Four Bookmarks
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It’s nearly the end of April and I have read 24 books so far this year. That’s double the number I had read by this time last year. No, I haven’t been doing a speed reading course or only reading books that are no more than 20 pages in length!
There are a number of reasons why my reading pace has quickened. Partly it’s because I am reading books which are really firing me up. It’s also because I am spending spare moments reading, whenever I can.
I also will always have three different books on the go at the same time. I make sure that three books are very different, so that I can feel motivated to read one of them depending on my mood.
Then there are two other tricks – firstly, I set myself a daily target of 50 pages. That means completing the average book (200 pages or so) in 4 days.
The second trick requires 4 bookmarks. The first bookmark shows where I am up to in the book. The second bookmark shows the page I am aiming for by the end of the day i.e. 50 pages on in the book. The third bookmark shows tomorrow’s target page, another 50 pages on. And the final bookmark shows where the book ends. This is important because often a book has an index, notes, bibliography etc and the actual book finishes well short of the final cover.
It sounds simple – but those bookmarks turn a book into realistic chunks.
So, it may not be a sophisticated speed reading course with eye tracking and the like. But it is a simple set of techniques which has resulted in doubling the number of books I am getting through.
And it does that without losing the meaning and value of what I am reading.
Give it a go!
1 thought on “Four Bookmarks”
I have found another couple of ways to maximse reading time. Firstly travelling by train and I go over to Liverpool from Manchester quite a lot, is a great opportunity
Secondly if you have a gap of a couple of hours then I diary reading time and I am lucky enough to be able to do that during the day. Otherwise I was always reading late at night, nothing wrong with that as Paxman said yesterday but time limited