Read Fast and Comprehend it All

How to Comprehend More in 5 Minutes

Smart Reading Hacks

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

When I was in grad school, I had to learn how to read strategically, which meant I needed to learn how to comprehend more in a five-minute period of reading time. The amount of reading that you do in graduate school is about twice what you would read in undergraduate school, let alone everyday life. In my doctorate program, I was doing more research (i.e. reading TONS more), which means you’re reading so much your eyeballs hurt.

Reading and comprehension become crucial to success. I needed to figure out how to employ smart reading hacks to improve my comprehension rate.

A few tips:

1. Strategy: Use the Table of Contents, Introductions, Conclusions, and Indexes like they’re your best friend. If you are answering specific questions, scroll or skim through the text as if you’re looking for exact words. This is not a leisurely summer beach read. You’re trying to find answers quickly.

I admit this is why I prefer to read on my iPad Kindle app. There is a sneaky little search feature where you can type in a word or keywords. If you don’t have that option, but need to read loads of information, answer a few questions as you are reading. 1) What does the writing have to do…