Read Faster? With More Retention? Really?!?

So, I hang out every night, from about 9pm till 12 or 1 in the morning in the virtual world Kitely.

Image from Wikipedia ~ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mia5793

I talk to writers…

Writers from many different places in our world…

Sometimes we talk in nice buildings, sometimes on boating trips, sometimes just sitting on the grass, or the top of a mountain…

And, I don’t pay anything but my basic Internet fee to do all this virtual socializing…

So, the other night, at The Muse (a cool space we visit a lot), I was chatting with my Best Friend (from Australia) and my Good Buddy (from Maryland {in the USA}) and someone new dropped by.

This new guy happened to live just a few miles from me in real life (Ohio—USA) but his ancestry was from a country in Asia that I’d spent time in when I was serving in the Navy…

Also, what he was talking about was nearly identical to a book I’d just read about how to get more done in less time…

I know, I promised faster reading—so, why am I going on about my virtual social life?

Basically because, when I’m doing my thing in a virtual world, I expect to be talking to folks who are many miles physically-distant and not having an ancestry that stretches back to the one place on the earth I had to travel farthest to reach while also sounding nearly exactly like the man speaking in the book I’d just finished !

The psychologist, Carl Jung, would have called so many “coincidences” a case of “Synchronicity“.

And, when this kind of thing happens, I take the time and what’s talked about Very Seriously…

One of the very serious things I followed up on was his recommendation of a particular web site and new “Reading Technology” called Spritz.

My new synchronistic-friend in Kitely had shared that he’d only read 4 books in his life due to a particular mental-syndrome he has—he just couldn’t pay attention long enough to finish more than a few dozen pages…

After he’d played with Spritz for awhile, he found himself reading so quickly and retaining so much that, in a relatively short time, he’d finished about 70 books…

Spritz lets you adjust your reading speed from 40 WordsPerMinute to 1,000 WPM!

So, because of my publishing experiment on Wattpad (which involves one heck of a lot of reading), I’m going to be experimenting with Spritz…

From the Spritz page about the science behind their Reading-Technology (and, I encourage anyone interested to definitely read that whole page...):

“Removing the eye movements associated with traditional reading methods not only reduces the number of times your eyes move when reading, but also decreases the number of times your eyes must pass over a word for your brain to understand it. This makes spritzing extremely efficient, precise, convenient and comfortable.”

And, on the page where you find all the places you can use Spritz, you learn that it can be used on the Web, with 6 different Apps on iOS, 3 different Apps on Android, the Windows Phone, the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Samsung Gear2, and 3 websites that have integrated Spritz Technology…

Plus, I want to share two very important points from their FAQ page:

• Does it require special training?

Unlike other reading techniques, you don’t have to receive special training to read with Spritz. And… the more you practice, the faster you will go, the smoother the reading will seem and the higher your retention will be. What you need to learn: relax! Don’t try to scan the words from left to right. Simply look at the red character and trust that your brain retains the whole word. When you relax, you will concentrate more on the content – see next question.

• Will I even remember anything I read?

Of course… Our testing shows that the retention levels when spritzing are at least as good as with traditional reading and that, with just a little bit of experience, you will retain even more than you did before. How long can I spritz in one session? Internally, we’ve tested to about 2 hours straight with no breaks. Then our tester had to pee. If you have a large bladder and would like to take a shot at the record, by all means, go for it and let us know the results.

I’ll be experimenting with Spritz on Wattpad and I’ll share my results—(soon ?)—but, if you try it, do, please give us a report in the Comments :-)

Oh! Here’s a nifty short video about Spritz:

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