HotStrategies.com

Well, can you?

You should! Forget talking to psychic or reading your horoscope or any of that, I’m talking about your goals and your visions. All of us have goals, and without them, we are nothing. A lot of people say they don’t have any future goals or any precise goals, but they do, even those who like to live carpe diem, living each day at a time. Goals just come in different forms.

Your goal, while not formal or planned, might be just to be happier in the future. A goal doesn’t necessarily mean that you need a plan to build a company or make money in the future or finding a better job. Deep down, we all want to be happier in the future, and I believe it’s a goal we all share; so even if you don’t have something concrete, I think rare are the people who don’t wish happiness.

Our future life and future situations are all based upon our actions. It’s a very simple equation, your actions build on top of others and create situation and scenarios that encourage other actions, and sure enough, you are building your future.

What you might not be aware of is that all that is coming ahead in your life is not so unpredictable. By thinking really hard and trying to line up a coherent string of events, you can clearly depict the different outcomes that are waiting you in the future. You can pretty much know if you will or not achieve the goals and be where you want to be.

If you have a stable job right now, and in a few years you would like to travel up to several destinations around the world because you enjoy it, and because you’d like to take a little break from your job. Can you see that future? Can you see it happening, really? You know that your primary challenge in your goal is money. You are in luck since money is easy to measure. If you take 30 minutes of your time now, and calculate all your expenses that is needed and the money you are going to make, don’t forget tax, you should be in a good position to see your future and how everything will turn around.

Now, let’s take the exact same example, but without the traveling and without nothing more. Let’s say you are someone with a stable job who doesn’t worry much and doesn’t have any fancy needs. Think about your situation right now, are you happy? Are you enjoying your life to the fullest? Whether you answer yes or no, do the same exercise as before and think ahead of your life. Do you see anything different that will be happening in your life? Are you anticipating a change in your needs? If so, are doing anything about it?

The point here is that most of the time, it doesn’t require much to see where you will be in 5 or 10 years. Unless something extraordinary or big will happen out of luck or bad luck, you are the one who is building your future. Many people are in stuck in a routine to a point where they don’t think anymore. If they are unhappy now, they are hoping the future will be better and time will tell. If they are happy, they are thinking it will continue by itself and the future will take care of everything. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are 99% of your future, and you can both see your future and change your future right now.

Reading is skill that is required for everyday life. Reading is the only way we can get information from text to our brain. If you want more knowledge, you need more reading. Now what if you could read faster? What if you could absorb a huge quantity of knowledge, or read more stories than ever by developing and improving your current skills. I for one would love to be able to read faster.

It has been a while now that I’m trying to gather information on reading faster and improving your reading skills. There are many books out there, many companies and tutorials that are supposed to make your reading speeds skyrocket.

I have come across techniques from different resources that all have the same goal which is to make you read faster; everything from “try reading 2-3 words at a time” to photo reading where you “mentally photograph a whole page of text”.

Right off the bat, I will tell you one thing, all the books that you will read will contain 95% filler and 5% actual helpful information. That is, the ‘real technique’ or the ‘essence’ of the book can most of the time easily be reduced to 2-3 pages or even less, but who would pay $30 for a 3 page book?

Some sites, like photoreading.com, say on their front page that with their techniques you can read up to 25,000 words a minute. This equals to 416 words a second. To give you an idea, a full page, filled to bottom, in a word document, single spaced, font times new roman size 12 is around 600 words. Being able to read two thirds of 8½ X 11 filled page in 1 second is something that I consider close to impossible. To give you another example, they are basically saying you can read a 200 page regular size book in 3 minutes. THREE MINUTES!

I will tell you one thing, some of the methods I found over time by questioning people and reading books do actually work, but you need a lot of practice, so much that you actually wonder if it’s worth it.

However, there is a clear distinction that has to be made. Reading faster is one thing, absorbing the information is another one. Being able to “photo read” a page in a second by knowing that it’s talking about cars is one thing, but being able to read it and actually understanding the complex explanations about the cars is another. I doubt anyone can read a page in a second by fully absorbing and understanding what they just read.

If you want to read faster and actually not make your reading a waste of time with some magic techniques, read everything by groups of word. Start small, like 2 words at a time. After you get comfortable get to 3 words a time, etc…You will see an improvement of speed pretty quickly. Most every other methods you will come by will either be just like this technique or be a waste of time and money.