Dealing with Difficult People/Speed Reading

I went to a seminar yesterday with some people that I work with entitled, 'Dealing with Difficult People'. Overall, it was a good experience - made me think and really want to make some changes and take action of the way that I am.

Something that the seminar leader was plugging for was speed reading - the Evelyn Wood Dynamic Reading program in particular. When mentioned, I thought it would be sweet to be able to read extremely fast - going from around 250 words per minute and 75% comprehension to 1000 wpm and 90% comprehension. The program costs $200.

I went online to read more about it and learn more about speed reading in general. Wikipedia is just great. I found out that the benefits of speed reading are unsubstantial. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Most people who read at 1000 wpm or more have around a 50% retention rate (this is a poor retention rate). According to Wikipedia, researchers in the area of speed reading do not recommend paying for expensive speed reading programs because the basic principals of speed reading are very simple and widely known.

Then, I found out about something that's just plain sweet - Wikibooks. A collection of free, online text-books editable by anyone. It just so happens that there is a wikibook on Speed Reading. This book has all the basic concepts for speed reading laid out as well as simple techniques and exercises to increase reading speed and comprehension.

I thought I could read like Superman - just flip through, page by page, memorizing the whole book. Maybe some day.