On Tuesday, August 4, Paul Nowak, founder of Iris Reading LLC, presented a webinar: “Speed Reading for Business Professionals” to CFA Society Chicago members. The 90-minute session covered practical techniques to read faster, remember more and boost productivity. The techniques could be used for a full range of materials from online media to annual reports/10Ks and financial statements.
Nowak teaches a three-step process that begins with a “preview” to look at headings and subheads for main ideas. The next step is “overview,” which requires reading the first sentence of every paragraph. You finally “read” from beginning to end, but only if the previous two steps have convinced you the article is worth reading.
Nowak also introduced the attendees to AccelaReader, an app designed by Iris Reading to increase reading speed. You can copy and paste text into the app and then read flashing words at increasing speeds to train your eyes to read faster. You can determine how fast you would like to read (words per minute), and how many words you would like to be flashed at a time (chunk size).
You can learn more about Nowak’s course by visiting Iris Reading.