Improve Your Reading Skills - Why You Should Improve Your Reading Speed And Comprehension

By Adam Harley

Reading skills can make the difference between being productive and not being productive. They can make someone look intelligent, if the person has read a lot; and they can make another look like a fool, if that person hasn't read enough. Reading is the best way to go about learning things in general. They may not be the best way to go if you want to learn how to golf, but later on they will be the best way to go if you want to refine and perfect your golf swing. There is always something to learn from books. If you're interested in increasing your reading speed, and improving your comprehension, and upgrading your reading skills in general, you should learn how to speed read. But more about that later - first let's talk about George Santayana.

George Santayana was a poet, essayist, novelist, and philosopher. You may know him best for once saying "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". Classic. But he also said: "The wisest mind has something yet to learn." I think this is even more significant. Santayana realized that absolutely everyone has room to improve and to learn. There is no learning cap. There is no actual reason for anyone to stop learning and reading - even for the wisest of people.

Everyone should continue learning and educating themselves constantly. George Iles agrees with this point, saying once that true students never want to stop learning. His exact words were "Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student." I like to interpret this as: not being educated well enough is the main cause for people to want to stop their education. If they were educated well in the first place, they would want to continue learning more and more.

Once we agree that reading is extremely important, we must also see that it's not the end-all be-all learning method. Lord Chesterfield - one of my favourite "gentlemen" of the 18^th century - once said "Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them." In other words, your sources of information and knowledge should not only be books, but people too. If you want to learn something new, unpredictable, and possibly engaging, try talking to some people. You'll find that discussions and conversations can be very useful and entertaining - unless your idea of a conversation is "Hey, what's up? See you later!"

But that's not to bring down the value of reading. Reading can be the fastest and most effective way of learning and gathering information. If you're serious about improving your reading skills - which you definitely should be - then click this link and learn how to speed read. Now, keep in mind that real speed reading is much different from what you probably think it is. Do yourself a favour and go to that page to learn more about it.

This author does most of his reading at about 600 words per minute. As he needs to read a lot every day, this fast reading saves him hours and hours a day. Speed reading has become not just a hobby, but a necessity to keep up his productivity level. Go to http://www.speedreadingisreal.com to learn more about how you can start speed reading while maintaining a high level of comprehension.