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 . . .

Most people don’t really want to go back to work in the office after a nice relaxing vacation, and for many of them one of the main reasons is the huge backlog of e-mail messages waiting for them. With all of the e-mails coming in every day it’s necessary to make sure you don’t waste time on the ones that aren’t important, but that you do get the most out of the messages containing the information that you need. To save time and get through your inbox in the most efficient way, try these useful tips:

Start using keyword searches. Even if you’ve got 50 e-mails from the same department, they might not all be about the same thing. Do a quick keyword search using a term that you know is likely to be in the messages that you need to see – for example, the word project or meeting. If you’re working on something specific with a group, pick a term that relates to your current task, such as upgrade or rollout. The most timely messages should pop to the top of the list, and the messages about the upcoming birthday potluck will fall to the bottom.

Identify key collaborators. Many e-mail services allow you to set up different groups and assign people to those groups. If you can identify the people whose messages you almost always need to read right away, you can put them in one or two separate groups, and go to those messages first.

Stay away from the crowds. While there might be company-wide e-mails sent out that you do need to read, many people use the “send to all” feature much more often than they need to. You’ll probably be able to immediately see whether you’re one of a hundred others on an e-mail list, and just by looking at the number of people who received the message you’ll get an idea if you’ve been sent the message for no particular reason other than that you’re in someone’s e-mail address book.

Highlight the important information. If you can use your e-mail service to automatically assign a color flag to certain senders or keywords you’ll have an easy way to visually sort through your inbox before you go any further. You’ll be able to quickly spot the red-flagged or urgent messages and handle those first.

Let the system do the sorting. This might be something you need to work with a systems administrator on, but it’s likely that there is a way for you to set up folders and have the e-mail system automatically route messages into those folder, either by keyword topic or by sender. In addition, you can make sure that people who you need to communicate with by e-mail set up their systems to use the same method, and your folder will serve as the go-to spot for all of your e-mails, so that they don’t get lost among the hundreds of others you receive in your main mailbox.

The Internet revolutionized reading in the 21st century, something everybody realizes now. The numbers alone speak volumes: 11 years ago about 22% of Americans chose the Internet to get their news, but in 2013, that number had risen to 39%. The statistics are revealing, and attest to the fact that e-books, news, entertainment, and communication are all taking place online.

Online, tech-based reading is on the rise

According to Kathryn Zickuhr, Internet researcher at the Pew Research Center, 55% of Americans own a smartphone and 24% an e-reader.

E-reading is a trend that continues to grow. In 2011, only 16% of the American participants in the Pew study read an ebook, but in 2012 that number rose to 23%. Print book reading dropped from 72% to 67% from 2011 to 2012. Again, there’s a strong but gradual tendency to read more ebooks than paper ones.

Rituals that are intimacy-based favor print book reading

While traditional reading rituals like reading with a child or with another person are still mostly likely to be done with print books, participants in the study who commuted regularly confirmed that ebooks are their preferred medium for reading when travelling. Not only does an e-reader have the advantage of letting you keep a wider selection of books available, it allows you to access new books easily and quickly.

The future of libraries

Libraries are not dying, and many people still visit them. In fact, 73% of the people surveyed visit a library with the express purpose of borrowing books.

What’s been noticeably absent from libraries is the time spent in them. People generally no longer browse shelves as frequently. They find the books in the library’s website, reserve them on line, and go pick them up, a time-saving approach that librarians say is on the rise.

As the purpose of libraries shifts, their cultural role is becoming even stronger. People regard libraries as community spaces for ongoing cultural expression and communication. Lectures, cultural events, and meetings are all part of the many activities taking place at libraries today, giving them a role in peoples’ lives beyond studying and reading books.

Reader expectations changing

Online content is changing the expectations of readers. The print book is not going to be replaced any time soon, but libraries are already feeling the need to adjust to a more tech-based environment.

In fact, the survey illustrated that people are keen to use tech services like pre-loaded ebooks, or classes on how to use e-readers. Most modern libraries have online catalogs that let people borrow library-owned e-books, and even the smallest library is striving to offer more automated and online services to the public.

As we move into a digital era of content dissemination, the need for libraries and other cultural institutions to keep up with technology will not decrease. Libraries that stubbornly refuse to offer online facilities like ebook borrowing, free access to databases, and digitized books will run the risk of being neglected and forgotten. Technology is changing the reading expectations of modern readers, and society – and its libraries – has to respond accordingly and promptly.

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