How Does Speed Reading Benefit the Entrepreneur?

By Melvin Ng
Creator of "The 16-Minute Speed Reading Course"


As either an old-hand in the world of business, or new to the life of being an entrepreneur, one common factor that you'll share, if you want to run a successful business that is, is an overwhelming amount of paperwork to read through. Now, you may decide that your entrepreneurial skills are more in management and delegation, and therefore offload this to your subordinates, or you may decide that being a "hand's on" entrepreneur means ploughing your way through all of this paperwork.

Whatever the case may be, being a successful entrepreneur means knowing about all the fluctuations in the market before the rest of the pack do, and having the ability to run your business smoothly. To be able to do this, you will need to undertake research and collect relevant, pertinent, information. In short, as an entrepreneur, you have a lot of reading ahead of you.

Here, some entrepreneurs, even successful ones, find that fulfilling their need to complete all their necessary reading means that they spend more than 12 hours a day reading! But, don't let the desperation, agitation, frustration and stress of reading all this necessary material get you down - there is a way to cut this reading time in half: thereby giving you more time to spend being the successful entrepreneur you always want to be!

So, how do you manage to improve the time you spend reading? Simple really, ask yourself the following questions:

do you read pages from left to right, or do you concentrate on the centre of the line and scan the page down?
Empirical evidence shows that concentrating on the centre of the line and scanning the page down will increase your reading speed.

do you read word-for-word, or do your sweep read?
Empirical evidence shows that word-for-word reading is both very cumbersome and reduces the reader's ability to comprehend the material being read.

do you sound out words and syllables as you read them?
If you sound out words and syllables as you read them then you are 'sub-vocalizing'. Although taught to many of us at an early age, sub-vocalization is actually one of the biggest hindrances on our ability to read faster. What's more, although there are a number of proven downsides with sub-vocalization, there are no proven benefits. In short, you're wasting valuable time!

do you re-read material if you haven't fully understood it the first time?
Although psychologically you may think it is more beneficial to re-read a passage you have not fully comprehended the first time you read it, in fact evidence indicates this is not the case. In any event, having the ability to speed read negates the need to re-read passages as with the ability to speed read comes higher comprehension rates.

So, as you can see, if you have answered yes to any one or more of these questions there is a very good chance you're spending longer reading than is necessary. What's more, if you were to take a speeding course you could easily find that you increase your reading speed by up to half - meaning that you'll free up more time to do other essential tasks central to being and entrepreneur, like wining and dining, or spending more time with your family.

Other benefits you'll be able to unlock by being able to speed read as an entrepreneur include:

having more time on your hands to research good business opportunities;
having more time on your hands to read materials relevant to the business you already have;
have more time on your hands to greet-and-meet your existing clients, like having the free time to play a round of golf;
have more time n your hands to spend with your family;
be in a better position to meet deadlines, as you won't be bogged down with reading;
be in a better position to take on more work and maximise your income potential;
have less stress and frustration, as you'll have been able to complete all your reading tasks within their given time;
increase your comprehension and memory of the material you've read: it's a proven fact that speed reading material is more likely to increase your comprehension of what you have just read than if you word-for-word, or re-read, material.
As you can seen then, the benefit of being able to speed read as an entrepreneur is that you are in a better position to manage your business more successfully and with less stress attached to the tasks you need to complete