Good weekend my friends. This has been quite an eventful time in the world of politics. We’ve seen the passage of the world’s largest spending bill. This was followed by a promise to cut the budget deficit in half in four years. Obama then had a surprise “quasi state of the union address” in which he pledged more funding and more cuts. I would say he’s promised everything but the kitchen sink, but he did that too by introducing hundreds of billions for healthcare in his new budget. By the way, it was very classy of him to finally say Washington needs to stop hiding expenses that aren’t on the budget. As a measure of transparency for all of this, he’s even launched Recovery.gov. The latest surprise was the announcement of a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq, most of the troops will be gone in 2010. He’s saying all the right things, I sure hope he can follow-through on everything.
But I’m sick of politics. I’m sick of the economy. I’m very sick of talking about money at all. So I’m going back to some of my other hobbies and interests today. One of my favorite things to do is read about cars. My favorite car blog is Autoblog. But sometimes I always don’t have the time to read everything I want to. Being a slow reader and prone to distraction, it can sometimes take me days to get through a 1,000 word post about the new BMW 7 Series.
This is where Spreeder.com comes in handy. With Spreeder, you simply copy the text of what you want to read (email, post, article, word doc, etc) and paste it into the spreeder box. What Spreeder will do for you is show each word in your article one after the other at whatever speed you want. The default setting is 300 words per minute (WPM) but you can change it to be faster or slower. I’ve found some topics can be read at faster speeds, while others require me to dial it down. Usually articles that contain more in depth details – like the subtle nuances of a new BMW – require me to take it down to 275 or 250.
The beauty of the system is I get to finish the article I want to read, and I do it much faster than I normally would have. The trick is to throw out your old way of reading. If you waste energy on identifying each word you see, you will have to take it down to 150 wpm in order to keep up. Instead keep your eyes on the screen and trust your brain to recognize to word, instead of you recognizing letters.
If you’ve ever tried speed reading, this is a similar concept, but there are differences too. I’ve tried speed reading, just can’t do it.
So take your favorite blog and give Spreeder a shot. Let me know how it works out for you.
 By The Weakonomist |
The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice. |
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