The desktop and web versions will be released first in January. We are doing the final testing on the iPad version and it will be released in February. Everyone who gets Spreeder in the initial release will get free and priority access to the iPad version as soon as it’s released.

Can I use Spreeder Pro offline?

Spreeder Pro has some support for offline use. Once you have downloaded or imported your book from the cloud library, you can keep reading it offline. However, you’ll need a connection to change books, or to do the video and training courses.

What is the expert training all about?
In Spreeder Pro, we worked with leading speed reading and learning experts to make the most powerful speed reading training. The expert training helps you read faster on a computer, on devices, and even offline. It also teaches you powerful techniques for managing information overload, improving your memory, and learning super fast.

To make Spreeder Pro amazing, we worked with a wide range of experts, such as expert memory trainer Sean M Kelly. In our final sneak preview, you can see Sean recall Pi to 100 decimal places.

Sean also shows you how to improve your memory, concentration, creativity, and visualization.

Watch the video below, we think you’ll be pretty amazed at what you can achieve!

As the world’s most powerful speed e-reader, Spreader Pro will work to make you read faster, eliminate subvocaliztion, and comprehend more. In addition, the expert training courses in Spreeder will address all your bad reading habits and the relationships between them.

Our second sneak preview shows you the exact reason that slow readers typically daydream, have lower comprehension, and can’t remember what they read. It also shows you what to do about it.

This preview is from one of the training lessons in Spreeder Pro and is created by Abby Marks Beale. Author of The Complete Idiots Guide To Speed Reading & 10 Days to Faster Reading, Abby is a leading expert. She has taught speed reading to professionals (including Fortune 500 companies) for over 25 years.

Watch the video now by pressing the play button below. It will only take 2 minutes and could help you improve your comprehension and memory for what you read.

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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“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!

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.

In the summer of 2014, Facebook conducted a fun literature experiment. Facebook asked people to list the top ten books that have moved them in some way.

The status game was popular and the results were quite revealing. The 100 books that Facebook users loved and were most affected by were Harry Potter (with a 21.08% appearance rate in Facebook statuses) and second-place To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, which had a 14.48% appearance rate.

Facebook decided to aggregate data from other non-English speaking countries too, and so the results now reflect what people in other countries and other languages most appreciate in the realm of literature – no matter the translation.

Italy

The Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling

Cent’anni di solitudine – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Il ritratto di Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

Orgoglio e pregiudizio – Jane Austen

Il signore degli anelli – J.R.R. Tolkien

France

The Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling

Le petit prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Ça – Stephen King

Le seigneur des anneaux – J.R.R. Tolkien

Les fleurs du mal – Charles Baudelaire

India

The Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling

The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

Mexico

Cien años de soledad – Gabriel García Márquez

El principito – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Harry Potter – J.K. Rowling

El perfume – Patrick Süskind

Aura – Carlos Fuentes

Facebook Statuses and Literary Predilections

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series dominate other countries’ lists besides the American and British readerships. It’s an epic series that has and continues to have a universal, sweeping appeal across the globe irrespective of the readers’ age, occupation, gender, and social status.  Even if some people tried to stick a”Young Adult” genre label to it, this didn’t stop it from inspiring millions of readers of all ages.

The  Facebook list also reflects the extensive popularity of authors like Jane Austen, George Orwell, J. R. R. Tolkien, F. Scott Fitgerald, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Stephen King.

Books are a very personal matter. They help us unearth new worlds and explore imaginary kingdoms, they are our companions, our teachers, our friends and our supporters. Books move, surprise and make us wiser. They also stay with us forever. We never forget our favorite heroes. Instead, we pay a visit to them every now and then by re-reading their story and re-living it with them as an homage.

Have any of these books listed above moved you in one way or another? Which books would you add to your top 5 list?

Are you a collector of time assets, or do you find yourself always in debt? Thinking about time as an asset or debt is a unique way of looking at productivity. People often think of productivity as a short-term goal. They’re focused on how to save 10 minutes in the morning by preparing breakfast the night before, or how to shrink a boring office meeting down to 20 minutes only. Although these and other similar strategies are efficient in saving people a couple hours per month, they miss a valuable point. Looking at short-term one-time solutions like this is shortsighted, because in focusing on them we are not taking into consideration how certain actions can save time not just in the present, but also in the future.

When we’re thinking of how to be more productive, how to fit more projects in the twenty-four hours we only get each day, we should be looking at strategies that will save us time for many, many years to come.

“Time as Asset”  (also referred to as Time Asset and Time Debt) is a concept coined by Patrick McKenzie. This approach helps us understand how valuable some productivity-boosting skills truly are.

When you think of ways you can be more productive, it’s best to try and think of more long-term strategies. For instance, it makes more sense to increase your reading speed than it does to skip reading an important report. Increasing your reading speed is an asset; it’s a time asset that will save you many hours over the course of the coming years.

Time Asset: Keyboarding  – How to Cut Down on Typing Time

One way to be more productive in the long run is to improve your typing speed and accuracy. This will substantially reduce your typing time because you will no longer have to look down at your keyboard to locate “C” or to find the shortcut “Ctrl+X”.

Ultimate Typing™ is a program that will help you pay off your typing time debt and help you increase your typing time assets. Over the years, you will save hundreds of hours of typing, just by committing yourself to improving this one skill today.

Time Asset: Reading – How to Cut Down on Reading Time

We read for work, for pleasure, for education, for keeping up with the world. One time asset you should be looking at investing in is reading. Reading efficiently means you can stay on top of developments and new knowledge, and you can be more efficient at any reading-related project, from doing research for a report, to putting together a white paper for a new software release from your company.

By improving your reading speed you will be able to save hundreds of reading hours because bad habits like sub-vocalization and regression won’t be slowing you down. Consider how 7 Speed Reading™ might be the key to improving your productivity, today and for as long as you live.

Time Asset: Language  – Minimize your Language Time Debt

If your spelling and vocabulary are poor, then your productivity more than likely suffers from it. A person with an extended vocabulary and excellent spelling skill is more efficient at writing.

eReflect’s user-friendly software products Ultimate Spelling™ and Ultimate Vocabulary™ help you improve on these two seminal language skills. When you master these skills, you won’t have to rely on thesauruses, dictionaries, and spellcheckers every time you put together a report or have to write your next pitch.

Time as Asset is an excellent way to conceptualize productivity. It takes into consideration a valuable aspect of productivity: that productivity is  an ongoing goal we must think of  as a continuum, rather than a one-time thing we conquer one task at a time.

Millions of people use Wikipedia every day to look up information, and chances are you’re one of them. Since this global resource went on line in 2001, it has grown to be the website everyone turns to first when they want answers to a question about a fact, figure, or statistic. In fact, it has become so common that it’s like breathing oxygen – it’s so much a part of our daily lives that we don’t even think about it any more. That’s why you might be surprised by these five facts about Wikipedia – which you can all find on Wikipedia itself, of course!

Surprising Fact #1: Wikipedia is even more multilingual than you thought.

There are more articles in English (almost 5 million) than in any other language, but when it comes to languages in which more than a million entries have been published, English-language articles make up less than a third of the total. Other top contributors are from authors who speak French, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, or Cebuano, one of the languages used in the Philippines.

And there are even more languages used on Wikipedia when you look at smaller total numbers of articles. Native speakers in Japan, Portugal, and China will all find at least 100,000 articles written in their language, and so will people who live in Norway, Lithuania, and the Basque country of northwest Spain and southwest France.

Surprising Fact #2: Earlier versions of Wikipedia articles are stored, not deleted.

Most people think that an online entry in Wikipedia can’t be trusted because anyone can go in and make changes and edits. While it is true that articles are open to editing, there are also thousands of dedicated editors who watch for people who are making destructive changes, which they call “vandalism.” The website also has automatic subroutines that watch for the same thing happening at the database level. If a page has been tampered with, the previous correct version can be restored.

Surprising Fact #3: Wikipedia is updated thousands of times per hour.

Somewhere in the world, someone is updating a Wikipedia article right now. Actually, there are likely a hundred people editing articles right this very second, and another hundred just started on a different set of article edits and additions. In many categories of information, such as politics and current events, Wikipedia is one of the most up-to-date resources you can find.

Surprising Fact #4: No matter where you start in Wikipedia, you’ll end up on the same page.

The next time you have a few minutes to spare, try this trick:

1. Go to any Wikipedia page, such as eReflect’s Wikipedia page.

2. Find the first internal Wikipedia link on the page (not one that is in parentheses or italics).

3. Click the link. Now look for the first internal link on that new page.

4. Repeat step 3.

More than 90 percent of the time, if you keep clicking on the first internal link of every article, you’ll eventually end up at the Wikipedia page titled “Philosophy.” Now that’s food for thought!

Surprising Fact #5: Wikipedia contains information on anything you can think of – and more.

If you’re interested in learning something new, but you don’t know where to start, you can always type in a random word or phrase in the “search” box at the top of any Wikipedia page. You could also click the “Random Article” link on the left sidebar menu. It’s a great way to get new ideas and inspiration for more reading and research, and you’ll see articles on topics you never even dreamed of, like these:

– the prehistoric South American mammal called Nesodon, which weighed over a ton

a) Big Time, the live album by Tom Waits released in 1988

b) the names of the global rulers and heads of government in 503 AD

c) 19th-century Cuban revolutionary Ignacio Agramonte

A word of warning: using Wikipedia’s “Random Article” link will lead you to entertaining articles and interesting facts, but it can be addictive. There’s always more to learn with just one more click . . .